They’re here!

Remember these?  They arrived yesterday (can you say FAST shipping?  Holy Cow!) 





I love them even more in person.  Love when that happens. 






I spent last night cutting them all up into little 4.5” and 2.5” squares.  Then just because I couldn’t wait, I made one little star before heading to bed. 





Two fabrics in the stack didn’t make the cut.  Literally.  I swapped them out for some yellow fabric that I had and it works much better.  I’m sure these will find a project of their own at some point.





This afternoon I got another 6 or 7 stars done.  26 more to go!

The Planning Stage

Tonight I spent an hour or so in the planning stage of a new quilt.  I love this part – pure creativity.  I open Adobe Illustrator and just mess around in it for awhile.  I knew I wanted to try another version of this quilt – with white background fabric and a little more openness.  This is what I ended up with tonight:
 


Each star block is finished at 8.5” just like in the first version.

Version 2 has the same number of stars as the version 1 quilt:




…but with the stars spread out a little, it makes a toddler size quilt into a throw size.  Perfect! 


Usually at this point I do all of the math to figure out how much fabric I need.  Then I print out the “sketch” of the quilt, along with the fabric requirements list and put it in a folder.  Then the folder and I head to the fabric store to find some inspiration.  This time I found what I needed online – awesome. 


I found these fabrics on sale – a great sale too!  [here]  Now I just have to wait for it all to arrive in the mail!


  


The quilt will eventually end up in the shop.  As I work on it, I’ll post photos of it’s progress and (of course) the completed quilt before it finds a new home.

Almost

(10/23/12: Edited to add - I now have the pdf pattern available in my etsy shop.  For a limited time I also have kits available for this table runner.)



It’s (almost) the most wonderful time of the year! 
 


I’m one of those people who refrains from breaking out the Christmas music until black Friday.  You? 

I have no corresponding rule when it comes to sewing for Christmas.  Honestly, if I waited until after Thanksgiving to start any Christmas project, then nothing would get done in time.

Last night I sifted through a stack of Christmas fabrics and found a few coordinating fat quarters.  I brainstormed for a few minutes and decided to make a table runner using some raw edge applique.  I’ve never tried it before.  Ever.  Guess what?  It’s easy. 

I spent about an hour last night tracing stars onto the Heat n’ Bond lite, ironing those stars onto the fabric and then cutting the stars out.  This afternoon during my son’s two hour nap time, I ironed the stars onto the background fabric, stitched each of them down, basted the layers (backing, batting and top), machine quilted the layers, made the binding and sewed it on.  Add one more hour in there to hand stitch the binding and It’s all done! 








I like the end result of the raw edge applique, and I love that this was a quick and easy project.  It’s a nice change from doing large quilts over several weeks! 

I have about a 1/4 yard of Heat n’ Bond left.  I feel another Christmas project coming on….

Oh, and the table runner is in the shop :)  Sorry, the table runner is sold!

edited to add:  I now have the pdf pattern for this Star Table Runner available in my etsy shop.  For a limited time I also have kits available for this table runner.

linking up:

Stars Abound

I recently had the chance to make the most adorable little quilt.  The mom sent me this photo and wanted a toddler-sized quilt just like it:

Photo from here  (I love this little bed – especially the sock monkey!)

And here’s my version:

The finished quilt measured 44 x 58 (before washing)

It’s machine quilted in navy – a basic meandering pattern with a few little loopies mixed in – one of my favorites.





The backing is this sweet little flower print from Henry Glass (Cottage Shirtings designed by Little Quilts for Henry Glass & Co.).  It’s SO wonderfully soft! 





The binding is the same light blue that’s used on the quilt front.  I love how it turned out! 





Soon after completing this quilt, I spotted this photo on Pinterest:




Isn't it just sweet?  I think now I’m going to have to use my same pattern and create a ‘Stars Abound’ quilt with some fun brights and a white background!  [Photo from here]

Charmed to Pieces

I finished this quilt last Summer and never got around to photographing it and adding it to my completed quilts list over on the sidebar.  It’s one of my all-time favorites though! 





I wrote a short post about the back of the quilt way back in July of 2010, and I talked a little about how this was designed, but I never showed the completed quilt.  I had (and still HAVE) intentions of writing it up as a tutorial.  It was fairly simple, and quick to piece together.  It uses two charm packs (hence the name of the quilt) and some 2.5” strips of solid white. 





See the shoes?  Ya, that’s me.  I had my 10 year old take these photos while I held up the quilt (my favorite quilt-holder is still at work.) 

The finished quilt measures 60” x 67”  (that’s after washing and drying)

So why is this one of my favorite quilts?  Several reasons.  First of all, it was the first time I ever did anything somewhat creative with a charm pack. Secondly, I tried a new machine quilting design for the first time on this quilt:




Can you see the little flower?  Not perfect, but I loved doing something other than the usual meandering quilting.  Among the flowers I did do some meandering and I added some small loops here and there as well.  Love the result.  See – it pays to be brave and try new things!


The third reason I love this quilt is the back.  Once I got the quilt top completed, I went back and forth between a few ideas for the back.




In the end I settled on these 12.5” squares.  I really do consider this quilt to be reversible.  I use the “back” as the “front” about 50% of the time. 

There you have it – the completed “Charmed to Pieces" --  Now back to writing this:

Boy is this one taking me a LONG time!

also linking to Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story and WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced