Fabric Friday Week 10: December 30

I've been using a lot of feminine colors, especially pink, lately. Which is fine; I have all girls, and I love pink. I love all colors, really. Pink is great. But sometimes it's nice to work in a palette that is more neutral. 

For this week's bundle, I focused on this focal print by Ruby Star from the Florida Vol. 2 line. I loved the first Florida line, and made sure to pick up a couple of prints from Volume 2. The colors were fun and out of my normal range, which is always interesting. 

I went simple this week, and tied in colors found directly in the print. So it's a pretty obvious bundle. But it's still appealing and I'd still use it for a quilt. I probably won't because I have plenty of other projects to work on, but it's a color scheme I could totally see myself using. 

Christmas Sewing

I did a lot of Christmas sewing this year! I made Christmas pajamas for the girls (and for me, because, why not?) and I made them all dresses. The pajamas were "from Santa" and the dresses were my gift to them. We let them open them first before church (our church meeting started at 9am this year, so we opted to do Christmas morning after church) so they could wear them to church. I was worried because they don't always love the clothes I make for them, but I ran the pattern and the fabric by my oldest daughter before I ordered them (pattern from Vintage Little Lady, not sure I recommend, and hacci knit fabric from Girl Charlee Fabric, which I highly recommend), and she seemed happy with both, so I went for it. 

I ordered WAY more fabric than I needed, partially because I couldn't figure out how much I actually needed. When you make multiple of one pattern from one fabric, you usually don't need to just add the yardage up, but the pattern didn't even have efficient cutting directions for one dress OR total yardage requirements. Instead, it broke it down by pattern piece and never totaled them up. For instance, 1/2 yard for the bodice, 1/3 yard for the sleeve, etc. It was pretty pathetic. And irritating. So, I just wildly guessed at how much I needed, added a little extra, and then added a little extra on top of that because I bought it on a FANTASTIC black friday sale. Like, it was $3/yard. 

So now I have loads of fabric left and I could make myself a dress if I could figure out a way to hack it to my size. It was a basic pattern, I think I probably could. But I have so many other things on my list I'm not sure how soon I'll get to it. 

Anyway, when they opened them on Christmas morning, they were all absolutely thrilled. Like, beyond thrilled, they just grinned, they all rushed to put them on, and they all told me throughout the day how much they adored them. I felt so pleased! They did turn out pretty cute, and I'm happy with them. They did find a couple of holes of places I missed when I was serging it together, which is understandable because they have pockets, which are always tricky on a serger, and I was just doing so many. Assembly line often leads to slight misses like that for me. But, I'll get them all straightened out soon enough. 

Hope you had a lovely Christmas too, and if you sewed for you family, it was as well received as mine was! 

Fabric Friday Week 9: December 23

Whew, we are so close to Christmas! Are you ready? We are just about ready. I wrapped up my Christmas sewing on Monday, we got most of the gifts wrapped, and I've got a lot of food prepped. Still a few things to do tomorrow, and of course, the excitement is building like crazy for my kids. So we're doing lots of fun things with them. I love this time of year. I love the festive celebrations, and I love the focus on our Savior. 

I DID manage to get a fabric Friday post ready and I can hardly believe it! With all the preparations, I figured two days before Christmas would be another one that got skipped. But, I played around in my sewing room just a bit this week and came up with this bundle.

I really love the coral with the citrine, and the navy and gray just round it out a bit. The one problem with doing these fabric Friday posts is that it inspires me with more possible quilts. Now I want to make something with this, ha! 

I hope you have a very merry Christmas if you celebrate, and enjoy a happy, healthy, and safe holiday season.

Home For the Holidays

 I finished one Christmas quilt this year. I had pulled a stack of fabrics last year when I was considering making a simple Christmas quilt to welcome a new neighbor to the street (I ended up making an embroidered throw pillow instead), and decided to use it to try out the Hurty ruler I bought at Quilt Con. I have tried to make half-rectangle triangles in the past, and it's hard. I hadn't seen HRT rulers before, and clearly they exist, but this was the first one I had seen and bought it along with the clammy rulers I chose. I was pretty nervous to use it, since unlike HSTs, you have to make sure they're angled the right way...so it took some courage to start, and that's one reason I wanted to use this stack of fabrics. They were fabrics I loved, but wouldn't feel bad if I used them on a project that didn't work. 

The assembly went pretty well and it didn't take long to get a stack of blocks ready. When I laid it out, I thought it would end up bigger than it did, but it is really only throw size. Which is fine, but, as you've probably noticed, I like big quilts. :)

I played around with layout a bit, and tried to add a couple of focal points by alternating the brights and low volumes. It's fun to experiment sometimes. Even if it's not super successful. This one I think works but isn't Ah-Mazing. 

When I got it back from the quilter, I decided pretty quickly to bind it with some of the white snowflake print I'd used. I had (and still have) plenty and it's a great print. It's backed with minky, of course. Naming it was tricky, it's always something I struggle with. I settled on Home for the Holidays because it felt right. I'm not sure why. Sometimes you just have to pick something, haha. 

Home For the Holidays, quilted by Abby Latimer, completed November 2022

Snowflake Quilt

 One last flashback Christmas quilt to squeeze in before Christmas. I also made this one last year, it was a big year for Christmas quilts, haha. (I also bought and had quilted one of those Lella Boutique Christmas panels that everyone has...I won't blog about that though because I didn't do anything except bind it, lol). 

