Blogger's Quilt Festival

This week is the Blogger's Quilt Festival over at Amy's Creative Side -- it's a nice way for us bloggers to enjoy tons of beautiful quilts, without the hassle of organizing a giant quilt fest! (Also, a way for us to keep busy while the big shots live it up at Quilt Market!).

My entry for the quilt festival this fall is my Chicago MQG callender challenge quilt "Springtime Fun" This quilt will be one of the calender girls for our guild calender. 

This quilt started out as a pretty stack of fabrics that I'd pulled out based on one of my favorite Tula Pink prints, I took the one busy fabric, and pulled fabric in colors that were included in it. I really like this method of fabric choice. It feels free and easy, yet you end up with a pretty well balanced stack of fabrics! 

Next I started piecing. I didn't plan at all really, the only thing I knew was that I wanted a random bunch of HST's in there. (I didn't mark or trim those HST by the way - I just winged them). I love the freedom of this style piecing. Sewing a bit here and there, chopping bits as I go.

I had fun sewing... but then set the piece aside for a while because we were packing up to move. The deadline approached quickly for our challenge and the quilt I was planning on finishing didn't get done... so I picked up this one! I added the white border and scrappily added the rest. 

I'm really glad I made this quilt - it's a mini quilt just 14" x 18" (if I recall correctly). Mini quilts suit me so well - fun and free. 

This quilt can be seen on display at the Original Sewing & Quilt Expo starting Nov 14, 15, & 16 at the Tinley Park show!! If you're heading out to the Sewing & Quilt Expo sometime this year be sure to check it out!! 

Final stats
Size: 14" x 18"

Improvisationally pieced

Quilted by me on a domestic machine (my beloved Juki!)

Machine bound

Thanks for all the Blogger's Quilt Fest people for stopping by! Feel free to follow me to see more pretty quilts! :) 

Check out the other Blogger's Quilt Fest quilts here.

Blogger's Quilt Festival

Hello to all the visitors stopping by for the Blogger's Quilt Festival! I'm Emily and I love to sew. Check out my tutorials here, and my recent finishes here. I also love to make zip pouches, so you'll see a lot of those here too! Thanks for stopping by, and I hope to see you around!

This year for my Blogger's Quilt Festival entry I'm sharing my Bella Quilt for Kathy.

This is my one of my most accomplished quilts ever, my most intense quilt.

The quilt was made for my Aunt Kathy, who has been a crafter for all my life. She's always had a project for us kids to work on, and shared her passion. She went through a quilting phase before finding her real love: polymer clay. For the past 10 or so years she's been passionately creating spectacular beads and necklaces - she's taught and written articles in magazines. She really is talented. 

Back to the story, when I was a kid Kathy gave me her old sewing machine. I was maybe 12? I started sewing and never stopped. So I guess I owe it all to her? So I made her a quilt to show my gratitude. 

So how does one make a quilt for an artist? I decided to work with black and white prints since they are a staple in Kathy's clay jewelry pieces. (it was a real stretch for me!). I started with a standard New York Beauty block and then drafted arcs of blocks to fit around it. Each border was drafted by hand, and nearly all of them are paper pieced. Each bit of this quilt took a lot of work psyching myself up to it. It was scary working on such a different and new to me style! 

In the end I absolutely love the quilt. It's really exciting to see it all together after all the planning and drafting! :) 

And the sweetest final touches? I added prayers written under the binding. Aunt Kathy will always be wrapped up in my love and prayers! 

Stats: 

Size: about 55" x 65"

Techniques: foundation paper piecing, hand drawn paper pattern, raw edge applique.

Quilting: meandering stipple with inclusions of "love," "hope," and hearts throughout. Quilted on my beloved Juki TL98E (Janice). 

If you're interested you can read all the details of the story / piecing here.

Now go ahead and check out all the other great quilts in the Blogger's Quilt Festival! 

