Newfoundland Pouch

I'm currently on a hiatus from sewing quilt tops (but I have a feeling that may end soon) while I concentrate on finishing some quilts on the longarm, but apparently I still have the desire to sew. After finishing Superbloom, that desire was not quenched, and I found myself looking for a new project from Sew Sweetness. I decided on the Newfoundland Pouch.

I have a lot of beautiful yardage fabric that I picked up intending to make into quilts, but then I end up not able to use them, preferring kits or bundles, and they end up languishing on my shelf. Now, I'm trying to be less precious about them, and just use them to make something because they deserve more than just sitting unloved (and forgotten) in my stash.

One feature I really like about this pouch is the accordion divider in the middle, which instantly makes it the most practical (and the most difficult) of the pouches I've made.

I rarely make pouches without a purpose in my mind for them, and for this one, with all the dividers, I think it would make a great travel organizer, perhaps for all my device cables / chargers.

The Newfoundland Pouch came out pretty well but the process was a bit hairy at times. But it's completely worth it!

Stellar

Stellar by Ruby Star Society is a fabric bundle I discovered completely by accident, and given my fascination with star-themed fabrics, I immediately got some. My only regret is I didn't get more of it. Alas, I think this quilt is a good home for it, as it allows the fabric to show off beautifully.

The pattern used is Octo by Brigitte Heitland (aka Zen Chic). It is a foundation paper-piecing pattern, so this quilt took a long time, but I really loved working on it because of the beautiful fabrics, and I do love paper-piecing too.

The more designs I use on a quilt, the more it becomes whimsical, and the fewer designs, the more it veers toward elegance, or I tend to find. For this quilt, I'm going for elegance, and I just used straight lines for the main pattern, with dense swirls at the borders.

As a rule, I don't quilt a lot over foreground fabrics, and I usually stick with straight lines or sparse geometric designs. I can't stand leaving them completely unquilted and having them puff out, so this is a good compromise. This quilt is no exception.

I'm really happy with this quilt. The fabrics are gorgeous and shiny, and the texture is lovely. Straight lines always look so good. When I was a newbie quilter I stayed away from straight lines thinking they were easy and boring, but boy was I wrong. They're not easy, and they're definitely not boring!

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.

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!

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.

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!

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!