Strip Pieced Baby Quilt finish!

I've had a busy week in my sewing room.  I'm gearing up to work on some custom quilts using baby clothes and needed to get some loose ends tied up before I get myself going on those.  But before I get into that - let's have a winner for my giveaway from Monday!  I had 16 people leave a comment on my blog post, so I went to random.org and plugged in the numbers...and the winner was comment number three!

Congrats, Mary O - I sent you an e-mail so you can let me know where to send that pretty spool of thread :)  Thank to everyone who took the time to enter - I appreciate it!  I'm having a little difficulty with blogger not sending notifications of all the blog posts to my e-mail so I couldn't answer all the comments :(   But I do appreciate each and every one of you for taking the time to do that, and for reading my blog.

So - one of the quilts I've been working on this week is made from 2 1/2 inch strips.  I finished the top earlier this spring, but haven't had time to get it quilted, so now seemed the perfect time to get it out and finish it up.  I found the backing in a pile of fabrics I had purchased for a different project that ended up differently than I originally planned - yay for using up some stash!

Aren't the colors fun and cheerful?

It took almost exactly two bobbins of thread to do the machine quilting and the binding for this quilt.  I used Aurifil Natural White (2021) 50 wt because it just blended in so nicely with all the brights, giving this quilt great texture in a subtle way.  I did loops and heart quilting because it's so much fun!

It's hard to get a good full on shot of it, but you can see how fun and colorful it turned out!

I have this quilt available for sale in my Etsy shop - you can just click the picture to go there!

Hope you have a wonderful weekend and get to do some quilting!  I have a stack of quilting ready to go for my weekend - so I'm off to get started.

Celestial Quilt Finish

I've been wanting to blog about the finish of this quilt, but I forgot to take a picture of it before I took it to Threads That Bind to go on display!  It got hung up this week in the front of the shop and looks awesome there.

I ended up quilting it in swirls because they always look great on a quilt, and how else can you quilt through all those beautiful pictures?

When I don't know how to quilt it...swirls seems to work on any quilt! #pamelaquilts #freemotionquilting

A photo posted by Pamela Boatright (@pamelaquilts) on Jan 16, 2017 at 6:00pm PST

I'm still writing up the directions for this one.  It was super simple - 2 1/2 inch strips to frame the pictures, then add two borders.  I made the back out of stash fabrics.  and was able to use up several good size chunks of blue fabric.  Of course I forgot to get a picture of that as well!

This is my first shop sample for the year, I have another one in the works, plus we got in some gorgeous fabric on Wednesday that is calling me - I love getting to play with pretty fabric.

Linking up with Busy Hands Quilts for Finished or not Friday!

Christmas In July - Island Batik Ambassador Challenge

I've sure had a good time this week working with the Holiday Happenings line!

  It's a fun mix of traditional Christmas colors and outdoorsy prints.  The second border I made from the fat quarter of an animal print.  So perfect for anyone who likes the outdoors - bears, rams, fish bears, elk...all on a lovely tonal green, red, purple, gold background.  Absolutely beautiful!  I added a pretty neutral print with swirls on pine needles for the cornerstones.  For the third border I did a narrow gold strip.  Then I was ready for the final pieced border.

When I started I wasn't sure whether I was going to go with the red triangles pointing out or in.  I liked them turned out the best.  Then I fussy cut four more of those great reindeer for the corners.  Here is where one of my favorite things about batiks came in really handy!  All the reindeer were leaping in the same direction on the fabric, but I could use the reverse side with no problem so that I could have them leaping in toward the center on both sides of the quilt.  

At this point I felt that my quilt was complete so layered in and quilted it - I decided to use an overall swirl and hook design with red thread.  I was really happy with the results.  My June challenge had so much detailed quilting that it was really fun to make a quilt with an overall design - and it was quick!

