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.

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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!

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.

Yoyogi Park Squared

I came across the fabric bundle Yoyogi Park by Skinny Laminx a few years ago and was immediately enchanted by how adorable it was. I had already made one quilt, Yoyogi Park from it, but still had quite a bit left over. When I saw the pattern Plus Squared by Quilty Love, I knew it was just perfect for it.

This was a very easy and pleasant piecing job, as all of Quilty Love's patterns tend to be. I had a good and relaxing time during the piecing process while enjoying the adorable fabric.

When it came to quilting it, I was excited by all the negative spaces which were perfect canvases for some fun motifs. I knew just what I wanted to use though: a square spiral design, which is always mesmerizing to look at.

I did a very simple dot-to-dot quilting for the blocks, as that was all they needed.

I'm really happy with this quilt, rather more than the original Yoyogi Park which was made 6 years ago. It's hard to believe it's been so long!

Peaks

I rate every quilt top I piece from 1 to 5, where 1 = What was I thinking, and 5 = OMG I'll keep it forever. Well, very few quilts ever become a 5, and even if they do, I very rarely finish them because I find it tough to finish my favorites! But I decided to pull out a 5 for my first quilt of the year, and Peaks is it.

In fact, Peaks is not only a 5-star quilt for me, but it's also one of my absolute favorites that I've ever made. It's a combination of the pattern, the fabric (both designed by Natalie Barnes) and of course, some wonderful memories I have attached to the piecing of this quilt that makes it such a special quilt to me.

I bought the kit for this quilt on a whim because I loved it so much, but I didn't make it for awhile because I was intimidated by its seeming complexity. I then ran into Natalie at a quilt show, and after chatting with her, she assured me I could do it. And after I got home, I did! It turned out a lot easier than I expected, and the whole piecing experience was so fun too.

After I got Peaks on the frames, I stared at it for a long time, unsure of what to do. I haven't experienced drawing a complete blank on what to quilt for a very long time, but I think the stakes for this quilt is oh-so-high because I love it oh-so-much.

I ended up deciding that each type of block will get a certain quilting design, and there are only a few different types of blocks: small squares, medium squares, large squares, and spike blocks, and I picked a different design for each type of block.

I had no idea what the final quilt will look like when I started it, but trusted that if I just applied this quilting design consistently across the quilt, it will turn out alright. And it did turn out beautiful! I absolutely love it.

I'm so happy I finished this quilt, and I'll call it now, this is probably already my favorite finish of the year. It's hard to imagine topping it!

Harpa ~ A Knitting Finish, Finally

I haven't posted about knitting in a few years, despite my initial intention to make this blog about all my creative pursuits, but it's mostly because I haven't done much knitting for a few years. However, lately I've finally started knitting again, and I'm finding one of my favorite ways to relax is actually putting on a record and knitting. (Yes, record. I had no idea that vinyls are hot amongst millennials right now until recently, I guess I'm just following a trend I wasn't aware of.)

Nowadays, I mostly knit scarves exclusively because I don't have to worry about the size so much. Harpa by Cirilia Rose is a project I started more than 3 and a half years ago, though I finished about 80% of it in the last 6 months. It was a looong project because I could only do a few rows at a time.

I really started to get excited about this project once the pattern started coming out, but I was still filled with a lot of doubts and concerns as I went on, several times being tempted to give up. But I'm glad I didn't, because I love the end result! Like quilting, most of the concerns we have while working on a project disappear when it's done.

This scarf is probably my warmest ever, because it has 4 layers of fabric! I suppose it's a good thing there are a few more weeks of winter left here in Chicagoland, so I might have a chance to use it.

Zen Garden

When I started quilting a few years ago, I quickly decided that Brigitte Heitland of Zen Chic was my favorite fabric designer. I went on a mad hunt to try to get fabric from each of her collections, including the out-of-print ones from the days before I knew what a quilt even was.

And I succeeded ... I got a little bit of everything. One of those collections that I snagged was Juggling Summer, which is probably one of her earliest collections. However, after I got it, I realized that I had no clue what to do with it. I wasn't even sure I liked it, but it caused a great amount of stash guilt. I had to do something with it.

One day while randomly browsing, I found a quilt pattern that used Juggling Summer in a way that I actually liked! It was a pattern called Zen Garden by Color Girl Quilts. This quilt was super easy to piece, and I liked how despite the chaotic color arrangement, the zigzags that weave through the quilt bring a sense of ... structure.

Since the fabric is so busy, I kept the quilting super simple for this quilt, with just a few alternating geometric designs and straight lines.

Zen Garden is my 7th and final finish of the year, and it was a very fun, easy, and relaxing quilt to make. It helped relieve some stash guilt, and also served a reminder to me that simple quilting can be effective too!

Ikat

Ikat is a pattern by Brigitte Heitland featuring fabric from her Fragile collection, one of my favorite fabric collections ever. I've made so many quilts with it, including Fragile, Paradox, and Critical Sunshine, and that's just the ones I've finished quilting! What can I say, I'm a sucker for black and gold.

Ikat was one of those quilts that I really wanted to have, but not necessarily to make. Piecing this quilt was a royal pain, due to the jelly rolls. But once I was done with it, I really loved the quilt top, and I knew it'd be as fun to quilt as it was a pain to piece.

Since the fabric is quite busy, I kept the quilting very simple in most of the blocks with just dot-to-dot quilting.

I decided to quilt all the white based blocks differently with some swirls. However, this was a real challenge on some of those blocks because I couldn't really see what I was doing.

I absolutely love, love, love this quilt! However, I'm done with jelly rolls. Once I get through my current stash (which will admittedly take awhile) I will probably never buy any more ... at least not from Moda. The pretty jelly roll packages are such a siren song, so I hope I can resist in the future! May this blog post serve a reminder to me, though ...