I loved this snowflake quilt when I saw it social media, and bought the pattern and fabric on black friday sales. The pattern is by Modern Handcraft and I love it. It has 3 variations, so it's like 3 for the price of 1. You could do a scrappy background, a striped background, or a solid. I loved her black background in one of her quilts and decided to use a metallic black Essex linen. I love it! I had to copy her straight-line quilting as well...shrug.

It's not as cuddly soft as my others because I backed it with essex linen as well. But I love it anyway.

Snowflake Quilt, pattern by Modern Handcraft, long arm quilted by Abby Latimer, completed 2021

Fabric Friday Week 8: December 16

Well, I've already missed a week, and I'm only 8 weeks in. I knew I'd miss some here and there, and I'm just going to give myself grace. Because this is supposed to be fun! And it's Christmas. Of course I'd miss a week during December, December is slammed.

This bundle is one I'm planning for a gift. A few weeks back, I had stopped at my quilter's on the way to my mom's to pick up some quilts. I was excited to see them, so I took them in the house and spread them out and admired her work. My mom, who I taught to quilt, commented on the large one (which hasn't been bound yet...) and told me if I was ever bored, I could make her a bed quilt.

I laughed and reminded her I had taught her to quilt and she could make her own, and she said she doesn't like to make big quilts like that, which I can understand. So, I thought I'd do it for her birthday! It's coming up in mid-February, so I gotta get a move on! 

I'm planning to make a Swoon quilt for her, the large blocks, and I'm adding a row to make sure it's actually bed sized for her. She loves blue and I thought this gradient from blue to green would be a nice change from her typical blue and yellow color scheme. Hopefully she likes it! I think it'll turn out great so if she doesn't, I'll offer to take it back, haha.

Pine Hollow Quilt

I've been busy with so many things and plenty of sewing, but finishing quilts has not been one of them. And neither has taking pictures of what I've been working on. 

But, it's December, so it's a great time to post this flashback quilt! I made this just last year, which means it's one that fell through the cracks between when I stopped posting on Instagram and started blogging again. 

As I was saying...I made this last year. The pattern is called Pine Hollow by Amy Smart. I had seen some of these quilts around social media and thought they were fun! So many different color schemes, I especially liked one that had been done in Alison Glass Christmas fabric. I can't remember who made it, maybe Angela Pingel? I can't remember. It was so fun. I wasn't ready to embrace butterscotch and pink and aqua in my Christmas quilts at the time (stay tuned, lol) but I thought it was just too fun to not make. And, I had made a bunch of the improv trees for my memorial quilt from Amy Smart's tutorial and thought it was fun, so figured it would be a great project.

 I used some favorite prints from years ago and some newer prints and I think it's a great blend. I do regret using the low volume Sweetwater Noel print, because everything else is just so saturated, but that's okay. What's a quilt without at least one regret, right? 

I backed it with minky and my kids just love it. It's pulling ahead with an early lead for being fought over come Christmas Eve...we'll see who the lucky kid is who sleeps with it! 

Slopes Scrap Quilt

I've been pretty into Amanda Jean Nyberg lately, I have her book, No Scrap Left Behind, as well as the one she co-authored, Sunday Morning Quilts. I love them both. And this is a quilt from No Scrap Left Behind that I just had to make. She calls it Slopes for how the blocks are angled gently to give it a sloping appearance, almost like mountains. 

I don't think mine turned out nearly as effective as hers did. She used exclusively cool colors, and it's a lot more unified. And I think some of my blocks didn't get the angled cuts quite right, like not angled enough maybe, so the gentle sloping action isn't as pronounced in all the rows. But, it was one of my first attempts at an improv scrappy project and I struggle with fabric waste. By which I mean that I am loathe to use the perfect color if I will have to cut off an unusable scrap to make it work. So, I tried to use strings that were pretty close to the right size (or twice the size so I could use it twice...) and that meant I needed to use a greater variety of scraps because I just didn't have enough cool colors to make it work.

Also, I really try to put my own color scheme onto a quilt pattern. I don't want to copy it exactly, because I want it to be mine. But sometimes, that means it doesn't quite work out. It's okay.

Since it's not really perfect, I"m glad I didn't put any effort into making it much larger. It's a respectable throw size, but not as oversized as I usually go for. 

I still really like the pattern, and my box of solids is still overflowing, so maybe I'll try again? Who knows. 

For the back, I opted to collect all my flannel scraps from previous backings and piece them together into a scrappy backing. I was just a tad short, so I bought 1/3 yard of flannel to finish it off. 

Slopes quilt, designed by Amanda Jean Nyberg, quilted by Abby Latimer, completed 2021

Fabric Friday Week 7: December 2

I have a messy stack I threw together for you, the picture is just terrible! That's mostly because I pulled it out and intended to come back to it, but didn't...so sorry. 

I pulled out the Rifle paper stamp fabric and wanted to figure out a good stack for it. It has so many great colors in it, I knew I had to have it when it was first released, but it's not one I've gravitated toward using. This stack is fun, though. It's got some dark colors with the navies and greens and butterscotches, and some lights with the peach and pale blue, and just a bit of brightness with the pink. It seems happy and balanced. I also really like that I was able to use the navy with peach line drawing. It's such a fun print but one that I've been stumped on. However, I think I will actually use it in a quilt that I haven't finalized my fabric pull for yet, a quilt for my mom's birthday. I'll post that fabric pull later, maybe next week if I can get my act together!