Brigid's Finally Done!

As some of you may remember I started this quilt some time ago and yes, I finally finished it and got it mailed out. My cousin Kelly had her baby girl, Brigid, in September and I got the quilt sent out in January. I know, not that bad by some standards, but I wish I could have had it to her about a month or so after Brigid was born.  I haven't heard back from her, but I'm hoping that she got it and that she likes it.  So here it is, this is my second time doing the pattern, Bella Baby, from Baby It's You by Amy Hamberlin, and it's also my second time doing a quilt with a minky backing.  The first quilt I did this way was Elizabeth Ann's quilt, and I think this one turned out just as beautifully.

I did try quilting the hummingbird, dragonfly and flowers that are patterns in the fabric. The tension was a bit off and I've noticed that sometimes the minky backing will come through in the stitches, but overall I think my free-motion designs look pretty good.

Flower

Hummingbird

Dragonfly

The first few were a bit shaky but I feel like you can tell what they are, and that's what counts.  I did some more flowers and skinny leaves in the borders, unfortunately I didn't get the best pictures of them, but you might be able to see it on the picture of the back of the quilt.

The back of this quilt showed up so different than Elizabeth Ann's, but I think that's only because I bought these two minkys at two different stores.  The first minky seemed to have longer fuzz (is it called fuzz?) so it hid the quilting on the back.  This one has a shorter fuzz and the quilting really shows up.  After my first minky I learned that they really stretch when you put them on the longarm, so this time I was prepared.  I made sure everything was squared up and tried not to pull too tightly on the backing while I was rolling up the backing.  I think it worked out well.  I also really love how the fabrics made different square patterns, I'm really going to have to remember that if I ever do this one again, I adore how that happened, completely unintentional but very amazing. 

I have to say that my mom has been coveting this quilt since I started making it, and I have a feeling that if it didn't have Brigid's name on it, my mom would have stolen it.  But I am really happy with how it turned out and I really hope she likes it!

We're Off to See the Wizard....for Christmas!

And I'm back again, I know you all missed me in my 4 hour interlude, lol.  I wanted to share with you all the pictures of the gift I made for my boss this Christmas.  It's based off of the "Tahoe Tote" pattern from Pink Sand Designs.  I found this pattern to be very easy and incredibly enjoyable.  I had previously made the "Don't Mesh with Me" tote by Karen Comstock of Quiltricks, and it's a beautiful bag but I was put off by all the binding.  In the Tahoe Tote pattern there is no binding at all, yippie! I had used this pattern previously to make a bag with a Sleeping Beauty panel that I had been saving for years.  I had chosen to embellish it and found it very easy to alter the pattern to fit my designs.  This was also the case for the tote I made for my boss. She loves the "Wizard of Oz" and once I found my fabric I knew it would be perfect for her.

Font of Bag

Back of Bag

Side of Bag

Inside of Bag

I really love how this bag turned out.  I did some stitch in the ditch and meandering to quilt the bag. I love the differences in the outside of the bag and the inside of the bag, and I especially love the handles.  I found the nylon straps at my local JoAnn Fabrics and found them to be better suited as handles than the pattern's recommendation of fabric and interfacing. It took me a bit less than a day to make the whole thing.  I have some leftover fabrics so I'm sure you'll be seeing another post about another "Wizard of Oz" bag soon!!!  I hope all of your Christmas gifts gave you as much joy as this one gave me when I made it!

A Birthday Quilt for Kate's Mom!

Hello everyone, well I've been a bit incommunicado, and here's why, drum roll please......  I had my first commissioned quilt to complete!!!! YEAH!! So it was an intensive one month project (unfortunately that was all the time I had to complete it). My mom's co-worker, Kate, wanted a very sweet home made quilt to give to her mom for her birthday, and who did she chose for this very special project....ME! So, of course, I chronicled my journey through pictures, did you expect anything less?

So here's the rub, since it was my first time doing this, I didn't put any restrictions on Kate. I will know better for next time, heh heh heh.  With only a month to complete I should have limited the pattern choices, but the good news is that I had the opportunity to try several new techniques. So I've included some pictures of how I put the quilt together as well as the final product pictures.

The pattern I used is from "Blocks to Diamonds: Kaleidoscope Star Quilts from Traditional Blocks" by Cheryl Malkowski, Kate chose the Desert Flower pattern.  I used a variation of her pinning technique, and here's what I did:

So the first step was making the small diamonds for the inner star, which involved lots and lots of paper piecing...several mistakes were made and several seams ripped, but here they all are.

The next step is to sew your nine diamonds into 3 strips, and this is how I pinned them to get somewhat clean points.

Insert pin through corner on top diamond.

Make sure pin goes through the corner on the bottom diamond.

Making sure that your corner pins stay straight, pin through both small diamonds as often as you would like. This will hopefully ensure that your diamonds will line up like they should.

And voila! you have two diamonds attached.

I repeated this process to attach all the diamonds together.

Three strips of diamonds.

To get the strips of diamonds attached to one another I put four pins in to make sure my points lined up, one at each corner, before pinning my strips of diamonds together.

One completed diamond!

The center of the quilt!

Getting all of the paper piecing done and getting the diamonds to match up was the hardest part of this quilt.  I applied my pinning technique to the rest of the quilt, but I had to make the quarter inch lines on all of my pieces.  Like below, I marked out my lines to help with my Y-seams. The book was very helpful with instructions on how to complete these pesky Y-seams. 

Square marked with quarter inch lines.

The first Y-seam is complete!

Diamonds and squares! The center of the quilt is complete!

The next set of diamonds I completed in the same was as previously discussed. Again it was 9 smaller diamonds to make one bigger diamond, and then they were joined together with, surprise surpirse, Y-seams!

And finally a single seam to add on the triangles and make it into a finished quilt top square!

In the book, the quilting was done in a couple of different colors, Kate really liked this effect so I tried to duplicate it for her, using a blue to accent the corner flowers.  I was really happy with the way it turned out!

The first round in just grey.

Accented with blue!

Here's a pretty close-up of the center of the quilt, I did a blue and grey flower in the center here too.

Kate wanted a special message for her mom's birthday.

The entire completed quilt!

I am really happy with the way it all turned out.  I think the colors Kate chose go very well together and I love the pop of the hot pink. When it was all bound and finished I wished that I had some more time so that I didn't feel as rushed, but I think it would have turned out the same way. I learned a lot about paper piecing, sewing diamonds, and Y-seams.  I'm glad I gave Kate free reign when choosing the pattern, but I'll make sure that I only provide appropriate patterns for the time constraints the client gives me. It's beautiful and I really hope Kate's mom enjoys it. And here's where I do my imitation of Kermit....YEAH!!!!! It's done!