Full of Soup

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.