Reel Time

I've been playing with new fabric this week, Reel Time by Zen Chic for Moda.  This is a fun line, and  compliments her earlier, wildly-popular fabric line, Comma, perfectly.

The line is inspired by elements and colors from the film industry.  I received a layer cake, and didn't even get a picture of all the prints before I started cutting into it.  (You can see them all here).  The blacks and whites (and greys) really stood out to me, so I sewed up flying geese and half square triangles.  

I haven't settled on a layout yet, I feel like it needs more, perhaps some color?  Somewhere to rest the eyes?  I'm not sure...

But I'm loving it so far.  These prints might add just the right amount of color.  

 Other colors from the line (I LOVE those circle x's).

follow along the blog tour this week: 
April 13:  www.kitchentablequilting.com
April 14:  www.freshlypieced.com
April 15:  www.diaryofaquilter.com
April 16:  www.modernhandcraft.com
April 17:  www.luckylucille.com
April 18:  www.craftytwinmommy.blogspot.com
April 19:  www.aspoonfulofsugardesigns.com

fancy foxes

My neighbor and I are putting together a quilt for our soon-to-be-high-school-graduate neighbor.  We decided to make a fox quilt, and and I get why this quilt is so popular, these little foxes are FUN to make.  We let our kids help pick out fabrics, and we might label them, you can see elsie on the nose up there.  

embroidery

A friend of mine embroidered the squares in this quilt for her grand daughter and then asked if I would be willing to finish the quilt.  So I got it put together, and now I am completely unsure of how to quilt it.  I know I can't go over the embroidery, so I'm going to stitch in the ditch around each block, but after that I'm not sure.  I've considered in the ditch on the whole thing, which might be best, but I'm not the best in the ditch quilter.  I'd love to hear your suggestions.

farmer's wife

I've had the Farmer's Wife book for a couple years, and have finally started making the blocks.  All the blocks are 6.5 inches, and they have been so fun to make.  Each block is different, so it doesn't get old.  I usually make four at a time.  I don't plan to make every block, I think I'll make mine lap size.

I messed up the bottom right two blocks.  I don't know how I put them together wrong, but once they are together, I just don't want to take them apart.  I think they look fine too.  The navy blue/mint green one kinda looks like a bird.  Can you see it?

(the book has templates for each of the blocks, but I really don't like templates, so I have been modifying each block (somewhat) using my rotary cutter and ruler.  The blocks I can't figure out, I will either use the templates, or foundation piece.)

star wars

I finally pulled my Star Wars quilt back out.  I am determined to finish it!  

I expressed some concern about the size of each character in this post, it was just getting to be too big so, I put it away--I didn't have a good solution.  Last May, when I started, there was no way I was going to redo it, but when I picked it up a few weeks ago, I knew that I needed to shrink it down. So I did.  I cut it in half, went from 2 inch squares to 1 inch squares and I am soooooooo happy I did. It is going to work so much better now.  I am so pleased with how it turned out.  I love it.

Pattern is found here.  It is a cross stitch pattern, turned pixellated quilt pattern, with each stitch being 1 inch.

her first quilt

My five year old has been asking for a sewing machine for a while now, and this past Christmas we finally made it happen. 

(For the record, I think she is a little young for it.  I can't plug her into the machine and let her sew, while I do my own thing.  I pretty much sit with her and walk her through almost every seam she sews.  It's tedious, and definitely takes a lot of patience, but I think it is a good thing.  I probably need to spend more time with my kids individually, so this is a start.)

But, we finished her first quilt and she is so proud of herself.  She told me that I no longer need to make quilts for her, she can make them herself.  

She really only made the quilt top, but she feels like she did the whole thing herself.  I let her pick whatever fabric she wanted...(this is such a hard thing to do.  I soooooo badly want to give suggestions, but I try to keep my opinions to myself).  Of course kids pick the cute fabrics, and what appeals to them at that very moment (not what necessarily matches), and we end up with a quilt salad--a little bit of everything.  And it ends up looking great!  

We (I) cut the squares out at 15inches (the biggest square ruler I have), so we could make a quilt that was big enough but not completely overwhelming for her.  She sewed the whole top together in one sitting!  It was perfect for her.  I think if she had to walk away from it, she might've become discouraged or lost interest.

 She picked the backing too.  Purple and red.  Red=her favorite color and purple=her brothers favorite color.  I was so happy to use up that purple fabric.  I bought it to line a halloween witch cape for my daughter, but she wanted nothing to do with a cape after I had already purchased the fabric, of course.  I don't know if I'd have ever used it otherwise.  It's really bright.

 For the binding, she wanted scrappy.  (I don't know when I first started sewing the remains of my bindings together to make scrappy binding, but it's such a great way to make scrappy binding, and it's perpetually...virtually never ends.)  I think it adds to the quilt salad perfectly.  

economy block quilt

I finished up my economy block quilt earlier this week, and it's been keeping us warm.  The weather turned COLD again this week.

I started making the blocks a year ago, and didn't want to stop (tutorial here).  They are a great scrap buster and pretty much anything goes.  I love that you can highlight those cute prints that we tend to collect.  My quilt ended up being rather large.  Each block is 5 inches square, and my quilt is 14 blocks x 16 blocks.  The quilt finishes at about 70in x 80in.

The backing was a happy surprise, it started out with various blue pieces from my stash (still trying to use my stash up), but I didn't like it.  The blues clashed and it just didn't feel light enough for this quilt top.  I almost went ahead with it anyway, but decided I didn't want to hate this quilt, I really wanted to like it because it has so many fun fabrics on it.  So, I scrapped the blues and went with Sarah Jane (can't go wrong there) and Orange.  I love the backing now and it makes me love the quilt even more.  

Using a border print on the back is a little tricky, especially when you use it on top and bottom.  You can see, I barely made it work...the selvage is pretty much showing.