My dear friend, Marcia, had a milestone birthday this past summer and I knew that the only thing I wanted to give her was a quilt. I had planned on a nice throw-sized quilt in blues and grays with a spot of yellow to be used for cuddling up on the couch. My plans were foiled, though, when a few weeks before her birthday, Marcia and her husband bought a farm. Maybe she'd want a quilt for the farm? A bed sized quilt? The answer was yes on all fronts.

Marcia went straight to work making a secret pinterest board of quilts that she liked. I added a few that I liked and, after a couple of days, I had a general plan. Squares. Saturated colors. Light gray. It took me awhile to come up with the exact design as I wanted the quilt to be something that reflected my style as well as her preferences. I let the ideas simmer and settled on a design that has structure even though it looks random and that was easy to piece and fun to sew.

With the exception of the light gray and the backing, all of the fabrics came from my stash. I had a fun time choosing which prints to use. I chose them in groups of four prints with some kind of connecting color scheme in each group. Each of the 36 groups was different, bringing the total number of prints to 144! Stash-busting! Jane helped me with some of the fabric selection. She has a wonderful eye for color and after choosing a bunch of the groupings on my own, I needed her artistic viewpoint to balance out my own color preferences (blue and green, anyone?!?).

The blocks were strip-pieced and then all mixed up and sewn back together. It wasn't particularly fast, but certainly more speedy than cutting 900 individual squares of fabric! And it was doable in chunks of time, which is the way I get most of my sewing completed. Once the blocks were finished and sewn into a quilt top, I added borders of the light gray to frame the entire top. For the quilting, I rented time on a long arm and free motioned a figure-eight-ish pattern across the entire quilt, using the squares as my guide. The backing is one of Carolyn Friedlander's widescreen prints and the binding is an Anna Maria Horner print from my stash.

After giving the quilt to Marcia just before Christmas, she and her daughter, Anna, took it to the farm and photographed it on site. It was so fun to have a stream of photos pop up one after another in a series of text messages. I loved making this quilt for her and I hope it keeps them warm and cozy on the farm.

I'm over on the Accuquilt blog this week with a new tutorial for the beginnings of a medallion quilt. Accuquilt has this new die system called the Qube that can be used with their GO! cutters. Essentially, the Qube contains a variety of mix and match dies to make larger blocks. It comes with a variety of block patterns to get you started and all the cutting mats you need. It's such a cool product!

As soon as I saw this product, I knew it could be used in so many ways beyond just individual blocks. Working with the 12" Qube, I have designed a medallion quilt. This month's tutorial includes the center medallion and the first border. Over the next two months, I'll add additional borders to end up with a throw sized quilt. Fun, right? Plus, there is a little mystery involved - I'm not giving away the whole design until the end!

I hope you will check out my Accuquilt Medallion quilt. Accuquilt provided the dies and cutters to me at no cost, but the designs and opinions about their products are all mine. I love how fast and accurate my GO! cutter is. Seriously.

(photo by Danielle Collins)

I am very excited to be one of today's stops on the Good Hair Day blog tour. This new fabric line by Kim Andersson for Windham Fabrics is absolutely adorable - bobby pins, hair bows, products and more! When Kim asked if I would like to make a quilt for her look book last year, I was incredibly flattered and very excited.

I love the saturated colors in this line, especially the blues, pinks and oranges. The prints are whimsical in a very sophisticated way and the coordinating cross-weave solids really made them sing. I made my quilt, Rinse and Repeat, over the course of a week last summer. To highlight the prints, I chose to make a grouping of quarter log cabin blocks laid out on point. The actual "logs" vary in width, giving the blocks more movement, and the quilt has five different quarter log cabin iterations.  Bonus: the peaks at the top and bottom reminded me of a hair comb without being a literal interpretation. The log cabins are sandwiched between two larger cuts of the red and white cross-weave. I just adore this fabric - it the most beautiful coral-pink and so, so soft. I think this gives the quilt a decidedly modern feel with a good nod to a traditional pattern.

(photo by Danielle Collins)

You can find the Good Hair Day fabrics in stores currently and I plan on releasing the pattern for Rinse and Repeat as soon as possible. I will definitely keep you updated on the progress as it happens.

