I managed to eek out one finish for Q3! I was determined to have something to cross off my Q3 Finish-a-long list, so this weekend I basted, quilted and bound my mega log cabin block quilt. 

Back in 2009 I created this quilt (and here) for my sister and her new baby.  I had a fair amount of the fabrics left over, so I always kept them stacked together. Then last year I wanted to try making up a mega block quilt (a quilt top made from 1 over-sized quilt block), so I grabbed my stack of fabrics and went to town.

I wanted the quilt to be soft and drape nicely when complete, so I quilted 1" horizontal lines over the quilt. It crinkled beautifully after I washed it!

Quilt top finish! This top is the third in a series of four quilts that are destined for a bunk room in a cabin. I first mentioned these quilts in my 2014 Kick-Off post in January. I originally had these on my Q1 FAL list, but alas, I haven't totally finished any of them.  When I completed the first one I decided that I wanted to see all of the tops together before I made a decision on how I wanted to quilt them.  (As you can see, I decided to eliminate the chunky borders that were part of the original designs.)

This Plus quilt is Kona cotton in wine with pluses in eggplant, ivory, and holly (though you can't tell that there are any light green pluses in these photos).

We've had a string of beautiful sunny days, which is great in general, but makes it difficult to take quilt photos. This picture (above) shows the colors in the quilt a little more accurately.

As I went to write this post, I realized that I had posted pictures of the Flying Geese and Bear Paw quilts on Instagram, but never talked about them here.
The Flying Geese Quilt is Kona eggplant, with geese in ivory and sage. The Bear Paw quilt is Kona forest with prints in ivory and cayenne. One more cabin quilt top to complete (Stars) and then I face the huge project of quilting all four of them.

Today I am linking up to WIP Wednesday!

Quilt Finish #2 for 2014!  I love how my version of the Economy Block Quilt came out using fabric from Jack and Lulu's All Hands on Deck collection of fabrics for Dear Stella. I had a lot of fun fussy cutting the seagulls, sailors, and boats, and I learned a lot paper-piecing the blocks using Rita's (Red Pepper Quilts) tutorial and template.

I quilted this one on my home machine by echoing the diagonals formed by the diamonds.  It is backed and bound with fabrics from the same collection (the crabs were my favorite).

The quilt is 34" x 41" and was listed in my Etsy store, but has now sold.
I must also mention that this is finish #2 on my Q1 Finish-a-long list. I only managed to finish 2 out of 6 this quarter.

This weekend I spontaneously decided to clean and organize my sewing room. In the process I re-discovered some turquoise strips I had assembled around the time I was working on my Turquoise HST Low Volume Quilt and the Turquoise Chevron Quilt.  I decided to finish ironing and cutting my strips in to 6.5" squares and now I have this on my design wall:

When I was done cutting my strips I realized I had way more blocks than I needed to make 1 baby quilt, so I separated the blocks (I was able to cut 3 blocks from each strip set) and laid out 2 quilts. That means I still have 1 set of blocks to play with.

The blocks on the left in the rail-fence layout have been assembled in to a quilt top and are ready to be basted and quilted. I still need to play with the blocks on the right to make the quilt look balanced with those dark gray prints and the super saturated turquoise fabrics.

Today I'm linking up with Work in Progress Wednesday.

Here it is: my first finished quilt for 2014!
This was another impromptu quilt-along that was fueled with lots of pictures from Flickr.

I had this quilt long-arm quilted by Plain Jane and I love the way the interlocking bubbles turned out.

The quilt is 67 in. x 53 in. which makes it a "throw" quilt in my book.  I backed it in fabric from Zen Chic's Comma collection for Moda, and bound it in Glacier Kona Cotton (which is richly dark teal if you can't tell from the photos).

ONE finish done for my 2014 Q1 Finish-a-Long. Yay!
This quilt is listed for sale in my Etsy shop.

This year I joined an online quilting bee that is focused on making improv blocks (blocks that don't follow a strict pattern). You can see a few of the bee blocks that I've made here, and the group's Flickr page here.

We decided that our project for December would be a mini-quilt swap. We were blindly assigned partners from the group and set out to make them mini-quilts and few fun "add-ins." I found my partner's Pinterest page and was able to see recent quilt pics that she had pinned: some of which were "Polaroid Block" quilts. Just a few weeks earlier another group member, Mandy Leins, made a polaroid quilt for Quilt Market. Between the pictures of Mandy's quilt and the Polaroid quilts I was seeing on Pinterest & Flickr...I knew I wanted to make one for my partner. Plus I had a TON of holiday fabric scraps from making fabric gift bags through the years that were going to work perfectly for fussy cutting.

To make the Polaroid blocks I followed this tutorial, and then added more negative (red) space around each block. Once I had the blocks done, I put them on a random angle and trimmed them all to 6 1/2" square (including seam allowance).  I didn't really have a plan for the size of the quilt when I started out; I just picked fabric scraps, "fussy cut" images for the Polaroids, and then started making the blocks. Once I had all my blocks made, I laid them out several different ways and settled on a "big-mini" (wall-hanging?) quilt size. In the end I used 35 of my Polaroid blocks.

The quilt is roughly 42" tall and 30" wide. I used Kona Cotton's "Rich Red" for the background and bound it in a green & white stripe from Me & My Sister Design's "Ready, Set, Snow" collection for Moda.

