Full of Soup

At long last, the Bounce top is finished!

I decided to take some pictures with some New York City architecture that echos the circle motif.

St. Vincent’s Hospital.

The Maritime Hotel.

The Cabana bar outside of the hotel.

Hotel’s porthole windows.

In early December, Nova posted her pattern for Pillow Pockets.

The pattern was so incredibly cute, I just knew I wanted to make one for my niece, but I wasn’t sure I could pull it together in time for her birthday. I kept seeing the pattern pop up all over the internet and read about how fun and simple this pattern is to complete, so I thought I would give it a try.

After an evening pulling out all of my fabrics and choosing colors for the Dresden Plate, I spent some time trying out different backgrounds for the pillow. I really like the high contrast between the background fabric and the Dresden Plate in Nova’s samples.

I also liked the idea of something more harmonious.

In the end, I decided on the strawberries because pink is the girl’s favorite color and I’m not sure what other project lends itself so well to hot pink strawberries.

The Dresden plate was straightforward to piece together, but I had never made a pillowcase before, so I anticipated pulling out a lot of stitches stitches and trying to figure it all out. Indy settled in for a long evening, but the pattern was actually a snap.

I found every step of the way so rewarding. Each night I worked on this, I went to sleep pretty pleased. I have had a couple dud patterns recently, so I am grateful for the clear instructions I know I saved myself a lot of headache.

Finished with hours to spare before her party!

I kept the quilting super simple.

I used a complimentary stripe for the fabric in the back. I just added this to my stash after visiting (read: paying extremely high prices for little bits of gorgeous fabrics) Britex in San Francisco.

Okay, EXTREMELY simple quilting. Don’t mind the cat hair.

I received a stack of Robert Kaufman Poseidon solids for Christmas and the one I tried out as a background fabric ended up making a perfect for the binding.

I repeated the stripe inside the pocket.

I am really happy with the final product.

The birthday girl was pretty happy too!

I made a few mug rugs for my coworkers this year. I lost my camera for a couple days, so here are some blurry shots from my cell phone.

I bought the red mugs from Bed Bath & Beyond and found some glittery ribbon at a card store. I rolled up the “rug” and put it inside and wrote a card.

The dots were leftover from Bounce, and the smaller prints were from my Trip Around the World quilt. I bought the square floral piece from a quilt show in Somers. I’m really pleased how smaller print fabrics compliment it!

I didn’t use a pattern, but it is similar to my last mug rug. This one came out a little smaller, which I think is how they are “supposed to be.” (Unlike the corners of this project, which are not at all how they are “supposed to be.”)

I quilted it with my walking foot on my machine. This seems like the kind of project that should zip up in no time, but I made six of them and ran into a bunch of small issues so the project took a couple weeks of evenings. In the end, I’m happy with how they came out and I think my coworkers will really enjoy them!

I pulled out my fabric stash with some of my recent purchases and threw together some things I thought looked nice together.

I’m thinking about making some mini-quilts, or, as they would be used here, cat mats.

I bought this pattern at Keepsake Quilting over the summer, and despite the delay in posting the results, I did actually have this finished three weeks before Halloween!

My rug is such a heinous back-drop. Sorry about that. This should be the kind of project that zips up in a night or two, but I broke down while working on this multiple times.

Do you see this shape? I somehow imagined sewing this to fusible web (a light material that has glue on one side), then turning it inside out and gluing it down. Turning it inside out didn’t work out at all. Turns out I needed a different gluey material. I needed to cut everything out all over again. Then, I completely destroyed my iron with glue. The pattern also didn’t include enough fabric for a backing or a binding. Thanks, guys! That wasn’t a pain at all!

The good news is I am starting to get the hang of quilting on my machine for these small projects.

I lost my rotary cutter and realized that my sewing area was getting slightly out of hand.

I opened up all my shoe boxes, cloth bins, and plastic containers and laid out all of my supplies to get them organized. I was pretty amazed with how well stocked I am.

Neutral thread? Check.

Safety pins? Check.

Walking foot? Why yes, three.

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Needles? For every type of project imaginable.

Miscellaneous tools from quilt shows? All of them.

And yes, Two rotary cutters.

Indy’s favorite necklace? Always.

On November 5th and 6th the Evening Star Quilters Guild of Mineola had their annual guild show. It was a small show, but there were many inspiring quilts.

If you look closely, you can see these are all batik fabrics. I think some quilts that use these fabrics become all about showcasing the prints, but her subtle use really lets the pattern shine through.

My camera was incapable of capturing this lovely tone of lavender, so enjoy this sub-par version.

I love the use of near-solids in this quilt. It’s so colorful without feeling like a rainbow.

Can’t go wrong with a scrappy log cabin.

Something modern! And beautiful quilting.

Double Irish Chain. Really perfect version of this classic pattern.

This woman purchased all of the handkerchiefs from eBay. I was thinking this would be a great way to zip up a simple quilt, but then she went ahead and intricately quilted each block.

I love this pattern.

Love. I think I’ll make something very similar someday soon.

Cathedral Windows.

This is sorcery to me.

Oh HANDS DOWN my favorite of the show.

Delilah’s Doll Shoppe!

Beads on the trees.

Apparently the bought the pattern at City Quilter. I hope it’s still there!

