Blogger's Quilt Festival Entry #2

Here is my second entry in the Blogger's Choice Quilt Festival, Spring 2014:

I have served as our quilt guild's block of the month chairperson for the past five years. It has been a fun an interesting challenge. For this block of the month series, we started with a few Kaffe Fassett prints in the "cool" colorways -- purple, green and blue -- and paired them with a mint green solid for the background.

Although we used several large scale prints, it was fun to see how they looked "cut up" in everyone's blocks!

When it came time to assemble the quilt, I knew I wanted to do a straight setting, but I wasn't sure what colors or fabrics to use. While walking through the quilt store, this striped fabric caught my eye. It seemed to bring all the various hues together, so I framed the blocks in a dark purple, and sashed them with the stripe. I love the energy it adds to the quilt!

For the backing, I used one of the large scale Kaffe Fassett prints (adding a little batik strip on either side to make it fit the width of the quilt!

I am entering this in the Large Quilt Category.

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

 

Pinwheel Sampler

I finished my pinwheel sampler quilt while watching the Olympics last night! I used the tutorials from Rachel's pinwheel sampler quilt-along at p.s. I quilt.

I am excited about the way it turned out! I especially love the mini pinwheel blocks used as cornerstones in the sashing.

I had a hard time choosing the backing, but since I loved the teal colors in the top, I went with a blue and green Kaffe Fassett print ( the bonus was that I got it on sale for about $7.50 a yard).

I also had a couple of small finishes. Last week, I made a custom quilted pillow sham out of the Set Sail collection by Birch Fabrics, and I had enough pieces leftover to make two 16 inch pillow shams:

Linking up with Quilt Story's Fabric Tuesday!

 

October Goal

Remember this stack of quilts I blogged about in June?

At the beginning of June, I issued myself a challenge to quilt a stack of 20 flimsies (finished tops) before the end of the month. I met that goal, but it left me with a stack of bindings to do!

Earlier this month, I unofficially pledged to finish the remaining bindings by the end of October. I really didn't think I would meet that goal, but I'm happy to report that the final binding stitches were put into the last quilt tonight!

This quilt was the oldest of my flimsies -- I made it over four years ago when I was testing out blocks for our guild's block of the month program.

Here are a couple of other bindings I finished this week:

A Modern Meadow quilt (top was completed Summer 2012)

A coins quilt featuring Groovy Guitar fabrics

And a Central Park flying geese quilt (top was completed in Summer 2012)

It feels great to have somewhat of a "clean slate", and now I'm ready for some new projects!

 

Wrap Up: 10 Things This Summer

Earlier this summer, Sherri at A Quilting Life hosted a Linky party to share your list of summer goals. Since fall has officially arrived, it's time to report how I did!

#1 Replace the floor in my sewing room and reorganize my quilts and supplies --DONE!

#2 Bind the stack of quilts that I finished in June (read more about this goal here). I didn't quite make it through the stack, but I did make a nice dent in it -- perhaps my October goal could be to finish binding the rest?

#3 Use up some scraps and make some pillows for the shop -- I'm happy with the ones I finished, although I could have made even more!

 

#4 Make a bunch of Christmas stockings for the shop (tutorial can be found here). -- DONE!

#5 Finish writing the four patterns I've been working on -- okay, this was the goal that I slacked off on the most. However, I did make some good progress on the sample quilts for the patterns, and hope to have at least one completed pattern within the next week or so!

#6 Complete some of the partially finished projects that are taking up space on my sewing room floor: Although I had a steady stream of custom orders this summer that prevented me from making a huge dent in my project pile, I definitely made some headway, as you can see below!

#7 Buy less, and start working my way through those beautiful fabrics I have stashed in my storage drawers -- I think I did pretty well with this goal. Although there were definitely some collections I couldn't pass up this summer, the fact that I was able to condense my fabric shelf pile from what you see on the left, to the photo on the right, illustrates that I did use up some fabric this summer!

#8 Finish my son's sports t-shirt quilt -- DONE!

#9 Quilt tops as I finish them instead of letting them pile up -- DONE! (As a matter of fact, the quilt pictured below was my last unquilted top, which I just finished today!)

#10 Get a good start on my final year as Block of the Month chairperson for my local quilt guild by making this year's sample blocks, and precutting all the fabrics for the kits -- DONE

These ten summer goals really kept me focused on what I wanted to accomplish -- I look forward to repeating the exercise next summer!

 

Finish it Up Friday

I have two finishes to share this Friday.

Oh, how I wish Moda Fabrics would consider reprinting this collection! Still one of my favorites. (Authentic by Sweetwater).

 

I wasn't brave enough to cut into any precuts, but I had plenty of bits and pieces to trim into 2 1/2 inch squares to make this pattern by Penny Sturges. (I chose not to add the optional zipper).

Love all the pockets on the inside!

 

My second finish was first blogged about here. I'm the chairperson of our guild's Block Of the Month committee, and this year we chose some beautiful Kaffe Fassett and Philip Jacobs florals as the inspiration for our color scheme. We decided to go with a pale free background solid, and I love the overall palette.

It's a fairly large quilt (80 inches square), so I wasn't able to get a good picture of the entire top.

When I went to look for sashing fabrics at my local quilt shop, this stripe just called out to me.

I love the backing, too!

Linking up to Amanda Jean's Finish It Up Friday.