Playing with Black and Yellow

I have always loved the color combination of black, gray, white and yellow, so when I found a little kit for a table runner at the Quilter's Oasis in Mesa, Arizona, this spring, I knew I wanted to make it. It was an easy and quick finish that only took a few hours.  

The kit included about 11 different 2 1/2 inch strips of various black, gray, white, and yellow prints. The herringbone placement was fun to figure out, and then I used the leftovers to make the binding. I just added in a little bit of a black and white polka dot leftover from a previous project for the rest of the binding and the backing.

I really love little projects!

Scrappy Bricks Finished!

It can be a good experience to work on something a little outside of your comfort zone, which this quilt was for me, at least color wise!  I bought a design roll of Kate Spain's Honey Honey last summer and used quite a bit of it on some other projects.  What was left was a lot of the bright fabrics that I don't sew with very often.  It turns out that I am getting to be a fan of orange!

I think this quilt has a sweet and spicy look to it with the combination of blues, greens, pinks, and oranges.  I used Cyndy's Scrappy Bricks design idea to put the fabrics together, and added the 1inch black bars to give the bright colors and prints some space from each other.  I decided to back it in a cool, summery blue, and bound it in my latest favorite, black and white polka dots.  I think the binding makes a nice frame for the quilt and ties in with the black sashing bars.  The finished size is about 36 x 40.

Unfortunately I kind of wimped out on the quilting... I was so determined to give some FMQ a go, thinking I could try a couple of simple designs in the bricks, but I couldn't quite get it to look the way I wanted.  So, after unpicking a bunch of quilting, I ended up  just loosely quilting it about 3 1/2 inches through the bricks and along the top and bottom edges of each row, mostly stitch in the ditch.  Hopefully for a small quilt like this, that will be enough.

All in all, it is fun to have a finish for June, and something bright and cheery to hang over the back of a chair.  

On to the next project!

My Favorite Quilt

Like many (most?) quilters, my favorite quilt is usually the current one I am working on, and I really have loved all of my quilts over the years.  It is always fun to think back about them and look at all the ones I have made because each one has been a good experience for many different reasons.

I have been enjoying following along on this month's "My Favorite Quilt" series over at Sew Mama Sew. So I decided to join in!

My favorite quilt is this wall-hanging I made as part of Quiet Play's And Sew On BoM of 2013.

I made this quilt almost entirely with fabric from my stash.  I did have to go back to buy more of the light blue and white stars that I used for the background.  But now I still have quite a bit of it left in my stash for other projects!  I worked on each block month by month through 2013, and then finished it up in November.  Working on it coincided with my getting involved in the online quilting community and starting my own blog.  

I grew so much as a quilter during the making of this quilt.  I had tried some paper piecing before, but not to this extent.  The great thing about the process is that the first blocks were quite easy, but got pretty complicated as time went on.  The last one is the one in the center., and I have lost track of how many pieces it had!  I definitely used my seam ripper a lot during the whole project!

I haven't shown this quilt in any shows, but I did get lots of quilty love from my quilt group that I meet with each month when I showed it to them!

The hardest part of this quilt was figuring out how to quilt it at the end.  Since it is a wall-hanging, I didn't quilt it very much at all, mostly straight lines around each block and inside each block to stabilize everything.  If I were to do anything differently on it, it would be that quilting.

This quilt hangs on the wall in my dining/family room.  I know it was meant to hang in my sewing room, but I was so proud of it when it was completed, that I just stuck it up there and it's still there 6 months later!  It hangs right next to the Little Penguins!

 

 

Thanks for the chance to revisit my favorite quilt!

A WIP for this Week

I have continued to follow along with Quilting is more Fun than Housework's Scrap-a-Palooza series. I finished a quilt based in Cyndy's January idea, and this week I've been working on a quilt based on her June idea.   Of course, she has done a new one every month, but I haven't been able to keep up with that!  No matter how many I actually finish, though, the fun is in getting some inspiration for using my scraps to make pretty things!  Thanks, Cyndy!  Here is what I have so far:

This is from the leftovers of a roll of Kate Spain's Honey Honey that I ordered last summer.   I think it was actually called a "Honey Bun."  LOL!  It is strips that are 5 inches by width of fabric.  I used some of the fabric for a baby quilt for a friend and also as the center of my pearl blocks for the String of Pearls table runner that I made last winter.

