Ruffled Pillow

At the end of each day, I walk around the house gathering up all of the pillows and arranging them back on the couch.  In our house we have many, many throw pillows – all handmade – some that were given to us and some that I’ve made myself. 

Those pillows never stay on the couches though.  They somehow migrate into the boys’ bedrooms where they are well-loved and used.  A few end up in the basement where they were used as shields, land mines, or bases.

I’m hoping that with all of the ruffles and the wood buttons this pillow will be less desirable to the kids and will maybe stay put.  What are my odds, do you think?

This adorable ruffled pillow was one of my quick projects from last week.  The pillow pattern comes from an Adornit book called “Long Live Vintage”. 

It was fun to make ruffles again.  I think it has to be at least four years or so since I’ve ruffled anything!  It just doesn’t happen that often in a house with so many boys. 

The backing is a simple envelope closure which is my favorite way to do pillow backs. 

For now the pillow is part of a display at a local fabric shop but I’m looking forward to adding her to our Christmas décor this year. 

Linking up to Anything Goes Monday

and 

Double Sided Minky Blanket

Confession time:  I've been avoiding Minky.  To be honest, I was a little afraid of it.  I’ve heard all the horror stories.  You know – you’ve heard them too.    

But then I started doing display quilts for the Fabric Mill and they have such cute minky – and  minky makes such snugly quilt backs.  So I tried it.  And it wasn’t so bad.  Not bad at all. 

I’ve used minky on a quilt back three times now.  And I love it. 

Then I was asked to make a double sided minky throw.  Woah.  That’s a new one for me.  So I googled some different tutorials, found some good tips and then just dove right in. 

Guess what?  It was easy-peasy (as my kindergartener is fond of saying.)

It was a fast project and now that I’ve done it once, it would be even quicker next time.  And I just have to say, aren’t those little snowmen so cute and cheerful? 

Here are the tutorials I found to be helpful:

I watched this youtube tute first.

I laid out and marked my blanket like this tutorial does.  I like the idea of sewing along a marked line and trimming the seam allowances AFTER.  It was easier than trying to trim everything first.  I also used my walking foot like she recommends. 

This one is also good.

My boys are already anticipating the day when this happy minky throw makes it way home again so they can fight over it use it.

Jack’s Blocks: take 4

 I don’t think I’ll ever tire of making quilts from my Jack’s Blocks pattern.  This one is the fourth I’ve made and it’s also my favorite.  Of course, the most recently made quilt is always my favorite!

Photographing quilts is one of my biggest challenges.  Just the size of the quilts can be problematic.  This one wasn’t so bad because I didn’t have to stand on a chair to hold it up and the width was about as far as my arms could stretch. 

Then lighting can be tricky as well as the environment.  Windy days are my nemesis.  I decided to photograph this quilt indoors to keep things simple. 

 

My living room gets pretty decent afternoon light, but I do have to move a few things around to make room.  For instance, there’s a blue bookshelf that normally sits right where this chair is.  It’s easy to slide around though – so I do.  All. the. time.  

In the photo below I just had to crop out all of the stuff that would be distracting – like the vacuum cord layin' around on the left and the big pile of shoes on the right. 

For a quilt like this I would normally spend about 20 minutes taking photos – that is if I have to hold it myself.  It’s a lot faster (and a lot less work!) if I have a helper.  I took 36 photos, and from that batch I got thirteen that I was happy with.

This quilt is now visiting my local quilt shop where he’ll be a display quilt for a few months.  The Jack’s Blocks pattern can be found here, here and here. 

If you make one (or have already made one) I’d love to see it!  You can email me a link to your blog, tag me in Instagram or if you’re on flickr then add your pics to my Sewing With A Bright Corner group. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Linking up to Quilt Story’s Fabric Tuesday!

Pow Wow quilt + Florence

I don’t often do what I call selfish sewing.  That’s the name I give to projects that are completely for me – made with fabric that I love, patterns that I love and the end result will be mine, all mine.  A lot of the time I’m sewing custom orders, shop displays for The Fabric Mill, or working on new patterns.  I love that kind of work too, but there’s something particularly delightful about making something for myself. 

This quilt was completely selfish sewing. 

I got this pretty fat eighth bundle of Florence from my friend Amanda (who owns Westwood Acres.)  It didn’t sit for long before I knew what I wanted to do with it.  Pow Wow!

