Solar Eclipse quilt

One of my favorite types of quilt designs are patterns that create secondary designs. I love how the blocks work together to create a pattern and visual interest. It's something I like to incorporate into my own designs, even though it can be trickier. I think that's half the fun. 

When I saw this quilt pattern in a book by Vanessa Goertzen of Lella Boutique, I really wanted to make it. The secondary pattern is fun and the dark background was really striking. Of course I had to mimic her quilt. I didn't want to completely copy her color scheme and so instead of an aqua print for the squares, I used a gray solid, and I omitted green. It's possibly more similar to the original than I usually like to go for, but that's alright. I think it turned out beautifully. 

I did have to make a couple of adjustments; I didn't have any charm packs and didn't intend to buy any for this project, so I needed to figure out the cutting from yardage. It's been too long; I might also have taken the opportunity to do some more efficient piecing, like flying geese four at a time, and multiple HSTs at a time. I like to do that when I can, it makes it go so much faster. And of course I backed it with minky. I opted for silver, and then bound it with the same blue as the background to give it a bindingless feel. 

Solar Eclipse, designed by Vanessa Goertzen, quilted by Abby Latimer, completed 2021

Fabric Friday Week 6: Nov 25

 I hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving if you're in the US! Ours was great; I feel like we've got our menu down pretty well, especially the pies, which of course is the most important part. I make three: French Silk Chocolate, Pumpkin Praline, and Tart Tatin, a French caramel apple tart. All recipes from America's Test Kitchen, so you know they're perfection ;)

Today's Fabric Friday bundle ended up pretty similar to one a few weeks ago, I guess the colors are speaking to me right now. But, they originated from a different space, so I'm going for it. I picked out the Tula Pink hexagon print because I struggle to use Tula sometimes, and tried to make a bundle that would use it. Sometimes her color combinations are just a bit strong for me. I bought this one because I loved the brightness and it wasn't as jarring as some of her prints are, but I still haven't managed to use it yet. I like what I pulled out though and think it works really well!

Have a great weekend!

Christmas Banner

 I finished up my Christmas banner I mentioned last week just the other day and I love how it turned out! It was pretty quick, and I guess I was just nervous because of placing the embroidery, and then trimming them after to a uniform size...and not really knowing how long to make the binding...I do much better with patterns with measurements, haha. Flying by the seat of my pants is not my specialty!

But, it turned out great and I didn't need to trim too much. I did end up redoing a few as I mentioned, and instead of wasting the squares, I used them as backings for the blocks. This may not have been the best choice...I hang my banners in my stairwell in front of windows, and so during the day, especially the afternoon with the strong western sun coming in, you can see the outline of the embroidery. At the very least, I should have matched up the replaced blocks to their replacements so it would be less obvious...but it's okay. The color doesn't show through, just the outline of the letter, and its mostly not too noticeable. I was glad to not waste fabric. 

I used a gray stripe from Camille Roskelley's Christmas line and I think it turned out really great.

Now if only the rest of my Christmas projects can go as quickly and as smoothly as this one...

*fingers crossed*

Fabric Friday Week 5: November 18

 Today I'm skipping the bundle and instead showcasing a color scheme of Kona color chips. I have a Kona color card that I cut up and added velcro too, and keep it on my wall on a large canvas. I love it, it's a great piece of decor for a sewing room in my opinion, and it keeps the chips ready to use. 

I saw something that reminded me how much I love navy and lime green. So I pulled some for that. I thought the purple was a fun accent.

And then I pulled some that felt like fall to me. The same purple works great here.

And then I realized that they're a great color combo together.

So which do I like more? I couldn't possibly pick, so I'm posting all three, haha. It's so vibrant and I feel like this is exactly what I need right now.

Christmas Sewing

The craziness that is Christmas sewing has commenced. And it snuck up really fast. I planned last year to make Christmas pajamas for my girls because they're just so tall and it's disheartening to hear the cries and complaints on Christmas Eve that the pajamas that Santa delivered don't fit. I've tried numerous solutions over the past few years, and this is the final attempt. If this doesn't go over well...I'll probably ditch the Christmas pajamas altogether. As it is, I've been planning on making them all year, and I bought fabric over a month ago, but wanted to finish a few things before I pulled it out and got started. Now's the time!

In addition, I've been wanting to make a Christmas banner and decided that would be the project I work on when I'm visible, since the pajamas need to be a surprise. So that's what I started this week and here's the progress! 

I decided I needed to remake the aqua and cream letters, which made me sad, but I'm glad I just redid them instead of regretting later that I hadn't.

