Wednesday’s Color Card

I love this red barn.  That’s all.

ps.  I couldn’t find the source for this photo.  I came across it on Pinterest, but there was no link.  I even did a Google image search and nothing came up.  I tried!

One Source of Inspiration

My oldest son recently became the proud owner of a 3DS.  The 3DS comes in fun colors:



Flame Red, Cosmo Black, Pearl Pink (not pictured) and Aqua Blue.  From the first moment he saw it, the Aqua Blue 3DS was calling his name.  Loudly. 

He loves everything about his DS, but one of his favorite things is the color.  So when it came time to update his room (he’s had the same paint, curtains & quilt for 6 years now) he knew EXACTLY what he wanted.  Aqua Blue.  More specifically, he wanted everything to be aqua.  Well, he had to make some tough compromises, but in the end he is happy with the result. 


The walls are painted a fantastic gray, and furniture is back in place.  The curtains are under construction as is the quilt.  For the quilt I chose these:


 


Last week I found an old sketch I had made a year or so ago for a pattern that never made it past the idea phase.  It worked perfectly for what I had envisioned for this quilt.

It came together quickly and Friday night I finished piecing the quilt top.  






Tonight I’ll hopefully have some time to load it and start the quilting. 





And the pattern will soon be written.  It is next in line, anyway!

Elf Hats (take 2)

[edited to add:  link to tutorial that shows how I made this quilt!]

Pardon me while I do a little quilt-journaling.  I recently borrowed this quilt back from my sister for an afternoon so I could get some better photos of it.  Plus, I had been missing it. 

I wasn’t ever really happy with the original photos I took of the quilt, so I was happy to have the chance to get a few more!

I made this quilt back in November/December of 2009.  It was a birthday gift for my sister and (I’m sad to say) one of the only quilts I’ve ever labeled.





One of my favorite parts of this quilt was the backing.  I don’t often use a print for the entire backing on a quilt.  I had to this time.  This snowman print was just too adorable.  I’m thinking that it is from Riley Blake.  Does anyone remember for sure? 









I love the colors.  After working on this quilt, I decided to switch our Christmastime colors from maroon and gold to this bright and fun color combo.





I loved creating each of the elf hats – particularly the unique ones.  I talk more about those in this post.







And finally… a green striped binding.  A lovely, and perfect finish to a Christmas quilt!

A Reunion Strip Tube Quilt

[photo courtesy of Carla @ Grace and Favour]

I had to share this with you all!  This fabulous quilt belongs to Carla who blogs over at Grace and Favour.  She used a Reunion jelly roll for her strip tube quilt- and I love that she used a gray dot fabric as her background.  I’m also quite taken with those two borders she added.  Love it, love it, love it!
(link to my strip tube tutorial)

It looks like Carla has caught the granny square bug too!  Look how great these are:

[photo courtesy of Carla @ Grace and Favour]

I really don’t have time, but the more I see these blocks floating around on people’s blogs, the more I’m leaning towards jumping in.  What’s one or two little blocks now and then?  Right?

Wednesday’s Color Card

My February has been filled with the red/aqua combo.

First I finished up this quilt.  Then I began working on this quilt.


Then I spotted this quilt the other day on flickr:

[photos courtesy of Rebecca @ http://rebeccasrags.blogspot.com/]

 

I knew I had to use this quilt for this week’s color card.  After perusing Rebecca’s blog, I came across this photo of the same quilt being quilted:

I love those cherries, and the shade of gray that she chose. 

Rebecca blogs at Rebecca’s Rags.  She created this hexagon quilt as part of one of the Old Red Barn Co quilt alongs.   Which, by the way, they have started a new one – a Granny Square QAL. Rebecca also has a flickr stream.  Thanks for the color inspiration Rebecca!


Wanna see more red & aqua?  Go and check out one of Jodi's pinterest boards.  Love it!

Red & Aqua Disappearing Nine Patch Variation Quilt

How’s that for a long blog post title?

My red and aqua quilt is all finished and I thought you’d like to see. 