The swirly design really goes well with the swirls in the background of the reindeer fabric!  I finished it up with a binding in the swirly pine needle fabric.  As always, it's a pleasure to work with the beautiful fabrics that Island Batik provides me as an Island Batik Ambassador!  It really is an honor to work with their company and I appreciate their generosity in providing me with such delightful material to sew with.

I love my finished quilt!  I've been wracking my brain to come up with a name for it, but so far I've come up lacking - I'd love a suggestion if you have one.  Thanks for following along on my journey of making my Christmas in July Challenge!

Modern Batik Challenge - Finished!

I did quite a few hours of machine quilting this week, but I got it done!  I am pretty pleased with how my quilt turned out, and I learned that I should probably do smaller projects for the Island Batik challenges.

 But I had a vision for this quilt and I followed it through to the end, despite a very busy month.  I was inspired by a quilt I saw online when I looked for modern quilts using 10 inch squares.  I had a gorgeous Stack of Florida Oranges in my Ambassador box and the colors were so bold and vibrant I knew they would be perfect for the challenge!  I loaded up EQ7 and went to town designing a quilt using only large half square triangles and squares.  I wanted it to explode out of the center and this is what I came up with:

Sewing the top was easy and fairly painless - I did get my green triangles turned around and had to unpick all 8 of them and sew them correctly, but other than that it was fast and simple sewing.  For the background of this quilt I used Egg White - I love the little dots of color swirling on the light background - it really went well with the vibrant Florida Oranges line!

Then came the quilting, which I really wanted to be special.  I started out with an outline of what I thought would be interesting and progressed through a lot of marking to do the straight line quilting in the center of the diamonds and around the center square - you can see my progress for my first couple of days of quilting in these posts:  Part One and Part Two

When I last blogged I was thinking about what to quilt in the triangles around the blue diamonds.  I found my inspiration the very next morning when I was reading through some blog posts.  Angela Walters blog is one of my favorites, (her machine quilting is amazing!) - and this post about dot to dot quilting gave me the inspiration that I needed to fill in those triangles.

I was thrilled with the results!  My daughter commented on how perfect the lines were, but they aren't - it's just the overall effect that makes them look that way!

I used a light gray Aurifil 50 wt for the quilting.  I like the way it blends into the colors and subtly shows up on the background.  I think it was the perfect choice!

And now for the finished quilt:

Isn't it fun?  I am just thrilled with the results!  I usually like to make more traditional quilts, but I think this quilt is pretty amazing!

It's really heavy - lots of thread went into the quilting, nearly the whole spool!  I used another Island Batik for the binding, from the Lavish collection - it was a nice orange that went well with the rest of my fabrics.  Batiks are nice for mixing and matching between collections!

What do you think?  Did I meet the challenge and come up with a modern quilt made with batiks?   If you would like to see what the other Ambassadors came up with for their modern challenge, there are links to their blogs under the Island Batik Ambassador tab at the top of my blog.

Daisy Garland in Spring Florals

I've been working on those piles on my sewing table, and have finished a couple of those projects already.  One of the projects was to get this bright top quilted and ready for a shop sample at Threads That Bind.  I even delivered it today!

I made this as a sample for my Daisy Garland pattern.  This is the third version I have made, and I think it's my favorite.  This is the first time I have quilted this design as an overall pattern and I really enjoyed it.  I simply quilted some daisy-like flowers, and did some echoing, leaves and spirals.  I used a light yellow Aurifil Thread and Warm and Natural batting.  The back is just as pretty as the front:

Here is a close-up so you can see the quilting:

I'm very happy with it!

I added the binding this morning, then took it to the quilt shop when I went to work with the American Heritage Girls.  We finished up the quilt block today and had a good time - I won't post a picture of them, but here is the block:

This will be sent off to be a part of the 50th anniversary quilt that is being made, and the girls will earn credit for the special anniversary badge as well.  It was really fun for me and I am glad they asked me to help them with the project.  I'll be blogging more about it later in May so I can show you how I used EQ7 to help us create it.

