Week 4, Final Finishes

So, this week I took a hiatus from my summer challenge to work on some projects with impending deadlines. I had two custom order quilts that needed finishing, a birthday gift quilt to complete, and a twin quilt to work on, so I decided to focus on those projects. Here's what I accomplished!

First, the birthday quilt (the top was made during my Joel Dewberry week). I'm happy to say the recipient loved it. I backed it in Azalea minky dimple dot from Hawthorne Threads so it will be warm and cozy for the winter:

Next, a finished Bricklayer custom order quilt in the Aviary Lilac palette (also completed during Joel Dewberry week):

This next quilt is also a custom order. It began with the Aviary colorway, but we added in some other coordinates, and I absolutely love the combination. I have already decided that I need to make a quilt for our bedroom out of these fabrics! This one is headed to the quilting machine shortly! (Pattern is Flowers in the Sunshine by Sweetjane).

My mother sent me to Kmart last week for a black and white twin "quilt" that was on sale. Luckily, they did not have the right size in stock, so it gave me an excuse to make her something much better! (She loves my quilts -- she just didn't want to stress me out with having to make something for her!). I didn't have anything on hand, so I ordered a few black and white fat quarter bundles. I managed to get the top done this week, and hope to quilt it over the next couple of days.

I also managed to quilt a couple of smaller tops from my ever-growing pile of flimsies! The first one is a small patchwork quilt made out of 2 Hello Luscious charm packs:

The second top was made during my Chez Moi week and features several of their collections:

I also decided to pull out a couple of "miscellaneous" fabric drawers. Both of these quilt tops were made from leftovers of previous custom orders. The first features Anna Griffin's Animal Parade collection, with some coordinates:

And the second one is mostly from the Gypsy Girl collection by Lily Ashbury for Moda Fabrics:

All in all, it was a very productive week, and I enjoyed the "break" from the summer challenge! In fact, this week I'm going to attack a pile of projects in the corner of my sewing room (see below). I'm sure that I will also "play" with a fabric drawer or two, but since the main goal of emptying drawers is to get more clutter put away, it makes sense that I should also deal with the clutter itself! I'll try to share my progress throughout the week!

 

Week 3 Final Finishes

I had a very productive week with my Joel Dewberry fabrics. Not so much with dishes and laundry, but that's okay! I started out with three very full drawers of fabric, as well as some lilac Aviary fabrics that wouldn't even fit in the drawers.

Part of the reason I chose Joel Dewberry fabrics this week is that I received a custom order request for a lilac Aviary quilt last week, so I started with this quilt in my Bricklayer pattern:

I also finished this Hip to Be Square quilt (many of the blocks were left over from a previous project)

The remaining Aviary fabrics went back into a drawer, because I usually keep those "in stock" for custom orders. I then moved on to a different collection, Heirloom. I remember when this collection came out several summers ago -- I stalked my favorite online fabric store and ordered it at soon as it was in stock. Then it sat in a drawer for 4 years. My favorite of the three color palettes is the Citrine, and I had purchased some Kona Stone several years ago after seeing this quilt by Fresh Lemons Quilts since it seemed like the perfect background color. I whipped out my Accuquilt hexagon and equilateral triangles dies, and cut the pieces for this quilt:

These two dies are awesome, by the way! The hexagons are big, so they are great for featuring large scale prints, and the tops go together quickly and line up easily with the dog-eared corners and notches. They are so much fun to make that I also made one out of Modern Meadow and Moda Bella in Ivory:

Next, I pulled out some Deer Valley fat quarters. I had originally bought these to make a Bricklayer quilt, so that's exactly what I did!

I had enough pieces left over to make a small Hip to Be Square quilt, too!

After those tops, I went back to the remaining two colorways of Heirloom, and chose the Coming Home quilt pattern from Camille Roskelley's book Simplify. This one is the Ruby palette (I have no idea what the background color is -- a pale grey that matched quite nicely!)

...and this one is the Sapphire palette, with Moda Bella Snow. I'll be adding borders to this one and finishing it for my husband's aunt, who turns 80 this month.

After all of those tops, I am only down to two drawers from the original three, and they are still packed pretty tightly! How is that possible?!

So, who is my next designer of the week? Well, this blog challenge has been pretty intense so far (I've made 20 quilt tops in the last three weeks!), so this week will be sort of a break from the challenge. I need to quilt three of the finished tops, as well as work on a new twin quilt for my Mom's guest room, so I'll start with those projects. I do have a few miscellaneous drawers in my storage units, so I plan to pull out one "surprise drawer" this week to work on. Next Sunday, I will share this week's finishes, and resume the blog challenge!

 

Quilt-a-Day, Day 8

This month, I'm blogging about a new or recent finish every day!

Today's finish is a custom twin quilt with matching pillow covers in the Aviary lilac collection by Joel Dewberry. I love the way this palette looks on a white background solid!

I was running a bit low on backing fabric, so I pieced a strip of leftover fabrics and centered it on the back. I really like the way it breaks up the main backing print at bit!

More custom orders await, but the rest are smaller, thank goodness!

 

Blogger's Quilt Festival Entry # 1

My blogging mojo has been seriously lacking lately, so I thought I'd get it back into gear by entering the 2014 Spring Blogger's Quilt Festival. This is my first time entering, so I'm pretty excited!