 


I think this was my longest lived WIP.  I blogged about it here and here.  2009 – 2012.  Oooh it feels good to get this stack of blocks off of my WIP shelf.  Yes, I have a whole shelf.  It’s a SMALL shelf though!


The finished quilt measures 56” x 69”

The disappearing nine patch variation that I chose to use was this one:





I used a Riley Blake print for the binding.  It’s from the Sugar and Spice line and I believe the print is called Blue Argyle.  There is a bit out there for sale online.  My local quilt shop had about a 1/4 of a bolt left, so check your local shop and see if they still have some.  It worked perfectly as a binding for this quilt!






I enjoyed doing this red/aqua swap.  I’d do one again.  I’d even consider hosting one.  I think maybe a gray/yellow swap? 

My red/aqua quilt is listed in the shop. 


I’m linking up:

Grape and Lime

This quilt (first talked about here and here) is all done!  I bound it in a purple check, and used a green dot fabric from my stash for the backing.  It finished (after washing) at 30” x 34”. 







I had mentioned before that all of the fabric for this quilt came from my stash.  To be more specific, some of the fabric was left over from this quilt, and some of the prints came from a sample card like this one:
(just the flat fabric with the label – not the folded fabrics on top)






A year or so ago I heard about an annual sample sale that this woman holds in her garage.  I went to check it out and was blown away by the boxes upon boxes of fabric samples she had.  After spending a good hour digging through everything, I walked away with about 8 sets of fabric like this one.  The fabrics I used in the green and purple quilt came from a sample card that was similar to the pink one above.  It is a line by RJR Fabrics called Crazy for Dots & Stripes. 


You can see the entire collection here.  My favorite print from the green/purple colorway was this one:







And it looks like you can still find some here!

Wednesday’s Color Card

[photo taken by Amy Smart - found here]

My color inspiration for the week comes from a recent quilt from one of my favorite local quilters.  Amy Smart lives just a handful of miles from me and I’ve had the chance to meet her in person.  She’s as sweet as she is talented.  She blogs over at Diary of a Quilter, has some fabulous Pinterest boards, and an Etsy shop where she sells her patterns.

What I love about this quilt is that it’s just…… lovely!  She created it for her husband’s grandma and in Amy’s blog post she has a photo of Grammie.  I’m not sure if Amy even noticed, but the colors of the quilt come right out of that photo – the rosy tomatoes, the greens of the tomato plants – even the color of the house is so similar to the quilt’s background fabric. 

Sometimes it’s refreshing to step back from all of the modern, bold colors and prints that are out there and remember how pretty fabric can be.  Know what I mean?

Saturday

My Saturday project was finishing quilting this:





Waaaaaayyyyy back in September 2009 I joined a red/aqua Disappearing Nine Patch swap.  This was one of the stacks of fabric I bought to use for the swap:

It was a fairly straightforward swap.  Each participant makes 25  nine patch blocks like this:

Then we cut each nine patch in half once vertically and once horizontally to create four blocks: 

We mailed our cut blocks in to Jane.  She (somehow) shuffled all of the hundreds and hundreds of blocks up and then mailed us each back 100 blocks.  It was fun to get my stack in the mail and look through all of the interesting fabrics.  It took me a long time to decide just how I wanted to use my blocks.  For a traditional disappearing nine patch, you take the four blocks and swap two of them (top left and bottom right in this case).

Then you sew them back together to create a larger block that looks something like this:

You can create all sorts of interesting blocks depending on the placement of fabrics in the original nine patch block, and how you arrange the cut blocks in the last step.  I created a gallery in flickr to show some other disappearing nine patch quilts.  I also found a disappearing nine patch tutorial that uses the oh-so-convenient charm squares.


I chose to arrange my blocks in a different way.  I’ll show you the finished quilt soon.  I just need to recruit someone to hold it for me so I can get a decent photo.  My kids have no patience for quilt photography sessions.  Bribing them with chocolate doesn’t help.   