Then this afternoon I made the Lady Godiva Apron for another shop sample.  This pattern is from Abbey Lane Quilts and you really need to check out their patterns!  Lots of Beatles inspired names and really cute patterns.  This apron had good directions and wasn't very hard to make, just took some time.  They also have a little girl version of this pattern that would be just adorable.  I ran out of daylight, so will have to show you this project next time.  I am planning to work on Coral Queen of the Sea tomorrow, so am looking forward to showing you her as well!

I hope you are having a productive and enjoyable weekend as well.  I was even a good girl and cleaned up my sewing room after all of my sewing.  So nice to walk into my room and see it nice and tidy.  Maybe I ought to try to keep it that way all month, they say it takes 30 days to make  a new habit stick...this one might be worthwhile to work at!

Pretty as Can Bee Baby Clothes Quilt

I just love how this project came out!  The colors in this set of baby clothes were a sunny yellow and pink, just so pretty - and there were bees on several of the outfits, so that just had to be the theme.  I wanted to do something different, but when it came time to actually start the cutting and sewing, I made a last minute judgement call and decided to go with the Honeybee block.  In order to make the best use of the baby outfits I decided to make the blocks over-sized at 15 inches so that the centers could be 9 inches square.  This allowed me to use up almost every last bit of those cute little outfits.

I decided to alternate the blocks with slightly different coloring to give the quilt a little more interest.  The pink fabric with big white polka dots was the perfect choice for sashing and border, plus I was able to use the last few scraps of baby clothes for the cornerstones!  The hardest part was cutting out the 144 teardrop shapes for the bees in the corners of the blocks - that was quite a task in itself.

 After putting the top together I decided to start out with just some stitch in the ditch quilting around the blocks to see how much more quilting I needed to do.  I really liked the soft feel of the quilt at that point, so finished it off by quilting the teardrops down (they are raw edge, so will fray a tiny bit after a few washes, but will stay put because of the quilting).  I love the white and yellow dot I found for the back - it looks a bit like a honeycomb!

I intended to add just loop the loops around the edges, but found this awesome tutorial to quilt a Honeybee  on The Inbox Jaunt - if you like free motion quilting, you have to check this blog!  Seriously, fun and easy to do because she shows the step by step process.  She also has a great set of doodle tutorials that I fully intend to work through someday.  So I ended up with bees and loops and added her name as well.

Now it's time to pack these beauties up and send them to their home.  

I've got more projects ready to be started!  It's just as much fun to start a new project as it is to finish one, I think!

Baby Stars

This quilt is made using pieces cut from baby clothes, thus I have named it Baby Stars. I love the bright, sweet feel of this quilt!  The color palette was chosen by the mom who sent the clothes, and it made it so easy to choose the fabrics to go with the clothes!

The teal dot I used for the inner border are also used for the back.  I love the way it sets off the colors in the stars.  The colorful elephant border was also a perfect addition, and I am thrilled with the results!

 I cut a 6 1/2 inch square from the outfits if I could.  There were some pieces that were smaller than that, so I bordered them to make a large enough square for the center.  From the leftover pieces after that, I cut pieces for star points.

 I chose a few bright prints that looked good with the center squares, and made 12 1/2 variable star blocks (24 in all)

I meander quilted the white backgrounds, then stitched around the centers, and added quilting around the motifs in the various centers.  For the plain centers I plan on adding hearts, and a few other special motifs to make sure everything is well secured.  I used Warm and Natural batting, Aurifil thread and lightweight stabilizer behind the knit baby outfits.  For the binding I used the fabric in the stars for a fun scrappy binding.  

I am excited to show you the project on my design wall today, but you'll have to wait until Feb. 15th!  My Island Batik quilt uses the Caribbean Splash line and it is amazing, if I do say so myself!  Make sure you check in that week - the Planes, Trains and Automobiles blog hop will be starting that Monday, and there are loads of great projects made from Island Batik that will be revealed!

