Pinwheel baby quilt

Posted on March 11, 2016 by Andrea R — 2 Comments

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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.

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

The finished quilt.

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

Have a look at the back.

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

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.

Butterfly quilt

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

I took on a quilting job that was not for my mom. One of my remote co-workers had seen pictures of my quilts and loved them. She was working on a baby quilt of her own and was not happy with the quilting she had started.

So, she asked if I would quilt it for her – for PAY even!

This is how the quilt arrived – basted and some preliminary lines done. She said she wasn’t sure she liked what she had already done, so if I had other ideas, it was totally okay to take them out if I wanted.

So I did. Honestly, this was the bulk of the work.

I pressed the top and the backing quite throughly and basted it again to new batting, replacing the 100% poly with a 50/50 blend.

And boy howdy did I have ideas! I thought it would be best to have Mctavishing in the white blocks, and a feathery design on the pink triangles.

I settled on a heart & feather combo. I did use a template for this and stitched over tracing paper to have a design to follow.

I did also stitch in the ditch on the seam lines, but only the pink ones – not inner ones on white blocks. These were mostly diagonal and just to divide the quilt into sections for quilting.

Back view – you can see I just went around the butterflies and left them unquilted.

The finished quilt! I machine bound it with strips cut off the backing when I trimmed it after quilting.

Here’s a close up of the crinkly goodness after I washed and dried it. I always do this for quilts I know that will be used.

Overall back view.

When Corinne received her quilt back in the mail she was SO HAPPY.

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.

Appliqued baby name quilt

Posted on October 20, 2013 by Andrea R — Leave a comment

When I heard I was going to be a grandmother for the third time in four years, well of course my first thought was what quilt I was going to make.

Okay, maybe that was my second thought.

After I made this baby quilt, I figured you would love to have this free baby quilt pattern. It was super fast and easy to make.

I had a yard or two of a lovely fabric with dancing bunnies in pretty pastel Easter gowns. It was perfect after we knew we would be expecting another girl. I pulled some somewhat matching tiny prints for the letters for the front of the quilt.

For the front piece of the baby quilt, I used about a yard of a tone on tone off-white print. It’s about 30-36″ by the 42″ width of the fabric. Then I cut the letters freehand from the fat quarters I had chosen to complement the print on the back.

The letters could also be done with a large thick font. My size was about as big as a regular sheet of printer paper, so you could draw them out on paper first and then cut them from the fabric.

It would be smarter as well, to fuse some fusible web to the back of the fabric before cutting out the letters. I didn’t, and it made my work a bit harder.

Also if you have a name with a lot more letters, you will need to make the letters smaller so they all fit. If you’re not sure, do a test with paper letters first.

You can see here how I didn’t like the original fabric for the letter A and swapped it for a yellow instead.

Here’s the quilt on my design board with the letters pinned in place to test placement. You can go vertically in a straight line – mark a guide line if you like – or go all funky and wonky.

Fuse the letters in place. This is mostly to hold them down before appliquéing. I used a blanket stitch that came on my Bernina Aurora 440 Quilter’s Edition. A zig zag will also work perfectly fine.

Baste the top and bottom together with your favourite batting and quilt away! I used an allover paisley design, and went around the letters entirely, adjusting the design to fit. This is great practise for any allover design you want to try. And a baby quilt is a great size to practise on.

I also used a pretty Sulky variegated thread in pink / green / yellow. It matched perfectly.

You can see here how puffy the letters look. The only thing I would do different now is to outline quilt the letters.

I bound the quilt in a jade green dot that was actually from a line of Christmas fabric. It works though!

I always pre-wash my quilt, so after coming out of the washer and dryer, the cotton fabrics and cotton batting crinkled up so nicely. It looks like a family heirloom already.

This is a super easy and fast quilt to through together. Just make sure the parents don’t change the name before birth, if you are making one ahead of time. 😉

Still with the feathers

Posted on February 18, 2012 by Andrea R — 3 Comments

I am almost done Kaytlyn’s quilt. At least the quilting part. I ran out of yellow thread *again*. That’s two spools if you are counting, plus a spool each of pink, purple and orange that still have lots left, but I need the yellow for the back. This quilt is using a LOT of thread.

I read another tutorial from Diane Gaudynski, and I swear this is the one I was looking for before, but someone forgot I read it. This time I clicked. Diane Gaudynski “Echo Feather Plume”

Here’s what I did the other day.

This was the third block I did, nice and relaxed and happy with the results. I’m not quite done the quilting because as I said above, I ran out of thread! And my local quilt shop is moving so it has been closed for a few days.

Here’s a nice shot showing how the quilt will look when done.

I need to find where I put the rest of the hot pink fabric so I can use it for the binding. One more row of feathers to go and two more of loops.

And just so Kaytlyn is not the only person I am tormenting with quilting previews, I did some work on a wall hanging for my mom. Mom has picked out a panel to hang in her stairwell, and since I am now her quilter, this is my first project and she said to do whatever I liked.

If you think that looks good, wait till you see the front. 😉 Some days I wish I had the whole day to quilt. So far, I have to keep stopping for one reason or another.

More quilting progress and how to get out of a boo boo

Posted on February 11, 2012 by Andrea R — 3 Comments

So I’ve worked on Kaytlyn’s quilt a few more times, after I unpicked the last screw up and worked on something else instead. Here’s what that same block looks like now, all done properly.

I went swimmingly, until I flipped the quilt over and realized I made yet another boo boo. But this one was more recoverable and did not involved taking out stitches. It turns out if you are near the edge and don’t pay attention to the backing fabric, you get this:

It flips over and you wind up quilting it. Uh-oh. But then you just find your tiny scissors, turns on some bright lights, get comfy and snip the fabric off from around the stitching. Like this:

Any of those stray threads will wash right out. I always try and wash my quilts before I send them off. This way I know they will hold up for the user and if anything comes undone (it happens) then I have a chance to fix it.

I also figured out how to quilts the skinny blocks and thanks to some advice from Angela Walters, decided *not* to quilt the hot pink sashing. It looks SO much better leaving it unquilted. It really does help frame the blocks, don’t you think?

Here’s the back, where you can see the effect really well.

In the skinnier blocks I decided to do a loop-de-loo, or a bunch of Laverne L’s. Sometimes when doing these bits I hummed the Laverne and Shirley theme song because I am a dork like that.

Two more big rows to go! I have to draw out the feathers on these ones, since I’m doing them all in the same direction and they are basically upside down because of the way I have to feed it through my machine.

free pieced squares

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Andrea R — Leave a comment

pink & yellow