Oh I'm so nervous!

I finally posted my entry for the QuiltCon Quilt Show. Now the nail-biting begins! I sure hope it gets accepted.... It's my favorite quilt I've ever made! Another great big thanks to Mona for being awesome and agreeing to let me enter it (since it's hers now!). 

Did I mention that I get to meet Mona at QuiltCon? I'm so excited about that - even if my quilt isn't chosen, I'll be pretty happy! 

**A little background - I made this quilt for the last round of the Doll Quilt Swap (round 12), so it was made secretly for Mona, and then sent to her. It's hers now - my best work! :) I'm pretty lucky that in this swap I've made some awesome friends - Mona and I have a lot in common besides quilting too - we both like reading and have swapped some favorite titles. We've been keeping in contact via email.

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!

DQS12 Finished!!

Dear Mona (DQS12 Recipient),

I needed a few extra days (right up to the last send day) to love this quilt and to prepare myself to let it go!

From the beginning of this DQS round I had this quilt in mind. I wanted a huge challenge and the chance to make a quilt that finished in a circle. 

I loved every minute of the challenge with this one! I do hope you love it as much as I do!

This is the most "me" quilt that I have ever made. It embodies all that I want my quilting to be, and it really shows my creative word for the year, which is "intricate." On this quilt I worked on my paper piecing skills, my curved piecing, and even drafted the paper pieced ring of flying geese myself.

I'm not sure if it's as clean and graphic as you prefer, but once I started it, the fabrics just fell into place. I sure hope you find a special place in your home and your heart for it!

Thanks for inspiring some of my greatest work!

With love,

Emily / emedoodle

It's going to be very hard to let this quilt go. :) But I'll make it through! On the bright side, my "hanging structure" worked out about as perfectly as I could have hoped!! Check out those pictures down there! CRAZY! It took me a long time to settle on the right way to go about that. In the end it was evenly spaced plastic loops, and a doubled up piece of boning threaded through half the quilt - hanging on a nail from the middle of the top. Perfection --or close to it! A circular quilt on the wall! Now I just need to make another one!

Here it is all bundled up to go. :) Good news, Mona received it today and she totally "got" it! :) I'm so happy that she loves it!!! 

Annnnd.... in equally awesome news... I received my DQS quilt Monday!!! Here she is! Such a beauty made by Marilyn!

I was hoping and praying this one was coming my way!! And it did!! Such a great little quilt - it's already hanging on my wall! And for those of you who weren't looking - notice that stack of charm squares she sent... there are some Bohemian AMH prints there! Eeek! :) Thanks Marilyn!!

The Salt Creek Quilters Guild - Quilt Show

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend my first ever quilt show! A friend from my guild had posted about this show in a nearby town, on a whim I decided to go. The show was pretty cool, although a whole lot more traditional than I'm used to! I can respect the talent though! 

One thing that I was surprised by was that their Mini-quilt section could have just been re-named "art quilts" since only one or two of them were pieced. I was a bit disappointed by this since that's the most inspiring area for me. 

Paper pieced mini quilt by Kathy Elwood

They did have vendors - and yes I bought a couple FQ's... how could I not? And they had some demos. One of which really inspired me. It was a demo on "no-tear paper piecing" by Kathy Elwood. Now I've seen tutorials for this method before, and it was really nothing very new to me... but I walked up to the table there and she was working with 2 1/2" squares -- that gets me! All her samples were miniature quilts (the real thing, to scale!) Tiny tiny piecing!! So of course I stuck around to watch her demo and ask some questions. the most mind blowing thing? she uses a large basting stitch to secure the paper to the fabric!

Kathy demonstrating this method... note the amazing tiny quilts all around her!

I do notice that this method of paper piecing isn't nearly as "perfect" as the other way, but heck, it gets me out of picking out those tiny pieces of paper afterward! The blocks she was doing were built out from the center, but I wanted to try it with my fling geese arcs -- since I see quite a few of them in my near future, and this would save me from having to trace my patterns a million times! 

Hand drawn flying geese pattern (transferred to template plastic!) and rows of geese!

Here's a link to a similar method... although she presses hers to the freezer paper so they stick there (I didn't want to go to my ironing board every time when finger pressing is all that's necessary... and I think the basting stitches hold better. 

Here's how it worked. I used a large basting stitch (a 3 on my Juki) to secure the first geese triangle to the paper then used the no-tear method to sew the two outer triangles on. After adding the next flying geese unit, I finger pressed it and then basted that one down. I basted each center geese piece so that the curves didn't shift. they turned out pretty great and I was able to re-use the paper 3 times (simply pull the top string of each of your basting stitches to remove). I'm pretty sure I can get another couple times out of my paper since I traced it out onto freezer paper (it lasts a bit longer than regular paper). 

Close-up of the basting stitches

I want to give a shout out to Kathy -- Thanks for sharing this tip!!! Sewing these flying geese curves is so much easier now that I don't have to re-trace the pattern every time!

PS - I also pre-cut my pieces for this project instead of doing them one by one like I do many paper piecing patterns, this shortened the sewing time by a lot!! 

From the back. 

Quilting Quilting Quilting!!

Free motion quilting has been on my mind recently! And here is what I have to show for all that obsessing! 

Last night I took the time to back, baste, and begin quilting my Doll Quilt Swap quilt. I started with the idea of doing some micro-quilting, pebbles inside the center of the NY Beauty block, then to add the same tiny pebbles around the outer edges of it too. After that I added some free motion zig-zags and outlined the points (woot woot for actually having coordinating thread on hand!). 

I decided to loosen up the quilting as I got farther from the center, so the pink area was straight line quilted about an inch apart. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to quilt the flying geese. I've thought maybe I'll outline them with a straight stitch (using white thread) just to pop them out a bit. 

