Purple Irish Chain

Date:  May 2015

Pattern:  Traditional Irish Chain

Size:  30 x 30

Reason:  I accidentally made 9-patches when I meant to make 4-patches (rolls eyes)

Special Fabrics:  White sheet, purple left over from God's Promise back

Lessons Learned:
  1)  Don't cut and sew on auto-pilot
  2)  Feathers aren't as scary as they look

Thoughts:  The circles are hand quilted, the lines were done with a walking foot, the corner feathers were done with a darning foot.

Wedges

Date:  November / December 2013

Size:  Approx 46 x 58

Pattern:  http://content.janome.com/index.cfm/ProjectCenter/Project_Detail/Modern_Quilt

Reason:  I drew my sister Alison's name for Christmas

Fabrics / Best Buys:  I discovered I do not keep purple in my stash.  I had to buy everything.  Shucks.

Thoughts:  This was my first improvised back.  I think.  I learned the concept in a free Craftsy class.

The quilting is both FMQ with a darning foot with the straight-ish lines done with a walking foot.  I think I did the walking foot stuff first and then filled it in with FMQ - there is more than one FMQ design on it.

I think I like the back better.  :)

Lessons learned:  Angles are the difficult.  This quilt was a lot more challenging than I would have thought.  The pattern called for appliqued circles, but I completely wimped out and didn't add them.

Leah Day's Building Blocks

Date: January 1 - October 26, 2014

Size:  48 x 56

Pattern: Building Blocks by Leah Day

Reason:  I love that I can FMQ on my domestic machine and although stippling is wonderful, I wanted to learn new techniques.

Fabric / Best Buys:  Almost entirely scraps.  I only dipped into my stash for the yellow and blue and white.

Thoughts:  This was a really interesting class and learning process.  Even though I've FMQed many quilts before I could feel myself getting more comfortable as the class went on.

I used a 2" binding strip instead of 2½".  It made a nice thin binding.

Lessons Learned:

1)  My sewing machine does not like to FMQ with poly as the top thread (it breaks lots).  Poly in the bobbin works just fine.

2)  Pencil washes off of white fabric

3)  I don't like premarking quilting patterns, but it really helps with accuracy so suck it up.

4)  Don't undo your work just because it's not perfect.  The triumph is in the learning and growing.

5)  If doing different colour ways front and back try to have ONE colour in common to make choosing a binding colour easier.  Just sayin.

A Blessing for Ruth

Date:  July / August 2014

Pattern:  From my head:

Block A:
~  Make crazy quilt blocks and cut them to 6.5".
~  Sew 2.5" strips of white to the crazy blocks
~  Sew 2.5" strips of a colour that matches the crazy block to the white
~  Square block to 10.5"

Block B:
~  Make crazy quilt blocks and cut them to 8.5"
~ Sew 2.5" strips of white around the crazy block
~ Square block to 10.5"

Size:  37 x 47

Reason:  A new baby in our church

Fabric / Best Buys:  All the fabric used was scraps and gifts except for the borders - I took those from my stash.  The binding was a pre-ironed binding given to me by my Aunt.

Thoughts:  I love this pattern  I used it for the first time here.  I've been wanting to use it again ever since.

Lessons Learned:  I finally got up the courage to stitch text into the quilting.  It went really well and fit perfectly  (Numbers 6:24-26)  I'm so excited that it worked.  I'll do it again on my next baby quilt.  It worked really well to run through the motions in my head that my hands needed to make word by word.  It kept me from getting overwhelmed and allowed me to keep calm and not rush.  Winner!

Cheater Wall Hanging

Date:  June 2009

Reason:  A friend who works at MCC gave this to me to practice quilting on it.  When it was finished, I donated it back to MCC for resale.

Purple

Date:  July 2012

Reason:  My sister's wedding

Inspiration:

Lessons:  I'm just starting to machine quilt, so this quilt clearly shows my progress.  I think I found the idea tension for machine quilting . . . once I was 90% done.  C'est la vie.

Thoughts:  I love this technique so much I have two baby quilts started using the same style.

This quilt also displays a lack of wavy edges!  Yahoo!!

Tipsy Topsy

Date:  July 2012

Reason:  I needed a test quilt for new fill I am trying out.  A baby-sized quilt seemed the way to go.  Also, I saw Leah Day's modern quilt technique and thought it would be fun to put a "twist" on these traditional 4-patches (haha).

Special Fabrics:  Five of the blocks are from dozens and dozens that my grandmother has given me over the years.

Lessons Learned:  Finally, I think it's been established WHY I had such wavy edges.  Leah cautioned against putting too much strain on the edges and I've realized that I practically play tug-of-war to bind my quilts because I'm so close to done I can taste it.  When you add the fact that two of my waviest quilts had double machine sewn bindings, it's no wonder they looked rippled.

Tipsy Topsy looks much better.  Thanks so much, Leah!

Thoughts:  Although I didn't do the fabulous quilting method that Leah is teaching for this quilt, I definitely want to try it out because it looks amazing.

I'm already getting bored of the straight stipple so I need to think about how I can incorporate an all over quilt method to enhance the blocks, not just stitch over them randomly.

Also, I think a larger stipple would have looked better on this quilt.

Lilac Fields

Date:  2008

Reason:  A friend gave me corduroy blocks that were already cut and pinned into a pattern.  I like treats!

Fabrics:  The backing is a pink sheet that another friend gave to me.

Lessons:  Corduroy frays a. lot.  After I put it together I washed it and SO MANY seams frayed.  I took the opportunity to use a pretty variegated thread and some fancy stitches and sewed over all the seams.

Thoughts:  A very good drag around the house, picnic on the kitchen floor type of quilt!

Ali's

Ali will ever be a purple girl.  I did two like this for her Christmas 2006.  This is paper pieced.