Up Next

1 Ruby Jelly Roll, 1 Ruby Charm pack and 420 little 2.5” squares.  Yes, 420.  (I think I'm crazy.)  A new quilt being designed and a new pattern in the works! 

Wednesday’s Color Card

This week’s color inspiration comes from a photo of a quilt that I pinned yesterday.  I actually had two of this quilter’s work pinned and I didn’t even realize it!  Her name is Concha Cabral and she lives across the sea in England. 

I love these colors – they are so calming.  The green grass is particularly appealing to me right now too, since nearly everything outside my house is either gray or brown.  Winter is too long. 

You really must go and see some of Concha’s work.  Her photography is beautiful!  Here is a link to her Flickr stream, and her blog.

Hometown Healing

Several weeks ago my niece had foot surgery.  While she was in the hospital someone brought her a lap quilt.  She was so touched by that.  This same niece just last year made her own lap sized quilt from a charm pack.  That was her very first quilting experience and she did a great job!  So when she was given this quilt in the hospital she had a good idea of just how much work goes into a quilt. 


Later that day I stopped by to visit her and she showed me the quilt.  I was not surprised at all to find a small tag on the back that said it was given to her from Project Linus.


I have heard of Project Linus and had always meant to send them a quilt or two, but never got around to it.  After seeing how happy my niece was to get such a thoughtful gift during a stressful time, I decided that now was the time to send in a quilt. 


I mentioned in my last post how I had used the bits and pieces from my Right Turn Only quilt.  Here is the finished quilt:


 


And here is the first photo taken.  My little helper knows that when I set my tripod up that this is his chance to get into a couple of photos.  He just can’t resist it. 





I called this quilt Hometown Healing.  The fabric line used here is Hometown by Sweetwater for Moda.  I still just really love this fabric. 






The backing is a yellow print that reads more like a solid.  It is lovely, soft and I have no idea what it is.  Sorry!  The binding is one of the only prints from the Hometown line that I could find in our LQS.  It is disappearing quickly.  If you want some, go and get it now!  I know you can still find the jelly roll and charm pack here, as well as many (if not all) of the prints.


Linking up to Sew Modern Monday at Canoe Ridge Creations

Tutorial: Strip Tube Quilt

I’ve had several requests for the pattern I used for my Right Turn Only quilt so I thought I would write up a tutorial showing what I did.  First of all, I would recommend viewing this.  That’s how I learned.

Secondly, don’t think that you absolutely need a special strip tube ruler.  I used one for this quilt and it was great -  but since then I have found a similar ruler that works as well.  I DID look for a strip tube ruler at a few local quilt shops but none carried it.  I could have ordered one online, but then I’d have to wait for it to arrive.  I’m not good at waiting, so I bought a similar ruler that I found at my favorite shop.  It is an EZ Quilting Companion Angle ruler and it works great!  What you’re looking for are the horizontal lines that will help you line up your ruler with the edge of your strip. 

[edited to add:  Heather found this youtube video showing how to do the same technique using a regular ol' square ruler- very cool!]

Ok – now on to the tutorial!

(I used a jelly roll for this quilt, but you can certainly cut your own 2.5” strips.)

Step 1:






For each set of jelly roll strips, you’ll need one strip of background fabric cut at 4.5” x width of fabric.



Step 2:





Step 3:




Now for this step, I was supposed to line up the 5 1/2” mark on the ruler with the stitching line there along the bottom.  Instead I chose to line up the 6” line with the bottom edge of the tube.  As long as your top point is below the seam line, and as long as you are consistent with each tube you cut it should be fine! 



Step 4:




Keep that end piece.  I’ll show you later what you can do with those!



Step 5:













Step 6:










Take your blocks and arrange them as desired.  I chose this layout:

I had some extra squares that didn’t have a match (like in step 6) so I kept them:

I ended up adding in the bits leftover from step 4.





I enjoyed making these quilts and using the strip tube process.  My blocks came together quickly and I love the final quilt! To see another option for strip tube blocks watch this. 


Any questions?  Leave me a comment and I’ll clarify anything that needs it!