Cascade

Cascade by Initial K Studio was one of the first quilts to catch my attention. I first saw it several years ago and it was one of the first modern quilts I saw that attracted me to quilting. Then I forgot about it as quilt after quilt inundated my mind. But several months ago I remembered it and decided it was time!

I was initially tempted to buy Cascade as a kit because it was hard to see it in any other colors. But then I found this magnificent jelly roll in my stash: Grunge by Moda. When I unwrapped it, I almost thought I had to bag the project. I was hoping to get a gradient across with one strip of each color, but instead I found that the jelly roll came with 20 colors of 2 strips each. But you know how a jelly roll is, once you unwrap it, you can't quite get it back. That motivated me to find a way to use it by arranging the colors in a gradient by intersplicing each color.

This is probably the simplest quilting I've ever done, with just some straight lines and a few simple linear designs peeking out. I didn't think it really needed more than that.

I took a shot of the quilt vertically, and I think it looks kind of interesting!

This simple and modern quilt reminds me of why I got into quilting in the first place. And although I usually like to pile on the drama, sticking with the simple quilting was the right choice in this case. I'm glad I finally made this quilt that helped send me on this crazy, wonderful rabbit hole of quilting!

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Linking up with: Crazy Mom Quilts, My Quilt Infatuation, Busy Hands Quilts, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Cooking Up Quilts, Sew Can She, and Powered by Quilting.

Skyline ~ A Sampler Quilt in Progress

I grew up in Shanghai, (now) the most populous city in the world, so I've always been a city girl at heart. Even though I live in the suburbs right now, my heart always beats a little faster whenever I see pictures of a skyline. It's been on my mind to make a skyline quilt, but I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do until I saw pictures of the Art Gallery Fabrics booth at QuiltCon 2017. AGF built a cardboard backdrop inspired by the Miami skyline, and when I saw it, I knew then that I wanted to do something like that in quilt form.

I wanted to make my quilt in the style of a sampler quilt, with each building being built with different types of blocks. I'm not into anything too complicated, so all of the buildings are made of basic blocks.

First I designed a rough version in EQ7:

Using EQ7 helps me visualize proportions and also play with color a bit, so that I have a general idea of how my color scheme will work out.

Well, I think my finished buildings look pretty close to the version I envisioned:

I can tell already that this quilt will be a blast to quilt!

Modern Plus Sign Quilts Blog Hop: Postage Plus

Today is day 4 of the Modern Plus Sign blog hop, and I'm super excited to show off the Postage Plus quilt from Cheryl Brickey and Paige Alexander's fabulous new book, Modern Plus Sign Quilts!

Image credit: C & T Publishing

How much do I love this book? A lot. I even bought my own physical copy, because I just love to sit on my favorite chair and flip through the beautiful book, enjoying the writing and styling, and dreaming of the quilts I'll make in the future. The Plus Sign is a very traditional block, but it has been interpreted in a completely new way in this book. There are so many different variations, as well as different techniques, that there is really something for everyone!

When I was deciding which quilt to make for the hop, I was immediately attracted to Postage Plus for one simple reason: I had envisioned the perfect color palette. I knew I wanted something that was dark hot pink and hot pink offset against a white / gray scrappy center, so that's exactly what I ended up doing.

I used cerise and berry for the background, which are such great colors. For the center plus sign, I pulled together some white and gray fabrics from my stash.

One reason I was so excited to use the berry and cerise color is because I wanted to use hot pink thread to quilt this. I created a wavy design that flows behind the plus.

I've been needing a hot pink quilt in my house, and now I have one! It was so much fun and so easy to make.

Modern Plus Sign has many other fabulous quilts, and they'll all be featured throughout the blog hop. You can get an autographed copy from Cheryl, Paige, or you can get a non autographed copy from Amazon.

Thanks for stopping by, and be sure to check out the other stops on today's blog hop:

Linda @ Flourishing Palms
Bernie @ Needle & Foot
Michelle @ From Bolt to Beauty
Patty @ Elm Street Quilts
Stacey @ Stacey in Stitches
Melanie @ A Bit of Scrap Stuff Blog

Here is the full schedule. There are lots of beautiful quilts (and non-quilts) so be sure to follow along, see them all, and win some prizes! I am always amazed to see people come up with their own variations of the quilts, so this blog hop has been a blast to follow along!

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Linking up with: Crazy Mom Quilts, My Quilt Infatuation, Busy Hands Quilts, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Cooking Up Quilts, Sew Can She, and Powered by Quilting.

Urban Cabin

It doesn't look like I'm going to be sick of making log cabin inspired quilts anytime soon, especially not with beautiful and easy patterns like Brigitte Heitland's Zen Cabin!

For my fabric choice, I'm using what I considered a very lucky find. Urban Artifacts by Leslie Tucker Jenison for RJR Fabrics is one of those collections that really captured me when I saw it. It certainly wasn't one I had heard of or was anticipating the launch of, and in fact I saw it by chance while looking for something else. But ... I'm so glad I did, because this is probably one of my top 3 favorite collections of 2017!

I actually started this project the day before National Sew a Jelly Roll Day (9/16) but, of course, it takes me months from piecing to completion. I can't help that I like to have many projects going at once. I actually found this a bit difficult to piece because the jelly roll strips were cut a bit under 2.5" (one of the major pitfalls of precuts!) and I didn't necessarily compensate well. It resulted in a not-quite-flat quilt but luckily, that problem pretty much quilted out!

Between the graffiti inspired prints and the dark gray background, the quilt really has a harder edge to it. And what could soften that more than a wild wraparound feather? I've never done feathers quite like this before, but it's easily my favorite part of the quilt. To add further interest, I used the jagged tiles design to fill in the rest of the space. These are some of my favorite designs because there's zero marking and they look a lot harder than they actually are.

In the foreground space, I used a variety of linear designs. Some of the fabric is pretty busy and it doesn't show the quilting at all, so it doesn't really matter what I do as long as it's filled in. I think there's about 5 or 6 linear designs that I like to use so they pretty much show up everywhere.

Since I used a solid back, the quilting shows up well there! And phew, my tension was alright.

I really love this quilt, because it is just so me in every single way!

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Linking up with: Crazy Mom Quilts, My Quilt Infatuation, Busy Hands Quilts, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Cooking Up Quilts, Sew Can She, and Powered by Quilting.

Tangerine Dreams ~ Ready to Quilt

When I caught my first glance of Kona's color of the year, Tiger Lily, I was ecstatic. Orange is unquestionably one of my absolute favorite colors, and the reddish-orange of Tiger Lily hits all the right notes with me.

I knew I was long overdue for an orange and gray quilt! I rarely make quilts in all solids, but it seemed like a good idea for this quilt. While hunting for patterns, I realized I wanted to make another quilt from my Haphazard pattern.

After a lot of clicks and iterations, I finally decided on a layout that spoke to me the most.

The quilt top got completed pretty quickly since it was all half-square triangles, which is one block I can say I mastered. (It's because I can trim it to size ...)

In all honesty, because it's all solids, this quilt top really lacks life at this moment. But that's what the quilting is going to do ... give it life! The last time I quilted this quilt, I was happy with my quilting decision, but I'll probably do something a little different this time. Probably.