Today's entry is in the Scrappy Quilts category:

I made this mustache quilt as a Christmas gift for my daughter, and it has definitely become her favorite quilt! (The template for the mustaches can be found HERE).

She loves blue and orange, so I had fun digging through my stash for some fun, modern prints in those colors. Most of the fabrics I used are by Anna Maria Horner, Joel Dewberry, and Denyse Schmidt.

Grey is one of my favorite neutrals (plus it holds up better to dirt than white!) so I used Kona medium grey to set off the mustaches (which are appliquéd by machine).

For the final touch, I added a minky backing so it's extra snuggly!

I had a chance to remake the quilt this year for an Etsy customer who had seen it on my blog, and it was just as much fun to make the second time around!

Head on over to Amy's Creative Side to see the other entries!

 

February Finishes!

February has been a productive month!

I have been very busy with custom orders lately. Here are a few of the recent one I haven't blogged about yet:

A baby quilt using my Mother Goose pattern in Bonnie and Camille's Ruby fabrics.

A cute patchwork quilt using a custom mix of elephant, giraffe, chevron, grey, orange, green and blue fabrics!

A twin size Aviary quilt in my Hip to Be Square pattern.

Another Vroom quilt!

And finally, I'm happy to report that I finished the quilt that my students created (originally blogged about here).

Linking up to Finish it Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, and Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation.

 

The Twelve Months of Quilting, 2013

This year, I decided to do a retrospective of many of the quilts I completed in 2013. I had lots of fun going through my photos, and playing with the Pic Collage app. Inspired by the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas", here is my "The Twelve Months of Quilting, 2013". Enjoy!

In the twelfth month of 2013, my true love gave to me..

Twelve "Hip to Be Square" quilts...

Eleven patchwork squares quilts...

Ten "Bonnie and Camille" quilts...

Nine Ahoy Matey and Vroom quilts...

Eight Kate Spain quilts...

Seven coins quilts...

Six Seuss quilts...

Five Grinch quilts..

Four "When the Stars Align" quilts...

Three Joel Dewberry quilts...

Two Martinique quilts...

And one very large T-shirt Quilt!

Yes, it has been a very busy and productive year!

Linking up with Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday at Sew Fresh Quilts, and Can I Get A Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

 

Finish the Flimsies Challenge Day 1

I've decided to issue myself a challenge to "finish the flimsies" this month! I have had a pile of completed tops for such a long time, and although I'm continually quilting my way through it, I keep adding to the pile! Since I have a midarm quilting machine and frame, I can easily finish quilting a top in an evening, but is is often more tempting to start a new project! Part of this challenge is to not make any new tops until this existing pile is gone!

Since school ends June 21st, my goal is to try to quilt through the pile by Monday, June 24th (I'm giving myself the extra weekend to complete the goal!).

I began the challenge today with a pile of 20 quilt tops, so here's the first finish, an Aviary quilt in my Bricklayer pattern. I've lost track of how many Avairy quilts I've made-- all three color palettes are so pretty!

(By the way, this challenge does not include bindings -- I always finish them by hand, so I know I'll need more time to accomplish those!)

I'm looking forward to seeing this pile of flimsies slowly diminish, and I'll be sharing my progress throughout the month. Nineteen more to go!

 

Mustache Quilt

Thank you to everyone for your lovely comments on my kids' Christmas quilts! As promised, here are some more details! For today's post, I'll focus on the mustache quilt:

My twelve year old daughter has been obsessed with mustaches this year, so I thought it would be fun to make her a quilt. I had planned to make my kids quilts as presents in 2011, but ran out of time, so I was determined to make it work in 2012! I originally purchased this pattern, which was really cute. However, when I actually sat down to work on it (December 23rd!) I couldn't decide what fabrics to use. I really wanted to use my daughter's favorite color combo of blue and orange, but it didn't seem to gel with the pattern. So, I went to the web for inspiration and found this tutorial by I'm A Ginger Monkey. I really loved the simplicity of the design, and the look of the mustaches in bright colors and bold prints. Since I was running low on time, and because I had some dark grey minky fabric for the backing that I wanted to tie in, I decided to appliqué the mustaches on a charcoal Kona cotton solid, and add in alternate fabric squares.

I started with some Anna Maria Horner Innocent Crush fabrics that I had been hoarding saving for something special. I dug through all of my fabric collections for additional blue and orange fabrics, adding in some Joel Dewberry (Heirloom), some Denyse Schmidt (Flea Market Fancy), and other Anna Maria Horner fabrics (Field Study and Loulouthi).

I was able to trace, cut and fuse all of the mustaches in the morning, and then I did a LOT of blanket stitch appliqué after my daughter went to bed that night. (The blocks were cut at 10 inches square, and the blocks were set in a 6 x 7 grid). By midnight, the top was put together.

I was able to do the quilting the next day on my Viking Mega Quilter (my daughter was banned from the sewing room!). I decided to be brave and use orange thread, which actually turned out to be a nice blend with both the prints and the grey. I also decided to quilt right through the mustaches, and I'm very happy with the overall look.

I used minky on the back, but I did include Warm and Natural batting, too. I wanted the quilt to be super warm and cuddly.

The recipient was very happy. She knew a quilt was in the works, but she was very surprised by the mustaches and favorite colors!

I'll blog about my son's quilt later this week!