I decided to leave the hexagons off for now... they may find themselves attached to a zip pouch or something as a little extra? No guarantees though. lol. I'm still really nervous about my partner really loving it.... but I'm really proud of how well it's turned out so far. 

Oh and that tiny star on the back? That's where my label will be -written in around it. It's my signature of sorts.... My favorite tiny wonky star. :)

I have grand plans of bias binding and a whole set-up that will allow it to actually hang flat on the wall... let's hope it works out! :) 

Oh yeah, and if you notice, there's not even a single bit of solid white fabric on this baby (one of our rules this round was to use a different colored solid as a dominant fabric, rather than white)... but much more, I only used a TINY bit of solid grey! That is much more of a challenge than not using white!

Worrying...

I have a question for those of you who do flickr swaps.

Do you worry? 

Finished DQS quilt top.

I'm usually not a worrier. I stalk my partner's photostream and blog until I have a list of ideas and then run with it from there. I occasionally worry and mostly about color or fabric likes. I don't have a big fabric stash and sometimes don't have the ability to drop everything and buy more fabric. 

But this time I'm worrying - my Doll Quilt Swap quilt is spectacular (if I may say so), but what if it just isn't my partner's style. It's not entirely her colors but the fabrics were begging to go together. 

Drafted by hand flying geese.

It's technically the hardest/most complex piece I've ever worked on (and that says something I think). Between the miniature NY Beauty block, plus the tiny plus blocks, then the giant set of 48 flying geese in a circle - that I drafted by hand.... and learned a new way to paper piece. I think I've executed it very well so far... and I do still have to quilt it and finalize the "framework" (hehe... how else would I expect for a circular quilt to be hung on the wall?) oh yeah, and it will finish as a circular quilt. 

So I'm worrying. Will my partner like it as much as I do? I couldn't bear if she didn't like it. Sometimes it's ok for a swap partner to not absolutely be head over heals over something... but this one, they've got to love it. What if she doesn't? 

Optional hexies - I haven't decided yet.

I've never felt such angst over sending a quilt to a swap partner... eek! 

Here's hoping she loves it!

(linked up for Fabric Tuesday)

DQS12 - in progress!

I've been making some progress on my Doll Quilt Swap quilt. I've got some lofty goals for this one, and I hope my partner likes it! Here are my initial sketches:

Starting with a small NY beauty block in the center, I'll then start adding borders. Finally ending with a larger circle of flying geese. I think I'd like this quilt to end round, but we'll see what the quilt tells me while I'm working on it!

So far the center is a 7" NY Beauty. It could have been a bit smaller if you ask me, but I didn't want to fiddle with trying to reduce the pattern any more than by 75% If you're wondering, I printed the pattern from this site. I used the first block on the page, and printed 4 pages per sheet (thus reducing it to 1/4th of the original size). I used freezer paper ironed to the wrong side of the small middle sections to control them while sewing the arcs together. I didn't do it perfectly ... there are a couple tiny puckers... but I think it'll come out in the quilting. 

Here are the hexies I made in preparation for the later rounds of the quilt... there are quite a few of them. I hope my partner likes bright fun colors with a splash of grey!

I am excited to work on this more tonight!

DQS 12 Starting Soon!!

DQS12 inspiration mosaic

The time has come, the Doll Quilt Swap is about to start! This will be my fourth round (wow!) and I can't wait! I really think that this is the best swap on flickr! For the first time this round I'll be a Swap Mama (oh the power!) lol. :) I'm really excited and it's looking like we've got an awesome group of ladies swapping!

Sign-ups are over, and partner emails will be going out this weekend -- which means I get to stalk my partner (another Mama is pairing me up so I won't know who has me). I have so many exciting ideas already! The cool thing about being a mama, is that I've already stalked through everyone's flickr pages so I've seen all the talent out there! Pretty awesome!!

Haha...my hair looks awesome. I can't wait to shave it again!

Also, Emily and I met up today to swap our {Modern} Robin blocks! This is our first round and I've been thinking about what sort of border I should add to her mini swoon block! :) Her brother took a picture of us together with our starting blocks - so that'll be added here whenever she posts it!

Hm here are some things I want to do tonight... to get my sewing fix before company comes over!

• Sew an ipod case and earphones case... just because I can.
• Refashion some pj's of mine into pants for allie.
• Plan my border for the Modern Robin.

It's Swap Time!!

I just received my partner assignment for the Pillow Talk Swap - my third time swapping with them. It's pretty exciting to stalk your partner and figure out what they like. I settled on a basic idea right away, and since I received my partner assignment just minutes before my husband took the toddler out for a couple hours - I was able to get started immediately!

Here's what I have so far, a round of 32 flying geese. They're foundation paper pieced using the printable pattern here. It was a little tedious, but not too bad. I like this sort of mindless, mind-numbing work on days where I tend to get obsessive about other things.... I'm not going to post about that today though - ugh (can I just have a baby already?).

So, the geese look pretty bad ass if you ask me! Perfect points and pretty colors. I'm thinking of using a newsprint type fabric for the middle and outside. I don't have any such fabrics (other than a fat eighth of sweetwater). Other than that sweetwater print does anyone know of a text/newsprint fabric that's readily available? I'm looking for a white/natural/grey type color scheme.

My pillow may be double-sided too... since I really think my normal style (total comfort zone without trying) is very much to my partner's liking too. We'll see.

This round each member will be required to include one of the following blocks in their quilt:
churn dash/shoofly, log cabin, drunkards path, N.Y. beauty, flying geese

By the way --- sign-ups are open for the Doll Quilt Swap!! I'm a mama this round - which is really fun and amusing - so it'll be better than ever!! You flickr people go on and sign up!!

Linking up to Fabric Tuesday over at Quiltstory!