I’ve long admired the Pow Wow quilt pattern from Allison at Cluck Cluck Sew.  However, her pattern calls for quarter-yard cuts so I had to do a bit o’ math.  Here’s what I figured out -  You can get three blocks from each fat eighth (if it is 9” x 21”) by cutting the pieces like this:

I had 26 fat eighths in my stack so I would end up with 78 blocks.  The throw size quilt requires only 56 blocks so I was able to add another row and another column to my quilt – yeehaw! 

My finished quilt measures 61” x 73”

I used Kona Ash on the backing (keepin’ it simple) and the Marcia Floral in Taupe for the binding.  (I bought the binding fabric from Fanciful Fabrics.)

Hip Hip Hooray for selfish sewing!  I looove this quilt and I look forward to many Sunday afternoon naps with it.

The fat eighth bundle of Florence can be found here at Westwood Acres and the Pow Wow quilt pattern can be found here. 

Happy Friday everyone!  I’m linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts Finish it up Friday

Swap Mosaic

Have you ever used Flickr to make a mosaic?  It's addicting!  Flickr all on it's own is one of my favorite places to gawk.  There are so many amazing photos there.

I'm currently in a swap with our Imagine circle for do.Good Stitches and we were asked to create an inspiration mosaic to help our swap partner gather ideas.  I dug through some of my most favorite photos and compiled them all into a mosaic using Big Huge Labs.  I have to admit it was hard to choose only 16 of my favorites!

1. Family Picnic Blanket - Modern Lattice Quilt by Whirly Bird Quilts, 2. scrapper's delight, 3. Pillow Swap - A little bird detail, 4. patchwork pillows, 5. Stargazer baby quilt and Sept ALYoF, 6. Potential fabrics for next month's #dogoodstitches quilt. Coral, yellow, aqua, navy, white/grey., 7. Superstar quilt fabric stack, 8. a coral and mint isosceles quilt., 9. Chopsticks for my new niece., 10. hexagon pillow 2, 11. Giggles Baby Quilt, 12. woohoo!, 13. Abby's Treasure Box, 14. hope valley fabric stack, 15. original birds on a wire, 16. Coral and Aqua Quilt Front

(To see any of the photos in more detail simply click on the numbered link above.)

Dr. Seuss Quilt

So the weather on Thursday was somewhat cooperative and I had a willing quilt-holder hanging around so I was able to get some photos of the Dr. Seuss quilt I showed you yesterday.  It’s as if all the stars were aligned or something.

The pattern is called “Wildflower Chevron Quilt” from the Adornit girls.  The applique shapes in that colorful column are supposed to be cute flowers but we didn’t think it went too well with the whole Dr. Seuss idea.  I swapped in some simple shapes and let the fabrics do the rest of the work.  Here’s a photo of the original quilt hanging at quilt market in the Adornit booth – cute, isn’t it?

The quilt shop I sewed this for needed the quilt to be just a bit narrower for display purposes so I removed the last column of chevrons and that did the trick.

For the quilting, I tried a new free motion quilting design that I found on Pinterest.  (The original pin was a bad link but I did a Google image search and finally tracked down the original source of the pin – mystery solved!)  The quilting idea came from here – and she has a lot of other great quilting ideas that I can’t wait to try. 

I chose a green minky for the backing and a stripe for the binding.  Once my boys saw the backing they began to discuss who gets to use the quilt first.  I keep telling them it will be awhile before they see it again but it doesn’t matter.  It gives them something to argue about discuss, right?

Hope you have a fantastic Friday!  I’m linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts Finish it up Friday.  Go and check out what other talented quilters have done this week.

Catching Mistakes

I’m a big fan of laying out a quilt several times during it’s construction.  I think it stems from my dislike of the seam ripper.  I’d rather catch a mistake before I make it than go back and re-do.  I have a large design wall that I use, but I also just use the floor a lot.  A lot.

The design wall is great for laying out blocks to decide how they’ll be arranged, but the floor is better once I have rows or large sections of a quilt put together.

I’ve been working on a display quilt for a local shop and during the process I kept laying everything out to make sure it was going well.  I’m sure glad I did too!  Once I had the larger elements of the quilt assembled, I placed it all out on the floor and then saw this:

  

Did you catch it?  I almost missed it!  Lucky for me I just had a few seams to rip out on that left section of chevrons.  Within a few minutes I had it pieced back together in the correct order. 

I finished the quilting and binding yesterday, so today (if the weather cooperates) is picture day!