Glam Girl Quilt--9th Quilt of the Year is Completed!

Here is quilt #9 of the year. I made this for my niece. She will soon be celebrating her 6th birthday! I used the Glam Garden Spring collection of fabrics by Josephine Kimberling for Robert Kaufman. I loved all the bright colors in this fabric and thought it would be such a cheerful happy quilt once it was put all together.

I did run into one little problem with this design. I was originally thinking of just a simple patchwork quilt. So for the size I wanted, I decided I needed 150 squares of 4.5" each. So, I began cutting my fat quarters and I ended up with 147 squares... *sigh*! So, with my leftover strips of fabric, I decided to add them in between the patchwork squares, but then still was short on fabric. So, I did end up having to buy a little bit more, in the form of a lovely jelly roll of both the Summer and Spring collections of this fabric. Darn! I guess that means now I have extra to make into another pretty quilt... ;)

For the back, I used Kona Cotton in Bright Pink with a little strip of patchwork in the middle.

I did my favorite simple meandering quilting design all over. This was my first time using a multicolored thread. It was a pretty pink/purple mix that I thought looked so fun with the rest of the colors in this quilt.

For the binding, I used strips of Mingle Dots in Spring by Monaluna for Robert Kaufman. I am starting to enjoy the "normal" way of binding... hand-stitching the binding to the back. I've gotten better at it and now it doesn't take me as long. It is kinda nice to take a little break and sit there hand-sewing the binding on while watching a sappy chick flick. :) I also love the way it looks once it is all finished!

This is another quilt that I would love to keep for myself, but I am also really excited to give it to my niece. I hope she likes it! I think the colors really suit her lively personality. :)

I have multiple quilts in progress right now, but really 3 that are more "in progress" than the rest. I should be finishing up 2 of them very soon. I'm still thinking about a giveaway while I wait for my 100th follower...

Glam Girl Quilt--9th Quilt of the Year is Completed!

What I've Been Up To...

Well, I'm busy as a bee... as usual! But, I love it! :) Actually, June is usually a pretty busy month around here, anyways. Lots of birthdays, and Father's Day.

I've started working on a hexagon quilt. Just paper-piecing some hexagons for now. Fell in love with these two fabric collections--Harlequin by RJR fabrics and Eclipse by Exclusively Quilters fabrics--both of which have yellow, black, white and grey. Perfect for hexagons to make a honeycomb/bumblebee quilt! :) I cut up a bunch of 5" squares, and when I'm just sitting down, watching TV, I make hexagons!

In other words, when I'm not quilting, I'm working on another quilt. ;) Don't they look so pretty all stacked up? If you want to try paper piecing some hexagons here is a good tutorial.

With the leftover scraps from this fabric, I decided to make a baby bumblebee quilt top in a simple stripe pattern.

I used some 2.5" white strips in between the 3" strips of the colored pieces. I'm still in love with white and how it makes all the other colors just pop!

Here is my sister's quilt top. This is using the Blush fabric collection by Basic Grey for Moda. When I saw this fabric, it immediately reminded me of my sister. She is really into brown/blue and brown/pink.

I decided on a Garden Brick Wall pattern. I thought it would look nice with the mix of small and large prints throughout this fabric collection.

Another quilt top in progress, but not completed. This one will be for my niece. I really loved the bright colors in the Glam Garden fabric collection by Robert Kaufman. I wanted to do a simple patchwork, but ended up with not quite enough blocks for the size I wanted. So, I'm incorporating some strips in between the patchwork. I am really excited to see the final product. I am loving these colors! :)

Yesterday, I pieced and cut all the squares for my nephew's quilt. Like my son, he LOVES cars, so I thought the Wheels fabric collection by Riley Blake would be perfect for him! It is also very colorful, and the cars, roads and street signs are so cute! :) I am going to make it into a zigzag quilt using an easier rectangle piecing pattern. I'm pretty sure my son will be jealous of this quilt!

I decided to finally order some of my own fabric from Spoonflower. Well, I can't take full credit for this one. My son painted a lovely, colorful painting in his art class and I thought it would look great as a fabric. My 2 year old son is the youngest fabric designer I know! ;)

I also designed some of my own, using a photo of a cactus flower from the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix. It is kinda fun to design your own fabric! :)

In other news, since I am getting pretty close to having 100 followers, I am thinking of having a giveaway! What do you think I should give away? I was thinking a mini-quilt, some fabric, or one of my other crafty creations. Leave me a comment and let me know what you think. Have a great week, everyone! :)

What I've Been Up To...