An Eventful Week!

Wow, has this ever been a crazy week!  It actually started off with a super busy week of working on these lovely quilts so I could get them off by my deadline.  Three identical quilts that will be awarded to some lovely volunteers.

Then I got to spend a weekend at a dear friend's new vacation house!  We had some great girl time, and it was just the ticket after a busy week of sewing.  Yep, that's me with my mouth wide open :)

On Monday I had a dental appointment, I was actually looking forward to the appointment because I had lost the temporary filling in my tooth and it was driving me crazy because it would catch every morsel of food I put in my mouth.  The appointment started out very well - I didn't have to wait in the waiting room at all, zipped right into the dental chair, shots given, and the impression started.  Then my left eye started feeling odd.  I realized that I could not blink my eye and the side of my face felt numb.  I felt like this might be important, so I brought it to the attention of the assistant.  She said that we better get the Dr. to come in and check out the situation.  He sat on his little stool and looked at my face as I tried to blink my eye and said that he thought we need to call the EMT's to come as he thought I may be having a stroke!

WHAT!!!

He left the room, the assistant started checking my blood pressure (they had checked it as I came in a few minutes earlier and it was great) and I asked for my cell phone so I could call my husband to come back to the office.  My heart was pounding, and I was so disconcerted tgat I was having trouble trying to figure out what I needed to do to contact my husband - all the while thinking that this could not be happening.  About the time I was ready to hand my cell phone over to have someone else call, the dentist came back in the room and said not to worry - it was just the anesthetic had affected the facial nerve!  He had not been informed that I had already received the anesthetic - the shot had apparently been placed too high and numbed the side of my face!  This is actually not a very common thing to happen (of course).  Just as he predicted, it disappeared after a couple of hours.  I had my procedures done, including an additional injection to take care of numbing the jaw more so they could do the filling.  Now I am not too sure of how I'll handle the next visit when they will place the permanent crown - I do suffer from a slight dental anxiety already and I don't think this will make it any better, but I'll get through it.

The rest of the week has been busy - working to finish some custom drapes, then Naomi came home for a visit and arrived Wednesday. I had to work a bit later than normal, but we've had a great time with her for the last couple of days!  On Thursday the FedEx guy brought me an exciting box of goodies!  My second Island Batik Ambassador box is here!  Oh, boy, am I ever loving these colors and I already have a plan for what I want to do with these...I can't show you all of it yet, but here is a sneak peek:

Fun time with family coming up this weekend, then back to work on Monday - wedding gowns are piling up like crazy, but I will get them done so I can get back to quilting soon!  I certainly hope next week is a lot more peaceful that this week has been.

Don't forget the Summer in the Country Blog hop is still going on!  Here is the list:

  8/17 – Island Batik
8/18 – KISSed Quilts – Part 1
8/19 – Kauffman Designs
8/20 – Adele Mogavero
8/21 – MooseStash Quilting
8/22 – Pamela Quilts
8/23 – Freemotion by the River
8/24 – The Patchwork Pearl
8/25 – Fun Threads Designs
8/26 – For Quilts Sake
8/27 – Lemon Tree Snippets
8/28 – Bejeweled Quilts
8/29 – Tamarinis
8/30 – KISSed Quilts – Part 2
8/31 – Beaquilter
9/1 – Purrfect Spots Designs
9/2 – Maria Michaels Designs
9/3 – Mary Mack Made Mine
9/4 – Made In Scraps
9/5 – Happy Cottage Quilter

Travel Theme Baby Quilt

I love getting custom order requests, and baby quilts are the most fun of all!  This request was for a travel themed quilt.  I do have some fun Paris fabrics, but needed more international landmarks for my quilt so I got to go shopping for fabric - woohoo!  I found a couple of prints that I thought would work for the feature fabric so I bought a yard each of them.  I ended up making two quilts because I couldn't decide which one I liked best!

