Blogger's Quilt Festival

Well, I suppose since I've seen so much of it, I'll try to join in.  I'm submitting a quilt that I just finished last week.  I wouldn't say it's my favourite I've ever made, but I didn't make it for me, and I'm still very pleased with it! To check out the blogger's quilt festival, click here!

I was lucky enough to be a pattern tester for Diane from fromblankpages.  She is the one who designed the celestial star quilt that I recently finished.  This pattern is called candy wrappers, and it is a foundation paper piecing pattern.

I am a registered nurse at a small hospital, and the way our schedule works for full timers, we are paired up with a full time LPN.  My amazing partner, who has been nursing in some way or another for 40 years, is retiring this month.  I wanted to make her a quilt that I could finish by the beginning of November, so I decided that this would be the perfect opportunity.  She had seen the pattern (my printer is on the fritz so I had printed it off at work) and commented on how she liked that it looked like there was a cross in the pattern.

She is a woman with a deep faith that has been apparent in every aspect of her life, and has such a servant's heart.  So I decided that I would try to make this with attention to the cross in the middle.

The fabrics are persimmon, modern neutrals, a bit of Lotta Jansdottir, and a few others including some 3 sisters stuff I had in stash.

I did a FMQ design I've done before, maybe something like a peacock feather? I was thinking of quilting in a way to draw attention to the cross, but wasn't happy with any of my ideas so just did an all over design.

I machine bound it following Red Pepper Quilts' tutorial again, definitely my go to now!

The backing is a 3 Sister's print I had from a sale at my LQS.  I am still not sure if I like it but I felt it went well with the quilt.

My only mistake was that I didn't put a sleeve on it to hang it as it is intended to be a wall hanging quilt (24" x 24").  I am thinking I'll just get some heavy duty velcro.  And I guess I lied about that being my only mistake because I wanted to make a label for the back and didn't, but I think I could still fuse one on.

That was a lot of writing, so here is Abby having a good time on the grossest chair ever.  That quilt was a wedding gift from my talented Aunt!

WIP Wednesday

For all that I feel I have been busy, I don't have a lot to show.

I finished off the bee blocks for this month.  We have two leaders this month, so I made four instead of two.  The first were x & + blocks.  I love how these two turned out, and kind of want to make a quilt of these blocks for myself.  Maybe someday?  Or perhaps I'll start cutting pieces from each fabric I cut for something else to make blocks gradually?

I couldn't bring myself to toss the extra scraps from the above blocks so I made HSTs and put them together to make a mug rug. Not sure what to do with them.  I used a new toy, my bloc-lox ruler, to trim them up.  I highly recommend it as a ruler, it's great!

The other bee blocks were Christmas themed, so I used my few Christmas fabrics paired with red and green fabrics.

I also made a new shirt for myself!  This is a Neptune Tee from See Kate Sew.  It's a basic tee that you can put those cute triangle cut-outs into.  I love the sleeves, they're the perfect length!

The fabric is from Girl Charlee, and I am super pumped at how I managed to match the stripes along the side.



It can be left plain, without the triangles.



The cut-outs can also be inset with a contrasting fabric.  I didn't really think that anything would match this fabric well so I left it empty.



I love this shirt! It's so comfy and was pretty easy to make.  And, if you ever wanted to see a lot of me, here you are!



Gratuitous baby photo!!



I will be linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

Finished!

Well, I finished my celestial star quilt!  I have been waiting for sun in order to get some good picture--and there has been none. So, I just took them with my flash, and they're awful.

Here's the whole thing.

This is how I quilted the four setting squares.  Anything white got a small scale stipple, and the grey is just loops back and forth.

I did two of the corners with scallops around the star.

And the other two with just echo lines.

The centre star has pebble fmq in the grey, and a spiral in the star itself.

The backing is a print by Amy Butler, I don't remember the name and I sewed the selvage into it. It wasn't big enough so I used my leftover grey to finish it off.

This picture shows how I quilted the stars in the four corners.  I just did that up and down in each of the twelve segments.

The binding is one I got on sale, the selvage said 'Alhambra 2.' It was what I had originally wanted to back the quilt with but I didn't have nearly enough. Apparently I am completely delusional about the amount of fabric it takes to back a 72" square quilt.

I tried a new method of binding, based on a couple different tutorials, but the main one by Red Pepper Quilts.  It is the best job I have ever done machine quilting binding.

Despite the poor pictures, the quilt turned out great!

Lastly, I got back into my Harry Potter blocks. For those in the know, this is the golden snitch.

Connecting to WIP Wednesday.