I'm using a linen from fabric-store.com and some fun Christmas prints. The black and red are by Lella Boutique and the green is by Sweetwater. The embroidery design is by meringuedesigns.net. Looking at it again, I might do two more redos, and make the I red and the s on the end black. Sigh...

As if that wasn't enough, I also decided to make another Christmas quilt. I blogged about the fabric here, and I decided to make another Shimmer quilt (pattern by Cluck Cluck Sew)

And, this probably won't get done, but I bought the panel by Sweetwater for a new advent calendar. It was too cute to pass up, what can I say?

Finally, my girls all said they wanted me to make them Christmas dresses this year. *sigh* Christmas does fall on a Sunday this year, so it's actually a good year to do it...but man, I'm feeling overwhelmed right now. However, I found a knit pattern on Vintage Little Lady, and a black and white polka dot hacci knit on Girl Charlee, so I might just cave in. I couldn't think of anything to make them this year as a gift anyway, so maybe this is a good idea. We'll see...

All the sudden I'm pretty overwhelmed by Christmas sewing. At least, the banner, quilt, and advent calendar are all things that can be ditched. But the clothes for the girls need to happen when they're not around, which is trickier, especially since my oldest likes to stay up late and often finds herself in my sewing room while I'm sewing. 

Fabric Friday Week 4: November 11

I have a few prints that I really love but that I just can't seem to use. Maybe can't is too strong. I'm befuddled by them. So, I decided to pull one out that I recently purchased to see if I could pull something together. I feel like it's a pretty basic bundle, but that's okay. I really like it, and it doesn't feel basic, because it uses bold colors.

The print I used was this great Ruby Star metallic floral. I think the size of the blossoms and the color just make it a bit difficult for me. It's a beautiful color and print, which is why I bought it, but I don't typically use this vibrant magenta. And it's pretty new to my collection, so maybe it's not right or fair to say it's a tough one for me, I bought it at Quiltcon, I think...which was in February. 

I really like the balance of warm and cool in this bundle, I think it's just a pretty effective group and now I'm trying to think if I have more I could pull in for a more complete quilt project, I'm not sure this is quite enough, haha.

Florentine Sunset

 I loved Quiltcon earlier this year. It was such a fun, but exhausting day. So inspiring. The quilts were just amazing, and I loved browsing the vendors area. It was so large! I was hoping I would be able to get a Clammy ruler, and I was happy that I could. Sewtopia had them for sale and I bought two sizes, plus a Hurty ruler. I can't remember where I had seen a clammy ruler quilt, but I knew I really wanted one, and that Latifah Saafir, the designer behind the clammy ruler, was a MQG darling. 

I bought a bunch of other things too...it was fun. I did try to restrain myself, but it was just all so inspiring! 

I came home and was promptly very intimidated by the Clammys AND the Hurty. So I "brainstormed" color schemes and designs so I could avoid them for a bit. I really wanted to try them, but I was so intimidated!

I finally got the courage after coming up with a fun color scheme (and testing out the sewing method with some scraps) and I went for it! I was inspired by this watercolor that inspired my mini quilt I blogged about here. I referenced this quilt in that post too, but I hadn't started yet. I couldn't decide if I liked the more visual bridge idea that I used in the mini, or this clamshell color scheme better. So I just made both.

Unfortunately, these pieces are a bit off a fabric hog and so I really went through a lot of fabric. It doesn't create useful scraps either, with the shape...and the pieces are so large that some fabrics I wanted to use weren't large enough. Everything was from my stash, I don't think I bought anything specifically for this quilt...pretty sure. That's my favorite way of quilting--I keep a large stash and then sew from it instead of purchasing fabric by the project. I feel like it gives my projects a uniquely me look.

The assembly was tricky, and I bet it was a bit wonky for my quilter. She is a good sport and doesn't complain. Hopefully most of my work is flat and straight enough that once in a while she's willing to tolerate it, haha. About half way through, I realized I really should have starched my fabric. But I never starch, so it didn't occur to me before it was too late. 

We backed it with a mustard yellow minky. I love the ombre effect this quilt has as they blend together and I'm proud of myself for making something hard! Maybe I'll even make another clammy quilt sometime. With starch, though. 

Fabric Friday Week 3: November 4

I inadvertently fell in love with a fabric that is completely not my style, but I didn't even care, because it's so darling. Art Gallery Fabric put out this vintage Christmas print in one of their lines and it was so cute. At first, I bought just a remnant for a steal at the Garden of Quilts. Then, I decided I needed a bit more, and a couple other focal prints in the same style. And Ruby Start had some pretty cute vintage-y prints that I thought would work...and then all of a sudden, I had a bundle of fabric for yet another Christmas quilt. 