Here is the first one.  I thought this one looked more earth toned.  It is supposed to be gender neutral, so I think I hit the mark on this one for sure!  I just did my usual Baby Nines - very simple, but a fun way to use a variety of fabrics.

I remembered to add one of my tags to the corner this time.  I've seen some really cute ones you can order, but I made these using printable fabric with a bit of fray-check on the sides.  I have quite a few more to use up.  I think next time I will order some cute ones, but these work for now!

I think it turned out lovely!  The machine quilting is loops in a gold Auriful 50 weight thread.  Just a bit less than 2 bobbins worth for this size, so the quilting doesn't take too long.

Today I will quilt the other quilt and you will see how different it looks even though I've used many of the same fabrics.

Today is Christine's turn on the Our Favorite Things blog hop - she does a great job making use of the limited space she has for quilting!  Here is Christine's post.  She also has a Juki, and says it is fast and furious - that's why I love mine!  I guess I'd better go do some fast and furious quiting and finish up that second baby quilt now, have a great day and make sure to hop on over to Christine's blog - she is having a giveaway as well.

Wednesday at home

It's rarely that I get to spend Wednesday at home because it is usually my day to work at Threads That Bind.  It feels a bit strange, to tell you the truth!  It's been a busy week, I've got several quilts prepped for quilting, so it should be a fun few days before we leave to go help with the grandkids.  I need to get off my lazy rear and go take some pictures with my real camera as the iphone pictures leave a lot to be desired.

I do have pictures of a finished project for you, though.  In the better late than never category!  This quilt is made using the blocks I designed for a short block of the month program for my local quilt shop.  I made one block for display and a second block for the finished table runner.  When I wrote the pattern I intended to make the sample blocks into a table topper or wallhanging, but they have been sitting in one of the piles I keep shuffling around my sewing room for over a year now.  On the Fourth of July they kept taunting me to finish them - after all, it is a red, white, and blue project!  So I did!

This was really an easy project to finish, just had to sew the sashing and borders, quilt and bind!  I quilted it in stars and looks.  I can't believe how easy that is for me to quilt now.  I remember the first quilt I did with stars and loops, I had such a hard time keeping my rhythm when stitching the stars - they were really odd looking.  Now I have done it enough that I don't even have to really think of it!  I was helping my grandson Cole draw stars on our last visit, and he was feeling frustrated, and I remember telling him that he just needed to practice, and that after a while it would be so easy he wouldn't even need to try to think about how to do it.  That definitely applies to machine quilting as well.  Practice, practice, practice!

Love the blue stars for sashing!  Thanks to my facebooks peeps for helping me to pick this out earlier this year - love being able to bounce my ideas off you :)

And here is a peek at the backside...more stars and a nice chunk of fabric out of my stash!  Didn't that flag fabric make a neat binding?    I love it!  The finished quilt measures 33 x 33 inches.  It is available in my Etsy shop, and if you would like to make one of your own you can buy the pattern in my Etsy shop.  It is an enjoyable quilt to make, I love working with triangles and getting the points to come out just right!

Don't forget to keep up with the My Favorite Things block hop - today was MaryEllen's day and her post is here, she is also offering a little giveaway, so be sure to leave a comment!

Blue and White Stars - Bloggers Quilt Festival Spring 2015 Home Machine Quilted Quilts

I always look forward to the Bloggers Quilt Festival!  Such a fun way to be able to participate and see some wonderful quilts - my poor husband will really wonder how many quilting blogs can one woman look at this week!  I am entering this in the Home Machine Quilted category since that is one of my favorite things about this quilt.

This quilt began last year as a Project Quilting challenge in 2013 - the challenge was to make a quit in your favorite color with only white added.  I knew right away that I wanted to make a blue and white quilt, and after making the blocks decided that I would rather make this a nice quilt than do a rush job on the quilting to finish by the challenge deadline.  So it took me a little over two years to actually get it finished...I think the wait was worth it!