It has some fun fabric still left:

 

 

and this fun honeycomb:

 

 

 

I never noticed the bees until I started cutting the bricks for this project!



To put this quilt top together, I cut 7.5 x 5 inch bricks of everything that was left.  I also cut a few half bricks to help offset the rows.  Since the fabric is pretty bright and big, I felt like it needed something to "calm" it down in between the bricks.  Looking through my stash I found some black fabric leftover from a long ago quilt that needed black sashing and borders.  From that I cut 1.5 x 5 inch pieces to place between each of the bricks.

So far, I have just made the rows and have it laid out on my design "wall" floor!  It is small - only about 40 x 43 inches, and I can't quite decide if I should add some black sashing in between the rows.  Any suggestions?  I actually really like it the way it is, and I think it could be a good size for a baby quilt, even though I am not planning on giving it to any babies at the moment!  So far, I have just been thinking of this quilt as a project to practice my quilting skills on!

 

 

Time to put the rows together!

 

Color Me Happy!

Back in April, when I decided to gift this quilt to a special friend, the hardest part of giving it away was that I loved the Color Me Happy fabric so much.  I solved that problem by making a mini quilt out of the fabric I had left over.  I had been wanting to work with HSTs again, and this was the perfect opportunity.

I backed it with a fat quarter of Glimma by Lotta Jansdotter that I had in my stash, a happy accident, since I don't usually pay attention to the designer when I am buying fat quarters!  But this was perfect for this project.

 

 

 

 

I also used the leftover navy and green polks dots for the binding.  I love being able to make a whole project out of my stash. 

 

 

A quick and simple table-topper for my dining room!

 





Linking up with Needle and Thread Thursday.

Finally, a finish!

I have been on a slow stitching path these last few weeks.  It's probably due to it being the end of the school year, with many demands on my time!  The last day of school is Friday, and I am  SO looking forward to more sewing time this summer!

I was able to finally finish my Rainbow Scrappy Bars quilt based on Quilting is More Fun than Housework's Scrap-a-Palooza series.  I am in love with scrappy quilts these days, and having a ton of fun seeing what I can do with fabric in my stash.  Here's how my Scrappy Bars turned out:

I really enjoyed quilting it with concentric circles using my walking foot.  I had never done that before, and will definitely try it again.  

I used some of the leftover blue and green polka dots from my Charm Pack Cherry quilt for the backing as well as some of the bars in the blue section of the quilt.  I was able to throw in some of the scraps on the back as well.  For a scrappy binding I used mostly blues, with a bit of red thrown in.

The finished size is about 40" by 50," a baby quilt size.  Even though that is small for use by an adult, I'm keeping it for now, since I don't have any babies to give it to, and I love how it turned out!  Can you ever have too many quilts?

Hoping to link up with some of my favorite parties later this week.  Happy Memorial Day, everyone!

A Little Random-ness... Quilty and otherwise

A fun find for the weekend:

I love the name of this wine, and it is tasty, too!

Dinner with good friends, celebrating retirement and engagement:

and... I have been having fun quilting my Rainbow Scrappy Bars quilt this weekend, as well.  I wanted to try something I had never done before, concentric circle quilting.

 

 

I started by tracing a circle with a dinner plate, and stitching around that circle.  Then I just kept adding larger and larger circles about 1/4 inch away from each line of stitching before it.  It is really an easy way to quilt with my walking foot.  It got harder when I wanted to stitch the inner circles.  When I got to what I thought would be the smallest circle, I decided to try a heart.  It ended up looking more like a philodendron leaf!  But since it is on a green piece of fabric, I guess that works!

 

 

 

I really love how this is turning out!  I did not start my circle in the center of the quilt.  Instead I off-centered it, and I think that makes it look fun and modern!

 

 

 

At this point, I am close to finishing the quilting, and hopefully, next weekend I will be binding it.  Thanks to Quilting is More Fun Than Housework for her Scrap-a-Palooza Series!  I am having fun following along, and getting lots of inspiration!