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 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.

N

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.

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!

I can finally report a somewhat successful evening of quilting! Full Disclosure: I went to a full day workshop with my mom’s quilting teacher, Margaret, who has been teaching quilting for 30 years. She spent a full hour holding my hand and wiping my tears and teaching me how to do this.

Step 1: Find a lot of things that are circles!

Take a piece of fabric and a piece of fusible web and put the “right” sides together. The right side of the fusible web is more course and has all those spots of glue. Pro tip: When someone gives you a bunch of free fusible web so you can go home and start right away without forgetting how to do this, don’t lose that fusible web then go to an overpriced quilt shop and pay top dollar for Designer’s Lite Luxury Apparel Fusibles.

Trace a circle on the fusible web side of things and pin it all together.

Quilt exactly on the line. EXACTLY, I SAID.

Cut about a 1/4 inch away from the line you just showed. Don’t ask questions about why my demo includes three different pieces of fabric. We will stick to this fabric for the rest of the demo.

Cut a slice through the fusible web. Do not cut the fabric.

Turn it inside out. Now you have the glue side on the back and the fabric side on the front. You can cut more of the fusible web off if you are worried that it will affect how your finished quilt will feel as long as you leave about an inch around the edges.

Okay folks. I was really inspired by the quilts at the Somers Quilt Show that had blocks of maritime flags and the mariner’s compass that I went ahead and purchased some solids and started mapping out my project.

The flags are made up of five solid colors and most of them are pretty simple square blocks. My plan is to make a quilt with 6×5 10″ blocks with 2″ of sashing framing them and filling in the negative space in blocks A and B.

I already have black fabric, so bought these Kona solids for the flags and the grey will be the sashing.

There are 26 blocks, so the plan is to make four mariner’s compasses for each of the corners to make a 30 block, rectangular quilt.

I can’t really front here, this should be a super simple quilt and adding on the 1/4 inch seam allowance around each block should not be that difficult, but somehow I’ve already managed to screw up block Q and block K. Scroll up and look at how simple those blocks are. BLOCK Q! I’ve decided to change the blade on my rotary cutter. I mean, that is the only explanation. I’ve also decided to give Bounce another shot.