Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Camden Road

Four years ago, shortly before the pandemic upended all our lives (has it really been four years since it all started?), I participated in the Camden Road Quilt Along that was organized by Cheryl Brickey of Meadow Mist Designs. Cheryl also designed this lovely pattern, and I had a good time piecing this quilt, after a good bit of angst with fabric selection.

And now it's finally time to quilt it. I'm always a bit surprised when I pull out a quilt top I haven't seen for a few years, because in my head it usually looks a little different. For this top, I was surprised how much the darker gray and the lighter gray contrasted, which was fun to piece, but presented a conundrum during quilting time.

And that of course is ... what color thread to I use? I definitely do not want to switch threads through this quilt, that's for sure. Well, from previous experience, the answer has to be a light gray thread. For some reason, lighter color threads look much better on darker fabric than the other way around.

These block-based quilts are my favorite to quilt because they're kind of mindless, zen-like experiences when I work on them. I really get to shut out the world, and even shut off my brain, and just get into a flow state.

For the quilting design, I alternated a tried and true swirly mix and a geometric design for the open spaces, and a dot-to-dot geometric design for the blocks.

And after 4 years, it's finished! I'm really happy with the end result, and the whole experience was just beautifully relaxing. I can't say that for every quilt, but it's definitely true for this one.

Sunday, February 25, 2024

Superbloom

Last year, I started seriously getting into fan conventions, and I've attended a few and always had such a great time, but I quickly realized I wanted to make a new bag as my con bag. I wanted something that can hold my photo ops and souvenirs, and have outside pockets to quickly access event tickets and badges and the such.

With that goal in mind, I started scoping bag patterns, and quickly decided on Superbloom by Sara Lawson of Sew Sweetness. It fulfilled my needs and also, there was a video workshop to follow along with. I simply cannot make bags without a video workshop, but Sara is my favorite teacher in this regard, and by following her video workshops, I've done things I did not think was possible.

My favorite feature of this bag is actually the rainbow zipper tape and the feather-shaped zipper pulls! I finally learned to use zippers by the yard, and I'm now totally addicted.

With each bag I make, I feel like I level up a bit. Superbloom has a recessed zipper which I've never done before, and I really like how practical it is.

There were challenging moments and choice words used during the final assembly process (as there usually was) and I had to make everything fit together which didn't seem like they went together, but when I saw the end result, it was worth it, and I now can't wait to go to my next convention with this beauty! Which will be ... in May. Still so far away!

Wednesday, February 7, 2024

Delicate Beauty

It's no secret that Brigitte Heitland of Zen Chic is my all-time favorite fabric designer, so I had to start the year with a quilt that features both pattern and fabric designed by her: Delicate Beauty featuring Sphere. Sphere is a really old and out-of-print collection, as it was printed before I started quilting, but I managed to hoard some here and there over the last few years.

I especially love this pattern because of all the non-standard shapes. In fact I was quite intimidated by the pattern initially, but it was a lot easier to make than it looked, and I'm very pleased with the end result.

I had a lot of fun quilting this! I knew I wanted to showcase the space inside the triangles with some free-motion designs, but also knew I wanted a lot of straight line echoes.

The fabric strips were quilted with some wishbone designs, which is something that's relatively easy to execute on the diagonal.

I love this quilt, and it was the perfect one to start the year. I don't know how much quilting I will accomplish this year, but given that I have no desire to piece at the moment, hopefully it means I will be able to at least make a small dent in my pile of quilt tops. Hopefully.

Sunday, December 31, 2023

Tokyo Underground

Once upon a time when I was a fairly new quilter, I saw the pattern Tokyo Subway Map by Elizabeth Hartman, and I was immediately attracted to it: scrappy fabrics, and the entire quilt was made of 2.5" squares, so easy to piece. My first Tokyo Subway Map was the largest project I've ever quilted on my no-longer-with-me sitdown longarm, and I was (still am) very happy with it.

That was a long time ago, and I've wanted to make another Tokyo Subway Map for some time, but I didn't want to make it scrappy. Then when I saw a neon collection of solids called Phosphor by Libs Elliott, I suddenly had the idea: make a grittier version of Tokyo Subway Map on a dark gray background, and call it Tokyo Underground.

One thing I wanted to do differently, since I wasn't using scraps this time, was try to minimize the seams on the subway lines. To accomplish this, I had to use partial seams, but it was much easier than I originally thought it would be. I had a really good time piecing this.

I knew how I wanted to quilt this while I was still piecing it. I decided to add some ghost elements in the background, because of course I had to. I don't always manage, but I try to introduce an element of interest into each quilt, and the ghost subway lines are it for this quilt.

And the background space was filled with one of my favorite designs that I rarely get to use because it's usually not right for the quilt, but is perfect for this quilt: steampunk gears! I had written a tutorial earlier on how to quilt gears here.

This was definitely one of the most challenging quilts I've completed recently. The steampunk gears were quite tough to fit in all these little spaces, and there were tons and tons of starts and stops. I had to make a lot of decisions about which section to go to next, which added to a mental tax. Some quilts are easy and relaxing because the quilt path is clearly defined, but that's definitely not the case for this one!

