Made in 2013

Hello, and happy almost New Year! Here are most of the projects I finished up in 2013:

I finished up 6 quilts by May (one baby, one king, two twin and the other two in between) and then slowed down a little bit after that.

I feel the need to point out that I did the machine quilting but not the piecing on the blue quilt in the 3rd row down, and that the scrappy trip quilt (also on the 3rd row) was a collaborative quilt with my do good stitches bee.

My main sewing machine has been out of commission for most of December and I've been sewing scrap blocks with my Hello Kitty machine (an accurate seam allowance is less important for these blocks.) I'm getting really close to having enough of them for a throw-size quilt and hope to show them here on the blog soon. Or you can pop over to instagram if you want to see sooner.

I have some cool things I've been working on that I'm excited to share during the first few months of 2014 so stick around, ok? I'm hoping my sewing machine comes back from the shop (again) very soon and that it will be functional and not squeaky so I can get lots of stitches in soon. Happy New Year!!

Finished Red & White Scraps Quilt

(I am challenged when it comes to creative names for quilts, I know.)

I finished up my red and white quilt for the Seattle MQG Binary Challenge a week and a half ago.

 

For binding, I used a white fabric that has textured dots for the binding. With three tiny red segments on the left. 

Here are some close-ups of the machine quilting:

 

 

 

I added some more red hand quilting after I took this photo.

The binary quilts will be on display at Island Quilter in January; I'll let you know as soon as I find out the exact dates.

The winner of my giveaway was #97, Heather. I've already sent her magazine on its way.

Happy quilting!

Happy Giveaway Day!

Happy giveaway day!
Twice a year, the folks at Sew, Mama, Sew host a big giveaway day, where lots of sewing bloggers give away sewn items or sewing supplies. This time I have a copy of the newest issue of Modern Patchwork to give away.

 

This issue of Modern Patchwork has instructions for a pillow I designed. I still think the block would look good made up into a quilt... maybe someday.

This giveaway is open to anyone living on planet earth.

To enter, please leave a comment on this blog post telling me something interesting. (Something more than "pick me!")

The giveaway will be open until December 13, 2013 at 5 p.m. PST.

I'll notify the (randomly chosen) winner by December 15, 2013.

Good luck with all the giveaways!

Scrap Rainbow Double Wedding Ring

Hi everyone! I hope you had a good Thanksgiving. We got together with a group of friends and had a great time with delicious food. And games and movie watching too. It's been nice to have a little vacation and some extra sewing time.

I spent most of the last two days working on my quilt for the double wedding ring challenge put on by NYC Metro Mod Quilters, and got it finished around 9 p.m. last night.

 

It's another project made almost entirely from my scrap bags. 

My friends on facebook and instagram cheered me on as I shared progress pics. Here's one that shows the pieced white centers a little better:

 

Sewing all those curves was not easy. I did a lot of pinning. At the beginning, I had to unpick small sections on almost every curved seam, but I got better at it as I worked through the project. I used the Simpli-EZ double wedding ring template and I have a couple questions about it if there are any experts out there reading this. First, I had to change my machine settings to increase my seam allowance a bit so the pieced arcs would fit the little melon pieces. (I usually put my Janome on 4.2 for a 1/4" seam but for this project it needed to be on 4.0.) And then the weird thing for me was that after I sewed on the first arc to the melon, the narrow ends of those melon pieces had a little chunk slightly larger than 1/8" sticking out and I wasn't sure exactly what I was supposed to do with it. I looked at a couple videos specifically about this template but they didn't show the up close details, just the general construction information.

Anyway, I made it work. I'm looking forward to getting the single arc template and trying another double wedding ring.

The quilting was fun. :D

I quilted a different filler design in each of the four ring centers, flowers in the squares (not easy to see though), S-curves in the melons, and loopy zigzags in the arcs.

clamshells, swirls

 

echoing, pebbles 

I had a hard time deciding on the binding but went with red because I thought it would look good and there is only one red arc in the quilt. And because I had red on hand. I got other good suggestions from friends--I think a dark purple or a black with a multicolor print would have looked great too. I got a little worried about the red after the binding was sewn on by machine but before I had it hand sewn down to the back--it was too much red and I thought I might need to redo the binding. I kept going though and decided it looks a lot better sewn down than it did before that step was completed.