Sticks and Stones topper, take two

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Andrea R — Leave a comment

I have made this topper before, following the directions, for Christmas. It’s a great little topper for the middle of my table.

My mom liked it a lot, especially the size. So, while I was at her place sorting her fabric (I’m the best daughter ever) I pulled out three fabrics that I thought would look good.

So, even though I used the same Sticks and Stones pattern, I had to adjust it slightly for cutting the same pieces from yardage. You can be very efficient by cutting strips the width you need and not 5″ squares that would come in a charm pack.

I sewed it up on one of my mom’s machines and had it done by dinner. I did straight line quilting just in the cross sections.

And here’s the back.

You could easily use 3 fat quarters for this instead of a charm pack, with a fourth FQ for the backing.

Free Motion Floral Sampler Quilt

Posted on March 8, 2014 by Andrea R — 3 Comments

A finish! Yay! This might be my first finished quilt of 2014, ugh.

For this quilt, I used the leftover blocks from my Summer Quilt. You can do this with any collection of 10″ squares. I had 25 blocks and some were duplicates.

This would look really awesome in solids or low volume prints or even alternate value prints.

Take your 25 blocks and lay them out on the floor or design wall until you get a pleasing arrangement. Sew two together for each row until you’ve sewn a whole row. Sew all the rows together.

(or grab two at random until you get most of the way through the stack and start sewing those pairs together. Make sure you leave enough single blocks behind to finish each row.)

For the backing, I had fabric that was 54″ wide and used that. Baste well with batting of your choice. Mine needed work.

For the quilting – this is the fun part.

I used my walking foot first and stitched in the ditch for each seam, leaving a nice square sewn for each block.

In each square, I quilted a different free motion design using the Bernina Stitch regulator on some and my free motion foot. I worked my way through Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Walters
and some of Leah Day’s free motion quilting designs as well. Have fun here! I used a white thread in the top and bottom on all fabrics.

For the binding, I trimmed the back so it was 2″ all around and folded it over to the front, then sewed it down. I screwed up trying to trim the corners so I won’t show that bit – just know there’s a gap. Sigh. I really need to work on mitring my binding, especially the “bringing the backing to the front” kind, which I don’t do often.

This quilt I am leaving in my own stash for an example of the kind of quilting I can do. I hope eventually to maybe quilt for customers, so this should give them something to look at to pick quilting styles if wanted. At the very least, it showcases my skills now and I can compare it to another quilt a few years from now.

Summer quilt

Posted on January 19, 2014 by Andrea R — Leave a comment

I made a summer quilt and started last summer, but that’s not why it’s called a summer quilt. A summer quilt is a quilt with either lightweight or (in this case) no batting.

I decided to make a large queen sized lightweight quilt for our bed for those times we just needed something to nap under, or for not very cold nights. Also, I had a lot of light to medium value floral fabrics in my stash that I wanted to use up. My mom had hit a sale at a fabric store that was closing and bought half-yards of seemingly everything.

Going though my stash, I picked the fabrics I wanted and cut 10″ squares out of everything. In my case, I did not care if I had doubles or even 3 or 4 squares of the same fabrics – I just wanted to use them up. You could also use a layer cake or two instead.

I cut and cut and cut. And stacked.

Eventually I decided to start laying things out to figure how many squares I would need. I cut some more.

For this quilt, I decided it would be more interesting to place the 10″ squares on point and piece the strips diagonally. I also laid out the squares on the floor multiple times to make sure I didn’t have matching fabrics too close together, or all the pink ones crammed on one side.

Finally I started piecing, which was easy enough. Keep track of where I was seemed to be the issue. For the half triangle on the sides, i just cut the 10″ squares in half. Technically they should have been a bit bigger so I fudged the seams a little. I also took one square and cut it into the four corner triangles.

When the top was all done, I found a nice and worn flannel top sheet in our cupboard. We had already worn out the matching bottom sheet, which got a large hole when someone put their foot through it. It was a well-loved set. I did have to unpick the top deep hem of the sheet and piece a bit on the side, since the sheet was rectangular and the quilt top was square.

Since there was no batting, it did not take much to baste it together.

The only quilting I did was a stitch in the ditch along the seams. You can get away with doing it this wide because there is no batting at all. I used my walking foot and the quilt was thin enough that rolling it up and moving it around was much easier than even a double sized quilt with batting.

For the binding, I had cut out 2.5″ strips from my favourite scraps as I cut the blocks and set them aside. I did the machine sewn method where you stitch the binding to the back and pull it round to the front and sew it down. Any slightly off seams were also covered up this way.

This is really a quick quilt – despite how long it took me to finish, and it really is great for when you don’t want a blanket that is to warm or too heavy. Plus it uses up a LOT of large stash pieces in a hurry!

My husband gives it two thumbs up – both for fabric selection and ease of napping.