The only problem is that it isn't my style.

But I'm not sure I care? 

I really don't go for vintage stuff, normally. And this print that caught my eye, that I had to have, it has flocked trees. In white AND pink. Guys, don't hate me, but I think flocked trees are so extraordinarily tacky. Like, so bad. I remember seeing my in-laws' Christmas tree for the first time the first year after we married, and it was flocked. I guess if you live in sunny southern California, you need the flocking so you can feel festive? I don't know. They thought it was so pretty and I just thought it looked weird. Fake. Snow. Why? But, I do love green. So I'm probably biased toward more natural looking trees...

ANYWAY, I don't do vintage. Or Santa, really...I don't think I had any Santa prints before this one. So I guess we'll see. And maybe it'll be my girls' favorite and they'll fight over it every year...who knows. 

Years ago, I decided I wanted to have enough Christmas quilts that when the girls are all big and move out, they can take a memorable Christmas quilt with them. Which meant I needed at least four. And then we started a fun tradition, and they all get to sleep with one on Christmas Eve. JUST Christmas Eve. They love it, and spend the whole month of December trying to decide which one they want to pick. I have way more than four now, which is good, so no one is stuck with the one no one wanted, but apparently, I can't help myself because I want to make yet another Christmas quilt to show off these cute prints.

Right now, I'm thinking a Meadowland quilt. The centers are nice and large and would show off the prints well. And this stack of fabric is what I'm currently thinking. We'll see. The row on the left would be the fussy cut centers.

Following the Leader

I love using leaders and enders. I see so many benefits, and very few drawbacks. It "saves" thread (although, does it? *shrug*), it DOES help fabric not get sucked down into the stitch plate, especially when you're sewing triangles, and it's like getting a bonus project without a lot of extra work. Additionally, with the way I use leaders and enders, I get to use up scraps. It's pretty much my main scrap quilting method. I should maybe sew more scrappy quilts, but...not right now. 

Some drawbacks I can see are that I tend to feel guilty if I DON'T use an ender for some reason, and it does rather clutter up my sewing desk, because I keep my pieces all ready to go behind my machine. 

Nevertheless, I find leaders and enders exciting, even though I've been making them for many years at this point. I love when I get close to finishing and seeing what I've worked so long on come together. I love how interesting scrappy quilts are to look at. And I get excited to start a new one. The excitement has not worn off yet, haha. 

This is my fourth completed leaders and enders and this one is entirely from scraps. My others have been *mostly* scraps, but this one is completely scraps, which makes me pretty proud. I opted to use this one for another picnic blanket, so I backed it with some denim. 

I was inspired for this one by this quilt by Crazy Mom Quilts. And interestingly, she was inspired by a vintage quilt, so apparently, it's an inspiring design. She provided a tutorial, but I did not follow it. I did use the final block size, and these are TINY. But, I love that I got to use up a lot of smallish scraps, and it also gave me a good opportunity to weed out a lot of scraps that are tinier and I really should let go of. These pieces are all 1x3 finished, so they started out at 1-1/2" by 3-1/2". In my opinion, 1-1/2" is pretty small, so if something was narrower than that and not a good length, I tried to let them go. I still have pieces way to small in there, and maybe someday I'll use them to create some fabric slabs or something. We'll see. 

Anyway, another departure from her tutorial is that I chose to make them into 9 patches instead of piecing long rows. This made more sense to me, and I think it made handling a little easier. Pressing wasn't always perfect, but that's okay. I also made it a lot larger than hers. By the end, I was pretty tired of piecing little rail fences, but I think it was worth it. It's a great size for a picnic blanket. 

I did try to follow her color scheme, which was brights on the outside and low volume on the inside, and I treated this like a kitchen sink quilt--any color was okay. For the most part, I think that aspect was okay. I regret using the black solids, and the ones that are more mid-toned that don't read well enough as a light or a dark. I feel like there are far more of those than there should be and it disrupts the design that the rail fence should produce. But that's okay. I did manage to use a lot of scraps that I knew I could use somehow, these border pieces from doll panels. I used more than I think I should have, but they were the perfect width and the colors are perfect. These are just three of the different borders I used (the two horseshoe colors and the aqua arch/rainbow. The lavender strip and the red with pink and white arches strip in the photo above are also border pieces from panels; there are a lot in this quilt!).

Of course, Halloween costumes got in the way of binding it and now it's too cold to actually use it, so we'll have to wait until next summer. *sigh*

Oh, and I did the math. There are 1,728 individual scraps in this quilt. Whew! No wonder it took YEARS. It's a 72" square quilt. 

Following the Leader, quilted by Abby Latimer, completed Oct 2022