Finished: purse

About two years ago, I made myself a messenger bag.  It was getting well used, so it was time to make myself a new one.  (I find it a bit funny that I seem to want a new one every two years.)  This one held up much better than the first one, but there were still some items I wanted to change.

First of all, I decided that I'd try using interfacing.  I've only used interfacing for T-shirt quilts before, but the last purse was a bit floppy.  I also wanted a smaller purse, so that I would put less stuff in it and hopefully lose less stuff.

The last changes included a zipper pouch under the flap and magnetic snaps.  The zipper in the photo above is for my phone.  I had one in the old purse too, but kept putting other things in it.  So the zipper in the photo below is for car keys, a pen, and chap stick...and hopefully nothing else.  I didn't do any inside pockets this time.  The magnetic snaps were a last minute addition since the shorter and stiffer flap wasn't staying closed well.  They work wonderfully!

The messenger bag is modified from this tutorial, and how to insert zippers is from this one.

Fish Quilt

My mother-in-law made this fish quilt for my new second cousin.

I quilted 'Sea Foam' on it.  The swirls and bubbles seemed to match so well with the fish.

I did not quilt over the fish though, causing them to pop slightly from the background.

Low volume finish

I finished this quilt for some dear friends and their new baby boy.  I did not finish it by the time the baby was born, but I wasn't too far behind.

 I started the photo shoot on a nice fall day with lots of sunshine.

I used mostly low volume fabrics, with an emphasis on some tree bark and rock fabrics that I had found at a quilt show.   Half of the accent pieces were dark grey/black and the other half were colored.  Just enough to give it a pop of color.

I quilted it with a wood grain texture.

Later I finished the photo shoot and it was cloudy with snow on the ground.  But I'll admit, that's the way I like it best.

The pattern, Mad Dash, can be found here.

Linking up with Finish it Up Friday.

Progress through November

It's odd how things can change so quickly.  Two months ago I felt like I was getting nothing done, but since then I've finished several quilt tops.  One month ago I felt like I didn't have much on the "to quilt" list, and now I have a bunch!

So here's what I've been up to...
1. Meshing solid HSTs: I finally got the last bit of medium grey that I needed to finish.  Unfortunately, it looks slightly different.  Fortunately, I was planning on a dense quilting in the grey part, so hopefully that will bind it together better.

2. Fish quilt: Quilting and pictures are all done and it just needs a blog post.

3.  Scrap bee blocks 2017: This got all put together and now needs to be quilted.  I was going to piece a back together, so I need to do that too.

4. Purse: Just needs a blog post...I feel as though I should be more of top of these blog posts.

 

5. Joshua robot pillowcase: Finished, and I'm not giving it it's own blog post. :) It's just a normal pillowcase, made out of left over minky from his quilt backs.  He loves it since it is soft and has robots.

6. Wedding Quilt left over HST: This turned out so much better than I had envisioned it.  It will be the next quilt I work on quilting.

 

7. Baby boy quilt (HCP): I started piecing a new quilt.

Things I haven't worked on recently (or haven't started yet):
8. Temperature quilt. 
9. Rainbow Log Cabin
10. Scrap quilt #2
11. Jeweled floors
12. Lost piece
11. Winter quilt
13. Fabric from Christmas
14. Pillow with green/purple fabric
15. Trying to fit in - left over triangles
16. Black scrap quilt.
17. Baby quilt (B?P)
18. Wedding quilt pillows
19. Wedding quilt left over HST II

Gigantic wedding quilt - finished

The wedding quilt is finished!  While I really like how it turned out, the main thing I remember about is it that it was huge.  It's for a king bed and I added a bit extra to the sides since I like having a bit extra there...that way it is harder to steal the covers in the night.  The idea for the design came from A Quilter's Table.

I was really nervous about this as I made it.  I really only saw small sections together at a time and I didn't love it at that point.  I was afraid that the dark section was going to be too dark.  The kona colors I used include:
Extra dark: navy, spruce
dark: mediterranean, teal blue, oasis, and ultra marine
medium: bluegrass, candy green, jamaica, shale, iron, pool, and azure
light: dusty blue, sky, ice frappe, fog, ash

But after I laid it out at the end, I like it a lot more.  I didn't get to see it on the bed, and I'd be interested in seeing it sometime...the dark part should cover most of the main part of the bed with the light part draping down.

I knew I needed some easy quilting for this, so I just did some double wavy lines, one set per row.  To make it a little interesting I added some back and forths to one or two of the bubbles in each row.  This worked well, because it also helped hide some of the flaws.