I backed the quilt in this fun multi-color "Yonder Star" fabric from Alexander Henry, quilted "in-the-ditch" on the inside and outside of each Polaroid, and then added hanging pockets. Now it's time to send it off. My fingers are crossed that my partner likes it!

I'm happy to have another quilt finished!
This is my "Modern Trees" quilt that was inspired by the quilt-along organized by Christa Quilts.  It was a lot of fun to make: this was a quilt that came together easily.  I saw the post talking about the quilt-along, ordered the triangle template that is used to make the tree, had the idea to try slicing my trees to create garlands on my trees, decided I wanted more negative space around my trees...and voila - here is my quilt! Not quite according to the original pattern in the quilt-along, but I love it.  (I will say it was quite difficult to photograph the saturated greens and stark white background fabric.) 

All the fabrics used in the quilt top were found in my stash: various Kona Cotton solids in shades of green and "rich red." The white fabric is some mystery fabric that I found in my cupboard. 

I treated myself to having the quilt long-arm quilted by Plain Jane Quilting, and I love how it the "meandering loops" pattern turned out. I wanted the quilting to look like blustery wind and blowing snow.  I also had her quilt-in-the-ditch around each tree and around the red borders.

The quilt is 64 by 55 inches and is my third finish in my Q4 Finish-a-long!

I decided to keep the quilt for myself and am looking forward to much snuggling under the quilt this holiday season.

It's DONE! The King Chevron quilt is done! As are 3 european-sized pillow shams that I made to go with the quilt.  This project has been on my "to do" list for the Finish-A-Long for 2 quarters and I'm happy to say it is done. (Can you tell?)

This was a commissioned quilt and it was requested that I made a chevron quilt that didn't have any yellow, didn't use any flowery or childish prints, included turquoise & gray, and matched an accent wall in the bedroom where it will live (hence the mushroom background color).  The customer also requested random pops of orange.

The finished quilt came in at 110" x 110" prior to a final washing and is by far the biggest quilt I've ever made. It is comprised of 324 six-inch half-square triangles. The backing fabric is Kona Mushroom and there are around 36 gray, lt. blue, dark blue, turquoise, purple and orange prints used from too many collections to name. Most of the prints were tone-on-tone or white-on-tone.

I don't have a great shot of the finished quilt backing, but I included rejected blocks from the quilt top and arranged them in to pinwheels - or windmills. The quilt is headed to the house of a farmer, so I thought that would be appropriate.  I opted to quilt vertical lines through the points of the chevrons. I wanted to break up the strong horizontal lines from the pieced pattern in the quilt top, but not add too much to a quilt top that was already very bold.

I bound the quilt in multicolored scraps from the quilt top.

When it came time to make the coordinating euro shams, I struggled to come up with a design that wouldn't clash with the chevrons but would still stand out. I decided to do color-blocked circles. I backed the pillows in an ikat polka dot home decor weight cotton/linen blend from Premier Prints.

The King Chevron quilt counts as my second finish for Q4 in the Finish-A-Long!  Two projects down, 2 to go.

Time to look at what I'd like to get done in the last quarter of 2013.  There are many projects that I'd like to have completed, but with the holidays approaching, I'm trying to be realistic about how much time I will actually have to sew. I decided I'd be a little bit conservative - so I can hopefully feel good about getting lots of things on my list done come the end of December.

First on the list is a holiday mini-quilt for an exchange that is being hosted on the Modern Quilting Facebook page. This is my first exchange and I have to say I'm a little nervous about sending my projects to another quilter. I feel like it has to be perfect!  The person who is assigned to receive my mini-quilt selected Christmas as her holiday of choice (you had to choose a holiday to be the theme of the mini quilt).  I opted to try out my new flying geese bloc-loc templates (rulers?) - and they were so fun and easy to use! All I have left to do on this project is finish the binding.

Next on the list has to be the King Chevron quilt (again). I'm sooooo close.
Quilt top - check
Backing fabric - check 
Binding made - check
Batting in hand - check! 

Now all I have to do is put it all together.  My personal goal is to have it done and off to the customer by the end of October.

Third on the list is my Modern Trees QAL with Christa Quilts.  The blocks are done (officially done - since I've run out of the white backing fabric), and are up on the design wall. Sorry about the horrible picture - but the lighting in my sewing room isn't great for photos).  I chose to "slash" my trees to make garlands and like the result. I also chose to alter the pattern a little to make more white space around the trees. Now I have to assemble the squares, add sashing (?), maybe a border, layer it...and I think I'm going to treat myself and have this one quilted by a professional long-arm quilter! This quilt is for ME. So I think I'll give myself a break and let someone else do some fun and fancy quilting on this.

Last up on the list is my Texty St Louis 16-Patch. This was a spur-of-the moment project that I whipped up in a weekend or so. It was a lot of fun. Now it just needs to be layered, quilted and bound.

I've been wanting to make a chevron baby quilt for along time. Cross that one off the list!  I'm not sure whether I had more fun making the quilt, or photographing it at my in-laws farm in rural Nebraska.

The quilt is 39" by 50" and is made from 14 different turquoise, gray, and white modern fabrics. I've quilted it on my home machine with straight horizontal stripes that are approximately 1" apart.

The quilt is backed with Lizzy House's Hi-Ho Silver Pearl bracelets fabric, and hand-bound with Stof's chain fabric in dark gray from their Pure collection.

This quilt is available for purchase in my Etsy store. Thanks for visiting!