Fast Forward with kids and puppies

Posted on September 20, 2015 by Andrea R — Leave a comment

I started this quilt a couple-few years ago, never posted progress shots, barely mentioned it in a to finish list, then eventually quilted it, Instagrammed some shots and never blogged it.

WHEW.

So.

Here’s my official record.

With the Fast Forward pattern from Julie Herman picked up at my local quilt shop, I paired it with a really cute jelly roll whose line I can’t remember. Also purchased at my local shop. Back in 2013.

I paired it with a brown solid, since I liked the dark effect on the pattern cover. I also had lots of brown to use.

For the back, I picked out a matching light blue, just to break up the brown.

Eventually I stared at it long enough to figure out how I wanted to quilt it. (that was last summer)

I used a dot to dot sort of technique, with radiating lines. I did mark main lines to the middle of the strips. In the print parts, I did a FMQ loop de loop.

Then I put it in my Etsy shop. It’s looking for a home.

I might make this again, but different, maybe a light background? There’s another pattern that looks similar, but the pieced prints and solids are reversed.

Isabella’s birthday quilt

Posted on April 18, 2015 by Andrea R — 1 Comment

My number one granddaughter turned five this month, and I made her a special quilt!

I had a couple of bright but smaller charm packs on hand, ones purchased at Wal-Mart. They were cheap, partly because of fabric quality and party because they were half the amount of regular charm packs.

For last Christmas, Isabella gave me a fabric roll of 2.5″ strips, also from Wal-Mart. They weren’t the exact same prints as the charm packs I had, but they co-ordinated well enough.

One day when Izzy was over for a visit, I asked her to match up a strip and a square, to put together ones she thought looked nice.

Some of them were crazy indeed! Once I started piecing the blocks I had to match up more and also add some more strips from my stash. But there are a good number of blocks that Isabella can look at and say, “I did that!”

I got the blocks pieced over most of one day. Over a couple other days, I picked the backing fabrics -two vintage small floral prints – and prepped the binding, one of the extra fabrics I pulled from my stash.

I also decided, since she likes heavy warm quilts, to use two layers of batting. I have a lot of battings scraps built up, so I pieced two layers. One layer is my 50/50 warm and natural, the other layer is Hobbs cotton, possibly with some 80/20 blends in there too. I didn’t get a picture of the battings I pieced, but it made a nice dent in the stash, and for a kid quilt will be fine.

Basting went pretty fast, maybe only 20 minutes total. I quilted it on my Bernina 440 QE, with a meandering loop-de-loop pattern. It perfectly fits the bright spirit of the quilt and Izzy’s personality.

I even remembered to label it this time.

Two more shots of the full quilt.

Birthday girl opened it up and said “Awwww! I LOVE IT!” and cuddled it lots.

Quilting the Jitterbug Quilt

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Andrea R — Leave a comment

Ages ago (March 2011) I started the Jitterbug quilt that is on the cover of Layer Cake, Jelly Roll & Charm Quilts. I even bought 1930’s reproduction prints off eBay. Got a deal on those, still using some of them up.

I had piecing issues and pressing issues with this quilt. I know it’s my technique, not the pattern and I’ve learned a bunch since then even. Like maybe not do 2.5″ HSTs. At least not without tons of starch.

The top was done for quite a while and was stuck with the rest waiting for batting. I finally basted it this summer. The only other issue I had was what to quilt. The pieces really were too small to do much custom fancy quilting, so I just stitched in the ditch.

At least it worked. Even if the entire process of this quilt was frustrating.

I bound the edges in scraps of the 30’s prints as well. The backing is just plain white. It’s a good old fashioned quilt and I probably should label it. Ron likes it and we keep it on the spare bed.

Grey Tula Pink Parisville quilt

Posted on September 18, 2014 by Andrea R — 1 Comment

When I went to hunt down previous posts about this quilt, I shocked myself in realizing it’s been over two years since I started this one.

Oops?

At any rate, the top was done, or so I thought. Then I decided to use up all the jelly roll and make it bigger. All but 4 pieces, which I used as an ipad cozy. (Then I took it apart because I never actually USED it with my ipad. Those bits went in the scrap bin).

So. Then the top was done and waiting for batting and I FINALLY got around to quilting it.

Again inspired heavily by Angela Walters, not to copy it completely but to really learn from her techniques and example, I did a different design in each strip. I also did pebbling in all the grey negative spaces around the strips.

While I emphasized the print strips, for the grey parts I just went all out as if it were one piece. Because it is – the background.

FYI pebbling takes a LOT of thread. I think I used up 5 bobbins, easy. I’m starting to write this stuff down and take notes too.

This quilt wound up around a lap / twin size. I debated back and forth, and eventually listed it in my Etsy shop.

Fibonacci and Angela Walters

Posted on September 15, 2012 by Andrea R — 2 Comments

I swear I’m not stalking Angela, honest! Just a huge fan. In her Free Motion Quilting book, she has a quilt on page 92-92 that she designed and quilted. The book does not contain the pattern for the quilt, but it was pretty simple. Just strips spliced with squares, randomly arranged on a solid background.

Inspired, and with a jelly roll of Tula Pink’s Parisville, I set to work. Got the jelly roll on sale at Craftsy. Great place! I was even going to go with white, but at the fabric store I saw they had a really nice grey solid and grabbed that instead. I haven’t done anything on grey yet. I think it goes quite will with the Parisville colors.

I wanted a random placement of strips and did not want to copy Angela’s quilt exactly, since I also wanted to make it bigger.

So given the strips are 2.5″ wide and there were a few squares, I used 2.5″ as my “unit”. The Fibonacci sequence is 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc.. so I have to do a little multiplication to figure out how long to cut some strips. I stopped when I got to numbers longer than the jelly roll.

For reference, I cut some pieces like this, not counting the squares (1 unit):
2 – 5″
3 – 7.5″
5- 12.5″
8 – 20″
13 – 32.5″
21 – 52.5″ so that was too long to cut from a 42″ strip of fabric.

More playing around:

I also started to cut some of the grey background fabric in the same lengths but will probably use longer pieces, or add more grey. I want a lap or maybe bed sized quilt. Something just for me to curl up under.