Love U Baby Quilt--8th Quilt of the Year!

Here is my 8th quilt of the year! I am way ahead of schedule, which makes me very happy! This is a baby quilt for my sister's friend who is pregnant with her third child. My sister decided on neutral colors and loved Moda's Love U collection of fabrics. Since it came with a panel, this quilt was super easy to put together. I decided to make simple blocks and rectangle half-squares around the border of the quilt, with 2.5 inch white fabric in between the border design and the panel. It is still a fairly small quilt, but definitely large enough for a baby, or even to use as a throw.

I decided to do simple outline quilting around the letters and larger shapes on the inside of the panel, and outlined each letter square around the main picture.

My favorite letter in this panel was 'Q', of course... for 'Quilt'! :) Around the panel, I did some meandering or stipple quilting. I was amazed that I finished the quilting on this in about half a day! Granted, it was a much smaller quilt than my last three, but still..!

My backing was much simpler this time. I just used a large piece of the yellow alphabet fabric that coordinates with this collection.

I decided to conform and try the "usual" way of quilt binding this time... It was still pretty easy, but time consuming. Piecing the binding, then sewing it on the front part of the quilt was the easy part, since I could use my machine. But, then hand-sewing the binding to the back of the quilt was the time consuming part. Even though my fingers were a little bit raw after this, I was very happy with how the binding turned out, and I think I might continue doing my binding this way since it looks so pretty.

I finished this quilt on May 31st, which means I completed 4 quilts in the month of May! I can't believe it! I am currently working on 3 quilts, with plans for many more this year! "I think I can, I think I can..." ;)

Love U Baby Quilt--8th Quilt of the Year!

Wedding Memories Quilt

Well, I finally finished Quilt #7 of the year! This is the "Wedding Memories" quilt that I made for my sister and her new husband. You can see other posts of this project here, here and here. She chose the fabric, Moda's Eden by Lila Tueller. Her wedding colors were pink and green, so the collection was pretty much perfect for her. I decided to omit the purples that were in the collection of fat quarters that I got, and used only the pinks, greens and yellows. The white rectangles are the signature blocks from people who attended her wedding. I used Kona Snow for these. My other sister helped me hold the twin size quilt up. She's standing on a chair saying, "Oww... my arms are sore!" ;) This is the largest quilt I've made so far!

Detail of a signature block. Man, that AZ sun is bright! I quilted around the writing, since I wanted these blocks to stand out more. I did an all-over meandering quilt with some occasional "sloppy hearts" mixed in. :)

And on the back, I used more Kona Snow with some leftover Eden blocks pieced in for extra color. Not sure why this appears wrinkly... It really doesn't look like this in person.

Detail of the back.

I presented the quilt to my sister and new brother-in-law all rolled up. I loved how it looked! My sister had mentioned she wanted a little bit of brown in the quilt, if possible, so I decided to make the binding a light brown that matches some of the outlines of the birds in the fabric. I also quilted using a tan colored thread.

I wrapped the "quilt roll" using this cute twill tape I found on Etsy. It says, "Happily Ever After" all over. So perfect! :)

On to quilt #8... I am actually finishing up the binding on it right now, so I should be posting pics soon! Yay! I'm ahead of schedule! :)

Wedding Memories Quilt

Blogger's Quilt Festival

I thought I would enter this quilt into the Blogger's Quilt Festival this week. :)

If you have a quilt to enter, click on the button above and join in! Or, just head over there to check out some beautiful quilts!

This quilt was very special for many reasons. It was my sixth quilt finished this year (ahead of my personal deadline), and my 9th quilt in all! If you are a new visitor to my blog, my personal goal this year is to make a quilt a month. So, by December I will have made 12 quilts this year! This was my first time doing free-motion quilting over the entire quilt. I was very happy with the way it turned out! I made this quilt for my mom for Mother's Day. I used Moda's Make Life fabric using a layer cake and a jelly roll, along with some simple white jellyroll strips. My mom loved it! She really enjoys the happy primary colors, and was impressed with my all-over quilting. :)

I did a fairly simple back using the cream floral yardage from the Make Life collection, along with leftover blocks from the layer cake. I also added a little fabric picture of my mom and I and a little Mother's Day message.

I did a simple meandering quilt design all over, and on various blocks throughout the quilt, I quilted "handprints" of people in our family. It was a fun way to add a little bit of everyone to the quilt project, and my mom loved it! :)

I loved the simple design of this quilt, and the pure joy of quilting it, then giving it away to someone I love!

Blogger's Quilt Festival