Thanks to Windham Fabrics and Kim, I have one 5" charm pack of Good Hair Day to giveaway. The giveaway is open to everyone - US and International readers. To enter the drawing, please leave a comment on this post telling me what your first sewing project is for 2016. I will keep the comments open until Friday, January 15 at 4:00 pm EST. Be sure to stop by the other blogs on the tour to see more amazing projects from this great fabric line and for more chances to win fabric!

Good Hair Day Blog Hop

January 2016

 

Mon 11th:

Kim Andersson - http://iadorepattern.com/blog/

Windham - https://windhamfabrics.wordpress.com

 

Tue 12th:

Erin Harris - http://www.houseonhillroad.com

Terri Carpenter - http://thequiltedfox.blogspot.com

Cath Mosley - https://www.instagram.com/cathmosely/

 

Wed 13th:

Adrianne Ove - http://www.littlebluebell.com

Kristen Takakuwa - https://theneedies.wordpress.com

 

Thursday 14th:

Daniel Rouse - http://pieceandpress.blogspot.com

Cal Patch - http://hodgepodgefarm.net

 

Friday 15th 

Stacey Day - https://staceyinstitches.wordpress.com

Amy Gunson - http://badskirt.blogspot.com.au

 

Sat 16th:

Madeleine Roberg - http://domesticstrata.com/blogs/domestic-strata

Darci Alexis - http://darcisews.com

 

Sun 17th:

Miriam Blaich - http://berlinquilter.blogspot.com

Crystal Chadwick - https://theclothalbatross.wordpress.com

 

Mon 18th: 

Pati Fried & Laura Nownes - https://seehowwesew.wordpress.com

Gillian Smith: http://sokath.com/main/blog/category/creative/

 

Tues 19th:

Casey York - https://studioloblog.wordpress.com

Nicole Daksiewicz - http://modernhandcraft.com/blog/

I haven't had much time to sew recently so I was pretty happy to string a few hours together last week to make this mini for our quilt guild's holiday swap. The quilts didn't have to be holiday-themed, and truthfully I think this could stay up all year, but I was feeling festive so here it is. All of the little trees were improv pieced. I grabbed a bunch of rectangular green scraps and some Kona snow and just went for it. If you would like to try this, here is a very small, kind of limited, photo tutorial. My quilt finished at just about 21'' square.

Cut your green pieces into rectangles and match each one up with a rectangle of your background fabric. Longer, skinnier background pieces will give you taller trees and shorter rectangles make fatter trees. Cut the background rectangle in half along the diagonal to yield two triangles. Arrange the triangles on the green fabric to get an idea of where they will be. Flip the first one over and sew it to the scrap right sides together. Trim the seam to 1/4'' and press towards the background fabric. Repeat with the other side. (Note: My method only works for a solid background as there is no wrong or right side. You could still do this with a print background, but you will need to more fabric to ensure that you have two triangles that point in opposite directions.

Trim the trees so that there is at least 1/4'' on each side of the bottom points and at the top. You can even out the height of the trees after the trunk is added by sewing extra background fabric to the top edge.

To make the trunks, sew a strip of brown fabric (7/8'' to 1 1/4'' wide by about 8" long) between two wider (about 3'' x 8") strips of background fabric. Press the seams towards the brown. Cut this into strips of different heights for trunks. For this quilt, I made two different strip sets and cut each into 6 pieces. Sew the trunks to the bottom edge of the trees and trim the sides.

Sew some strips of background fabric on each side and between the trees to act as spacers. I put four trees in each row and then sewed the rows together. You might want to add more background fabric along the top and bottom - I found it was nice to have some more negative space. Now make a quilt sandwich and quilt as desired - I went with unevenly spaced horizontal and vertical lines using my walking foot. Bind in your preferred method and admire your work.

I know the photos are limited, so if you have questions, please ask. I will answer in the comments for all to see.

