Pinwheel baby quilt

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Sometime last year I did a quick and easy throw quilt from Tula Pink’s Elizabeth fabrics and very large rectangle snowball blocks. No pictures or write up yet though, sorry.

But! The triangle bits cut off the corners were plentiful and quite large. Enough to make a baby quilt for sure. I sewed up each corner as I cut them off – working on two quilts at once – and played around a bit with layout.

Still need cornerstone dashing on the sides, but this baby quilt top from scraps is almost done. #quilting

Pinwheels are pretty straightforward, so to liven up the boredom, I also added sashing with cornerstone blocks from more scraps. The white sashing itself was from my white scrap bin too.

I swear, this fabric is going to live on forever… I also have a runner from more scraps from the same project.

All done! It's about 38" square, baby quilt sized. Gonna sell it so if you want it holler. Ready in January.

I posted a picture of the completed top and Kathy contacted me to claim it for her granddaughter. Fun! Anything for a fellow member of the cool grandma club.

For the quilting, I wanted it to be nice and custom and pretty and basically what I call quilting the heck out of it. But first, I stitched in the ditch around each block. Technically I could have left it there, it was secure enough. But you know me!Today's project. Some might think this is done or they may stop here. I ditched along the seams in all directions for stability for the next steps. After lunch I'm gonna quilt the hell out of this and you can see the difference. ?

I wanted to challenge myself as well, and time it so I could see how long it took for me to quilt when focused.

The sashing has back and forth lines, sometimes called switchbacks.

Each cornerstone has “bumps” – a curved line that goes from corner to corner.

The pinwheels also have bumps in each triangle, but with them all together almost form a flower. It only took a couple of blocks to figure out the best way to travel with the least amount of back tracking.

An hour and twenty five minutes. That's how long this took me to quilt. This includes changing the needle that was giving me issues and stopping to wind 3 more bobbins. Yep, I quilt fast.

Did I mention I hate breaking threads? Most of the quilting here is done all in one go, save for bobbin changes.

The small border around the outside, same width as the sashing, is done in half feather bumps, just to soften the look a bit. I had trimmed the quit after the first step of straight quilting, and by the time I got to the borders was kicking myself. Some places I was holding on with my fingertips!

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Super happy with those corner turns too.

So, time spent doing the initial straight quilting was 20 minutes. I stopped for lunch, swapped out the walking foot for the FMQ foot and went at it, knowing what to do for each section. I quilt fast and at top speed. Time spent for the custom work? An hour and a half. Maybe an hour and 20 mins.

Then it was on to the fabric choices for binding. I sent Kathy a picture with options.

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She picked the green stripes. Perfect! I cut it on the bias, because bias striping is always a great choice.

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The finished quilt.

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All this puckered crinkly goodness is after washing. It already looks like a family heirloom!

Have a look at the back.

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When the quilt arrived at Kathy’s place she said the same thing my mom always says. “The pictures don’t do it justice!”  😀

Blue bars minimalist quilt

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Ages ago, I saw a preview post for Modern Minimal: 20 Bold & Graphic Quilts and fell IN LOVE with the quilt on the cover.

Even though it was folded and you couldn’t see the entire thing, and it was a teeny picture, I was so inspired I pulled out all my yellows and quickly did my own spin on it.

When it was done, I posted on Instagram and someone offered to buy it within 20 minutes. Maybe that’s why I never posted about it here in my blog? It went fast. And that was 2 years ago.

But it was also quite popular. I had quite a number of private comments from others saying how much they liked it and how sorry there were to hear that someone else got it.

So, since the first one was so sunny and yellow, I decided to do the same in blues. This time the process went a bit slower.

Instead of improv, I had made sure I wrote down all the pieces on the yellow quilt so I could make it again. I have one notebook where I try and sketch out all my quilt ideas and notes and measurements, so at least they’re all in one place.

I pulled all the blue solids, and some other color groupings, editing until it felt right.