This was my take home from the show. I’m psyched.

I started this quilt in 2007 or 2008.

It was the second quilt top I made so I was looking for something just a bit more challenging than my first top (which is still being hand quilted). I picked up the pattern at The Cambridge Quilt Shop, and then annoyed a very kind Joanne’s sales associate by asking her to cut me a 1/4 yard of all of these fabrics. “Well this will certainly be a scrappy quilt,” she said.

One of the bigger mistakes I made was not cutting off back layers of fabric, so the top became very thick and quilting this by hand through all those layers would be impossible. This lead to my main problem- I don’t know how to quilt by machine.

After a couple months of trying to shove this quilt under my machine and spinning it to create straight lines around the stars, I gave up. My mom’s quilting teacher, Margaret, helped me let go of this insane idea and simplify the quilting design into squares rather than a more complicated pattern around the stars.

I’m so happy with how it came out. I took these pictures before I added the binding around the edge and pulled out all the loose strings.

I submitted my quilt to an art show at my job and they will have it hanging until January! I’m so pleased to have another finished quilt under my belt.

I can’t wait to have it home.

This summer was packed with local trips to really cool little places. I made it to Mystic, CT; Bar Harbor, ME; Lake George, NY; Poquott, NY; New Paltz, NY; Boston, MA; Manchester, NH; Portsmouth, NH; and to a wedding in a cutesy little town on the Hudson River.

But for quilting, New Hampshire was the place to be. I went to a great little quilt shop in Portsmouth and bought a slew of over-priced fat quarters. They were beautiful, but I paid!

I really love them and I knew I’d need a bunch more fabrics to make a full quilt, but I didn’t want it to be super matchy and use fabrics all by the same designer, so I picked up a bunch more fabrics at the Pennsylvania Quilt Extravaganza. They match beautifully, but not so much that it will look like a Pottery Barn Quilt.

Then I decided to run a little test that Kaffe Fassett talked about in the workshop I went to. His philosophy is that the most interesting quilts should be a mixture of light and dark fabrics and contrasts that excite the eye. It is actually really hard to tell if a fabric is “light” or “dark” based on color alone, and Kaffe carries around a red magnifying glass that helps him see the tones. He said another way to see the tones is to take a black and white shot of the fabrics:

Uh oh. These fabrics are all different colors and prints, but in the harsh black and white photo, they are so, so blah. I think it’s going to take a lot more contrasting fabrics to make this into a beautiful quilt.

I also made it to Keepsake Quilting!! The mecca!

I didn’t realize we were so close to this shop, but there was a sign in the road that said Keepsake was coming up on the right and I opened the door in mid-traffic and ducked and rolled out of the car. The people were so friendly and helpful and the selection was mind blowing.

I had no idea where to begin, but I had been eyeing this kit in their catalog for a few months. The color in this photo is terrible, but I bought the pattern on the left and all the colors so I am ready to go. It is probably too ambitious for this halloween, but maybe!

I think “extravaganza” is actually fitting for what I witnessed at this show.

This was an enormous quilt. I felt like I was looking through a window and had to turn my head to see it all.

Love these colors.

This quilt, from Japan, was made up of 61,000 pieces. For reference, my Trip Around The World quilt was about 1,500.

These quilts, also from Japan, were incredibly intricate their effect was unlike anything I have ever seen before.

I love the way this one is framed. I love how it looks realistic, but not so much that you forget it’s a quilt.

This was a total show stopper for me. I love this painting and had just visited it at the MoMa the day before, so I really appreciate the startling accuracy.

Okay, this BLEW my mind. The next three quilts are made from the same pattern:

I forget where this one is from. I need to take notes.

I love this one. Can’t describe why.

This quilt is from South Africa.

This quilt was so stunning in person. It reminded me of the “crazy quilts” from the 20s.

Detailed fabric flowers were a recurring theme in this show.

Loved this! I can’t even figure out how this was done. And this is just one square!

On the right there is a 3-D spider crawling out of the quilt!

There was a section of the show that was for quilts that address racism. This artist feels that the current US flag is too clear cut for the layered history and the many different cultures represented in America.

This was her version.

This quilt was another stunner in person. It reminded me of Elizabeth’s “Touch this Quilt” piece. There white spaces are newspaper articles about racism in the US.

This one’s for my sister- these animals are felted!

This quilt really stretches the definition of quilt. I love seeing the unexpected at these shows.

This quilt, titled “Bathing in the Ganges,” won Best in Show. I really like it when more modern quilts make a nod to the traditional. The detailed log cabin blocks that border this piece really brings it all together for me.

And bling!!

I realize I didn’t take a picture of this whole quilt, but the embroidery on this one was off the hook.

What?

Again, really amazing details here.

There is no photo that can do this quilt justice. If you are still scrolling through all these pics, click on this twice to get the biggest image you can.  Please note that “white” is not a background fabric, but actually an embroidered pattern. Also, every flower, bee and butterfly is embroidered.

I hope this can give you more of an idea.

It took us 5 hours to get through this show and all the vendors and I took many, many more pics, but I think there’s only so many times I can use the word “love” in a single post. It was such a freaking blast. I also bought a bunch of fabric for my next project! I’m so inspired!