 

I backed it in minky.  It makes the quilt bulkier, but I do love minky.  All adults seem to, even if it isn't an 'adult' fabric.

Phew.  While I do like how it ended up, I really am glad that it is done.  If I ever do a king sized quilt again, I need to go with the 'normal' king quilt dimensions.  I think that would have helped some of the quilting issues (that I didn't talk about).

Halloween quilt

My mother-in-law made a Halloween quilt not too long ago.  I quilted it last month so that it can be enjoyed before Halloween is actually here.

For everywhere except the pumpkins, I used 'candy bucket'.  I have a tutorial for it here.

Here is a heavily photoshoped view of candy bucket.  It has circle candies (like peppermints), rectangle candies (like tootsie rolls), and lollipops.

                            

I put spiderwebs with a few spiders by the pumpkins.

This is the back of one pumpkin - spiderwebs and the same spider as the above photo.

Progress through Septemeber

There hasn't been a ton of progress lately as the king sized quilt took up quite a bit of time.  Oh, and World of Warcraft released it's expansion and so I've been spending more time playing that.  Things are still moving though, and that's nice to see.

1. Wedding quilt (JEM): I'm dealing with a ton of thread ends, but it's almost done!  It's a king-sized quilt and there's just a lot of it.  I haven't actually laid this whole thing out as I'm a bit afraid of it.  What if I don't like it?  It hasn't clicked with me as much as some quilts have.

2. Quilt Halloween quilt.  I just need to make my final post.  I should do that soon, before Halloween has come and gone.

3. Baby boy quilt: I just finished the top of this baby quilt.  Next to figure out how to quilt it.

Things I haven't worked on recently (or haven't started yet):
4.  Scrap bee blocks 2017.
5. Meshing solid HSTs
6. Temperature quilt. 
7. Rainbow Log Cabin
8. Scrap quilt #2
9. Jeweled floors
10. Lost piece
11. Winter quilt
12. Fabric from Christmas
13. Pillow with green/purple fabric
14. Trying to fit in - left over triangles
15. Black scrap quilt.
16. Joshua robot pillowcase
17. Baby quilt (B?P)
18. Wedding Quilt left over HST
19. Purse

Framed quilt block

Some friends had a miscarriage recently.  Instead of a quilt, I made a quilt block and framed it.  A palm branch block, because the baby is praising God now.

Quilting: candy bucket

I quilted a Halloween quilt recently and the fabric had quite a bit of candy in it.  So I made a candy bucket quilting motif to go with it.

There are three different candies, and they are combined with a meander.

There is a tootsie roll or smarties shaped candy:

There is a peppermint candy, with or without a swirl:

Finally, there is a lollipop.  Again with or without a swirl.  This was my least favorite of the three, because I had a hard time going back on top of the stick.

 

It's a bit hard to see on the quilt due to the fabrics, but here's what it looked like on the top.

Robot quilt - finished

A while ago I finished my son's quilt.  However, since it was staying in my house I delayed in documenting it.  But finally did.

His favorite color is green, and I found some Galaxy by Makeover UK that had robots and spaceships, also some of his favorite things.

While I like how the design turned out, I'm less than thrilled with the quilting.  I couldn't decide what I wanted to do, so I did half  maze (or circuit board) and half meandering starts.  I only quilted the green triangles, and tried to do the opposite motif in neighboring green blobs.

I did fussy cut out the robots as well as possible.  

The back is a robot minky.  The binding is a green Kona...I don't remember which one.

This is my favorite picture.  A robot quilt by a robot...at least the best one I could come up with.

Stash Bee 2018

I finished the quilt from Stash Bee this year!

I love how it turned out.  It is bright and colorful and just what I had in mind.  I got the idea from Love Laugh Quilt.  It worked well for a bee quilt because there were barely any points that needed to be lined up.  The blocks I got were all mostly the same size, but it was still super easy to deal with the slight variations in size.  (Also, I love seeing what scraps other quilters send over.)

I thought I was sending the quilt over to the baby with plenty of time to spare.  However, I think the quilt arrived the same day the baby came home from the hospital.  I received a picture; the baby is less than two blocks tall of the quilt...and the quilt isn't that big. :)

I did a scrappy sateen binding.  It seemed like a good fit for a scrappy quilt.

For the quilting, I did Square-Centric (from 180 Doodle Quilting Designs) in the white borders.  It worked out lovely.

 

Hmm, with the white thread you can't see it very well.  You can see it slightly better on the minky.

A few last pictures, because I ended up with a bunch of pictures that I loved this time.  We went to the local college, and the outside spaces were beautiful.