Merry Christmas

At this time of the year, fast and easy sewn gifts are my go-to. One of these items is a set of these super cute and simply constructed coasters. I can whip up a set of six in under an hour and they are perfect for fabric and batting scraps. With an assembly line going, a whole slew can be made in an afternoon. I'm over on the AccuQuilt blog today sharing a tutorial for how I made these. The tops are pieced with quarter square triangles and the bottoms are squares. While I could cut them with a rotary cutter and ruler, I love my GO! Cutter because it makes accurate cuts in no time. You can cut one set of six with one die and one pass through the machine! Who couldn't use a little more time at this time of the year?

You can find the tutorial here. If you make some, let me know. I'd love to see your version.

I've been wanting to play with the January Quilt block since, well, January when Liz Harvatine released it out into the world. When I saw it on the mosaic that my partner, Hilarie, had on her instagram feed for the Schnitzel and Boo mini swap, I decided to go for it. I felt doubly lucky that Hilarie's favorite colors are navy, aqua, green and gray - my favorites, too! - and that we share the same taste in fabric. It made making this mini extremely enjoyable.

The background fabric is by Alexia Abegg from her Paper Bandana line for Cotton and Steel. I stashed 6 yards of this back when it was released. (I have used it ALL. Insert sad emoji here.) It is the perfect neutral for the way I like to sew and I was thrilled to use it for this mini. It adds interest without competing with the prints. The other prints are a mix of scraps and stash. Many of the pieces are small so this block is wonderful for scraps and fussy cutting treasured bits of fabric. The piecing is pretty easy. Yes, they are curves, but they are gentle curves and with a little pinning and some deep breaths, you can do this. Slow and steady is my mantra with things like this, with slow being the key word as it is not a fast make. Still, I loved sewing it. My favorite part? The block finishes larger than necessary and then trimmed down to size so any wonkiness or the like is taken care of painlessly.

I would like to make this quilt again, albeit in a much larger size. That doesn't fit into my new sewing plan, which is to finish all the unfinished things laying around the studio. (A girl can dream!) I can just envision this made in Liberty prints, can't you? And I happen to have a stack of those waiting to be made into something fabulous. I know I would have to set out to make a block a day or some other such system to get it done because it takes time to do it right. Maybe in January? Seems fitting.

With the holidays fast approaching, I decided that I could use some new placemats to freshen up our table. Using scraps, a couple of fat quarters and my GO! Cutter, this one came together quickly. I love fast projects and bonus if they use scrap batting! I think that a set of four or six of these placemats would make a cute handmade gift this holiday season. Maybe make a variation on the flying geese theme with different layouts, but using all the same fabrics? Or use the same layout and vary the fabrics in your selected color palette? Get the full tutorial and how-to on on the Accuquilt blog where I am guest posting today.

I'd love to hear what you are making for gifts this holiday season. I can always use a couple more ideas (and a lot more time)!

Last week I decided that enough was enough and I signed up for a long arm quilting certification class. I am extremely lucky to have Angela Huffman's studio, Quilted Joy, right in my home town. Beyond being an amazing quilter, she is a APQS dealer and has long arms for rent by the hour. Having considered buying a long arm for awhile now, I decided to try before I buy. Smart, no?

I got the girls off to school and quickly whipped up a quilt top using a layer cake of Erin Michael's new line, Purebred, in a little over an hour. Armed with that and a quickly pieced backing from my stash, I arrived at the studio for my four hour class. After a quick tour of the studio, Amy showed me how to load my quilt on the frame and let me go at it. I didn't really have a plan and because I knew that we would keep the quilt at our house, I didn't worry about messing it up. I just started stitching flowers, hearts, little doodles. I wanted to play and to feel the machine. Let me tell you: IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!

A couple of hours and a few bobbins later, we took my quilt off of the machine. I was really excited to see that the quilting isn't horrible. It's far from perfect, but I am happy with my first attempt. The stitches show up so well on the back side. Of course, I can see every tiny misstep, but that's ok. I immediately drove to my local quilt shop and picked up a half yard of one of the prints for the binding. At home, I squared it up and bound it by machine. Yes, a quilt start to finish in one day! That was beyond satisfying.

I have already booked more rental time for next week. I have a half dozen tops that need quilting and I am going to try to finish them before I start any additional big projects. I know: famous last words.