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Piecing was easy and straightforward enough.

 

Sorry for blur!  Eventually I decided it needed to be bigger, so added a border.

Then finally, decide on backing, piece as needed. Baste.

It took a while for me to decide how to quilt it. I’d done straight line quilting on the last version of this, the yellow, and wanted something a bit “more”. But not *too* much, you know?

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Here I am testing designs on scraps. Initially I was going to use lofty poly batting, then while testing remembered how I don’t like working with it. I changed the batting used and was much happier.

Going around some blogs was the wavy line quilting, which looks fantastic but is just as easy as straight line. Still somewhat boring to do, but the finished texture. Oh my.

Even with needle troubles, thread issues and waning patience, it still manages to look darn good. According to the pictures, it took from March thru June to finish up, but I worked on a pile of other things too.

 

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The how to is the same as just straight line with your walking foot, except you change the machine setting to use the 3 step zig zag. That’s it. But oh how lovely it looks. I didn’t mark anything – just followed a seam line from the middle and spaced each one thereafter organically. Or, “works for me”.

This quilt is for sale to a good home, even though I haven’t managed to list it in my Etsy shop yet.

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Neutral Feathers

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I can’t believe I haven’t written about this quilt yet.

I started it WAY back in September 2010, when I decided I had enough neutral fabrics that I could make this pattern. (Pattern available for free here.)

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By end of October 2010 the top was pieced, but it wasn’t until last September that I finally got it basted. (and finally writing a blog post a year later but we’ll skip that part, right?)

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The back was a large piece Mom picked up at a thrift store. Pretty sure it was a duvet cover in a former life, but it matched well enough.

And then it sat for a bit because I had big ideas to quilt it, but I wasn’t sure if I could pull it off. It was scary! I wanted feathers but at the time I wasn’t sure if I was “good enough” to quilt them the way I saw them in my head.

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So I fretted. And I sketched. And I practised on paper.

And then I finally took a deep breath, marked the spines where I wanted and just WENT FOR IT.

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The border was the biggest challenge so aside from a few wobbles I think I did pretty well.

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The square blocks I actually used a stencil, because it really did help me with the curves. The curvy bits on feathers are the hardest for me, so of course I have to toss more in.

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I decided to leave the sashing un-quilted, partly because it is so skinny, and partly for emphasis.

This quilt is also listed in my Etsy shop. I’m really happy with how it turned out because it’s one of the first ones that I think I stretched my skills and rose to match what I saw in my head.

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Grey Tula Pink Parisville quilt

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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.

Cowboy quilt

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Or maybe “The Sheriff is in town”. I bought the fabric for this quilt a few years ago in a thrift store. 3 yards of each grey print, just sitting there. I maybe paid a buck a yard, not a thing wrong with it.

Ever since I got the fabric, I had an idea that I would have to do a quilt with bright solid stars, so I drew it up and roughed in some measurements and finally started it this month. Well, February but you knew what I meant. 😉 I did want a bit of a modern spin on it, so that will probably happen with the quilting itself.

sashing strips

I wanted to see how long a typical quilt will take me, so I’m going to try and track my time. I spent 50 mins getting these sashing pieces sewn and pressed today.

Before that, I figure I spent 2 hours planning and drawing, and cutting the pieces. That’s probably a conservative guesstimate there.

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Once the sashing strips were done, it only took twenty minutes to do the first row.

laying it out

uh-oh. I looked at the sashing pieces I had, said “That can’t be right” and realized I mis counted somewhere.

I have a grey stack of strips without the triangles on the corners, but couldn’t remember if I’d cut too many pieces or not. I opent get rotary-happy when cutting and cut out waaayyy too many pieces!

Do you think this would be a good free tutorial to write up? It’s just large enough that the backing can be done with one piece of fabric, and will be a nice baby quilt size.

Edit: I did manage to get half the top pieced today. Hoping to do the rest tonight.

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