Each star has a dark blue center made from one of my favorite stash fabrics!  It is a blue celestial print with gold highlights.  So pretty!  Then I added a deep blue for the star points, light blue for the corner squares and a medium blue for the triangles on the setting squares.  The points all came out great, thanks to the use of the Tri-Recs rulers (one of my favorite ruler sets!).  I added the white border, then the quilt waited for a while.  I needed some yardage for blue borders and it took a while to find the right ones that would frame the quilt just the way I wanted it to look.

It took me while to decide how I wanted to quilt it as well.  For the inspiration behind much of the quilting I used Angela Walter's book "Free Motion Quilting".  I also drew from Leah Day's website for the sharp stippling I used in the light blue areas.  (See the video here!)  I use a Juki 2001QI for piecing and quilting.  No frame, I just use it on my table - works great for larger quilts, it still gets a little tight in the center, but way better than my old 1979 Kenmore was.

When it was finished being quilted I realized that I didn't have binding for this quilt.  I don't know how many times I have done this, so I am pretty good at improvising!  I had actually thought about using this two colored binding, so was really excited to find just enough of the dark fabric for the strips needed (I had 1 inch to spare after cutting!)  I made it a bit narrower than I had before and it came out perfect.  I love that little pop of the lighter blue, it really frames the quilt nicely.

My favorite thing about this quilt though, is the quilting!  I used Aurifil thread for all of the quilting.  White in the background, a blue/green in the medium areas and a dark blue in the dark sections.  The bubble and swirl design was fun to do and looks great in the diamond shaped center squares.

I was a good girl and buried all my thread tails on this one (I generally just snip them off close to the quilt and don't worry about it)  You can barely see the contrasting threads on the back in this picture, but I love the way they bring out the design on the back of the quilt as well!

It's a nice size for a queen bed - I don't generally make my quilts with a pillow tuck because I prefer pillows on top.  Since I have plenty of quilts for myself (with two new ones in progress!) I am listing this one in my Etsy shop.

Be sure to head on over to the Bloggers Quilt Festival and check out all the other awesome entries!

Ribbons, Binding and another Block of the Month

Today was a productive day - despite a couple of unusual events that had things a little off-kilter.  Woke up to several piles of kitty vomit...my poor Scamper kitty was definitely not feeling well.  He has pretty much just laid around all day looking pathetic.  He seems to be a bit more perky tonight, so hopefully we won't have to make a trip to the vet tomorrow.  It seems weird to have our little one cat entertainment system down.  He definitely keeps us busy with his crazy antics!

The second unusual event was a fan blowing up on us!  My husband turned the fan on in our spare bedroom this morning and it went bang and even had flames coming out of it!  The smell was horrific, we've had the windows open upstairs all day to get rid of the stench.  Thank goodness it happened when he was right there to unplug it and get it outdoors right away!

So...after all of that I did manage to finish the binding on the Wall hanging I made out of the Block of the Month Blocks!  Whoopee - another one down!  And this evening I finished hand sewing the binding on the Butterfly quilt.  Tomorrow I'll finish machine quilting stitch in the ditch around the butterflies and it will be ready to get back to the owner - double whoopee!

I made up another quilt block, this one was from 1996.  Double T is the name of the block.  I had all the prints cut out, so just needed to cut out the white blocks and sew it together.  Easy as pie!  Cute block - hard to believe it's been waiting almost 20 years to be finished.  Guess I'm a little slow!

I also finished re-sewing all the pickups on a wedding gown.  It came out really well, I think the bride will be very happy with her shortened dress!

Last, but not least I picked up my quilts that I entered in the fair.  I got four blue ribbons and two red ribbons!  I'll share some pictures of those later this week.  For now, I need to go to bed and get some sleep - I have a lot I want to get done tomorrow, too!