A lot of the time I will go for months just piecing and not machine quilt anything. For the last few months though, I've not felt like piecing at all and just wanted to quilt. (I'm not sure I've experienced this before in my entire quilting life.) I don't know how long this phase will last, but I figured while I'm in this mode, I might as well try to get as many quilt tops done as possible before they start piling up again.

And whew, looks like I finished it in time, this last quilt of the year. Happy New Year to all, and I wish you all a great 2024!

Wednesday, November 1, 2023

Rapid City

After I finished the lovely More Fishes for Cheryl's blog hop, I loaded up the next quilt, and then, my summer vacation started. I had such a nice time with lots of traveling around the country and memories made with my family as well as some solo trips for myself, but after I got back home, it was really hard to get back into the longarm room.

After a hiatus of about 4 months, I finally started machine quilting again. All this time I didn't really know what to do with the quilt, and I kept hoping an idea would come to me. But it didn't. It wasn't until I actually started quilting that I forced myself to come up with something.

Rapid City is designed by Elizabeth Hartman, and the fabric collection I used is leftover from my Cat's Eye quilt, First of Infinity by Kumiko Fujita. This whole quilt had such a graphic and urban vibe that I knew I wanted a very simple design mostly of straight lines. I allowed one curvy design: the ribbon candy, because I just really like the way it looks across long strips.

Elizabeth's designs are always intricate looking and the cutting instructions have brought me to tears at times due to their complexity. But once the dreaded cutting is over, I always have such a good time piecing her quilts. This one was no exception!

I love the texture of the straight lines running across the white fabric, as it always looks and feels scrumptious. For the border I did a simple piano keys design. It's not something I do very often, but for this quilt, it seemed fitting.

Since I love this pattern, and I love the fabric collection, I knew I was going to love the end result as well. And I absolutely do. Hopefully with me breaking through the post-summer slump quilt hiatus, the next one won't take quite so long to finish. In fact, I think I already know what quilt I want to quilt next and exactly how to quilt it. It's another Elizabeth Hartman!

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

More Fishies ~ Just Two Charm Pack Quilts Blog Hop

I've been a lot less active in the quilting community over the last few years, choosing to let quilting become just a hobby for myself, and instead focusing most of my attention and efforts on other endeavors. However, when Cheryl Brickey asked me to participate in a blog hop to promote her latest book, Just Two Charm Pack Quilts, I was excited to do it.

I've made a lot of Cheryl's patterns over the years so I knew it was going to be a good time. Her patterns are always clear, well-written, and the end results are always great.

I fell in love with More Fishies as soon as I saw it because it was so adorable. Even though it was assembled on the bias and I'm not generally a fan of that, I really wanted to make it. The only "new" fabric I used is a single charm pack, True Blue from Zen Chic, and the rest of the fabric is from my scraps. I had a lot of Kona turqoise due to frequently using it as a backing fabric, so that was the perfect background for the ocean for my fishies.

I knew I wanted a wavy design for the background, but I didn't want to do it over the entire background as it would be boring and my machine would hate me. (It really doesn't like this design.) So I sort of gave the fishies their own little swirl bubbles, and filled the rest of the background space with the wavy design.

The fishies themselves asked for minimal quilting, so I did just a simple geometric design to nail the fabric down, but I didn't want to make it too literal by quilting fish features or anything.

The wavy design is one of my favorites, but I had trouble with it for a long time because I just didn't really know what to do. After this quilt though, I can finally say I'm quite comfortable with this design! Unfortunately my machine still doesn't like it, so in the future when I use it I will still have to be judicious about it.

I really love everything about this quilt, from the fabric, to the quilting design, and even the binding was exciting. This one is definitely a keeper.

***

The rest of the quilts in Cheryl's book are gorgeous also, so be sure to check out the other stops on the blog hop!

Wednesday, May 24, 2023

Shimmer

Shimmer is a very old quilt top, so old that I don't know when I made it nor the name of the fabric collection I used. I found the pattern in the book Striped Quilts Made Modern by Lauren Palmer, but I really wanted to use my Hex N More ruler so I did my own version, but the idea is definitely based on the book.

I hadn't seen this quilt top in years, so I was rather surprised when I pulled it out because it was a lot bigger than I thought. The hexagons were also huge compared to how I remembered them! However, I decided to treat this quilt as a sampler of hexagon quilting, and try out a lot of different designs.

I sat down and just kept drawing and drawing until I came up with over 2 dozen designs. However, when I actually started quilting, I found myself making adjustments as some things that sound great on paper just don't work on quilting. I also came up with several spur-of-the-moment designs in the midst of quilting, and I'm pretty happy with how they turned out!

To keep this quilt from taking forever to finish, I mostly picked simpler geometric designs, and occasionally sprinkled in a block where I quilted it a bit more densely.

I really like how this quilt turned out, and it was such a fun exercise to try out all these different designs in solid colors.

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