Blogger's Quilt Festival

It's been a while since I've participated in the Blogger's Quilt Fest. It's always so inspirational to look around and see what everyone else has made!

I've chosen to share my Doll Quilt Swap 12 quilt. I made this quilt for the fabulous Mona who was my secret partner for the swap. It measures about 23" in diameter and was mostly paper pieced. Yes, there is some tiny piecing going on there... it's just my favorite most "me" quilt I've ever made. This was my first try at  drafting paper piecing patterns by hand (those arcs of flying geese around the outside), and I happened to fall in love with hand drafting and paper piecing.

Another first on this quilt, was that I made use of very specific types of free motion quilting on different areas of the quilt. the movement between micro quilted pebbles to free motion zigzags, to radius' out to the points. It was a lot of fun and I'm really glad I gave it a try!

The final moment of excitement once I'd finished the quilt - was realizing that my detailed "hanging structure" using boning and plastic hoops tacked to the back actually supports the circular shape! I was so worried that it wouldn't be able to be hung! All the time I spent going over it in my head worked out well in the end!

You can really see all the quilting here!

As I said before, this is the most "me" quilt I've made to date. It was hard to give it up and send it to my partner, but it was such a joy to make this quilt. Sometimes it's best to just let all the crazy ideas in my head out - and put them into a fantastic quilt. There's a very special place in my heart for the Doll Quilt Swap, and even though I knew I'd likely never see this quilt again, It still made sense to me to make it and send it to my partner. There's so much growing that happens when you're inspired during a swap. It's really important to me to be ok with letting go of the actual quilt.

There you have it. My ramblings about my precious Doll Quilt 12 quilt! If you'd like to hear the whole story this link will take you to the rest of the story!

Now go enjoy all the other quilts linked up for the blogger's Quilt Festival!

Blogger's Quilt Festival

It's that time again! Blogger's Quilt Festival! This time around I'm going to share with you Gia's Quilt. The plan for this quilt has been sitting in the back of my brain for a long time... and I didn't intend to be making it as a baby quilt for someone else... but that's how it worked.

First a little background. My cousin Chris met a girl (he's older than me... and has never really brought girls around... or really been around a lot himself), her name is Lizzie. Once Lizzie was part of the picture it was like suddenly there was my mature, cool, fun cousin Chris that we'd never really seen (no offense Chris). And Lizzie took to our family really quickly too - we love her! When they announced that she was pregnant I knew I had to make her baby a quilt (Chris' mom, my aunt Kathy has been pivotal in my crafting journey... it was fitting to make her first grandchild a quilt). I started off with a pretty basic idea, grey fabric, and some strips of various prints added among the grey... it sat on my design wall for months. It wasn't pretty enough - Lizzie had become more and more a part of our family and I think part of me felt that she deserved something sweet and pretty and gentle. So that's how I came to pour a lot of myself into this quilt.

Chris and Lizzie had found out that they were having a girl so I went with a light pink/grey/white color combo. I was a little disappointed in the lack of contrast in some of the blocks so I created a lot more variety in them than I originally planned. In all I love how it turned out.

Late night retreat photo - after quilting and getting the binding attached!

The other aspect of the making of this quilt is that it was almost entirely made during my very first quilting retreat. I had taken a plunge and signed up for the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild's retreat (although I had only been to one meeting) -- it turns out that those ladies are awesome!! I stayed up most of the night on Saturday finishing free motion quilting this baby. Now that is accomplishment! :) It was great having some late night sewing companions too. 

Lastly, I practiced my free motion writing for the label. It took a lot of practice writing "Gia" to get one that was worthy of the quilt, but I love it! Gia was about four months old when she received the quilt -- which is largely due to the fact that we live in separate states.... I love this quilt a lot, and I hope that Gia and her mommy know that they're amazing and that Lizzie is more like family to me than a lot of family I have. :) You guys rock! :) 

That's the story of Gia's quilt... now go check out the other awesome quilts at the Blogger's Quilt Festival