Blogger's Quilt Festival

Welcome to the Blogger's Quilt Festival!  I would like to share my quilt called Interlocked Hearts.

This quilt was made with my mom in mind.  She died eleven years ago, before I started quilting, but I still wanted to make her a quilt.  So I made this one and donated it to a Hospice fundraiser.  My mom did a lot with Hospice, both working there and then receiving help before she died, and so it seemed fitting.

The white heart represents a loved person (for me, my mom) and the colored hearts are for all the people in their life.

It was quilted with a heart pantograph.  The binding was left over scraps, but I love how it helps to bring out the bright colors!

If you want to see a few more pictures, you can go here for the original post.

Additional Info:
Designed, pieced, and quilted by Amanda Hilldore
Size - about 55" x 75", but I forgot to write down the measurements so that could be wrong
Category/Number: Favorite Throw, # 50

WIP Wednesday

Good morning!  It's a beautiful day over here.

And I've made some progress this week!

I finished my random HST quilt.  It's currently in the wash and then it will get an official final post.  And none too soon!  I heard the baby was on the way (and might be here by now...I'm not the first to find out.)

 

I also finished my rocket for the countdown.  It didn't go together perfectly, but close enough for me.

And I started the Fractured Quilt...I'm loving it.

I also got two more quilts in the queue this week...I'm excited about both!  One of them is a T-shirt quilt so I'm waiting on the T-shirts and one is a pixelated 1-up mushroom.  I have ordered the fabric for that. :)

Joining up with WIP Wednesday.

Finished! Interlocking Hearts

After about a year in the making, I've finished the Interlocking Heart quilt!

It is backed in flannel to make it snuggly.

After making quilts for several members of my family, I decided I wanted to make one for my mom.  However, as she passed away many years ago, I decided to donate to a fundraiser at the local Hospice.  My mom was very involved there, so it seemed appropriate.  I dropped it off today and the ladies did a wonderful job of oohing and aahing over it.

We finally had some sun, so I got a few more pictures.

The hearts are a design of my own.  The colors have some meaning too...the white ones are for a loved person. (In my case my mom, but you can pick your favorite person.)  The colored hearts stand for all the other people in their lives. 

This is probably my favorite part.  I like how the blue binding ended up next to the blue heart.

I quilted it with a heart pantograph.  It was a good thing that the quilt wasn't any longer because I was running out of room under the sewing machine.

And I really like the binding too.  I think it nicely sets off the hearts and adds some color.

Linking up with Fabric Tuesday, Freemotion by the River, Sew Cute Tuesday, LAFF, Whoop-whoop Friday, and Finish it Up Friday.

Almost done!

I'm almost done quilting the interlocking hearts quilt!  I did some things differently with this one...

I did end up using a pantograph, and my laser pointer batteries were giving me problems.  So I used a stylus (kabob skewer).  Still not ideal, but better than buying expensive batteries that don't last very long.  I need to find a different laser pointer.

Someone also asked why I wasn't using any cones, and I didn't really have a good reason.  So I ordered one and it worked really well.  I put some batting scraps on the spindle to help it from jiggling around.

I'm on the last row!

quilting pattern

Are you sick of this quilt yet?  I need more advice though.  And I like polls. :)

I'm going to be quilting it with a dark grey thread.  I'd like to do a pantograph because I don't have a lot of time to finish it, but do you think that is going to detract to much from the hearts?  Otherwise I could do a FMQ loopy meander.

Is a pantograph ok for this quilt?

Linking up with WIP Wednesday.

WIP Wednesday

Hey, I'm finally joining in on a WIP Wednesday again.  It's been a while because most weeks I feel like you've just seen what I'm working on or I don't have any substaintial progress to report.  But this week will be a little more interesting!

To start with, Sarah's next quilt is on the quilter and getting meandering stars.  I was really nervous about the thread selection as it looked kind of green, but once it's on the quilt it doesn't look green - just nice.  I have one of six rows done and have a goal of getting one row done every two days.

I've also done the horizontal sashing for the heart quilt.  I love how this is turning out.  The problem is that they aren't all the same width though, so I'll need to do some creative vertical sashing.  I have a few ideas of how to do it floating around in my head, but if you've ever encountered something similar I'd love to hear your solution.

Linking up with WIP Wednesday.

hearts - a poll

There are two different possible layouts for my hearts.

 Rainbow:

Slightly mixed up:

I think I like the mixed up better, but think doing a rainbow would be cool too.  What's your vote?

Which heart layout?

More hearts

Since it is Valentine's today, I took a break from my top three goals the past two days and worked on my hearts.  (I also found out what the deadline is, and realize that I kind of have a lot of things I would like to finish by April 15.)

They started as broken hearts,

but I was able to mend them back together.

,

January accomplishments, February goals

It's that time again!  I'll admit, I look forward to the month changing so I can take stock of what I've done.  I feel like I got a lot done this month, although I didn't get my top three completely done.

1. Finish duvet. Not finished, but close.  I mis-remembered the dimensions, so it is a little small.  Luckily, I sent it over for a test run before doing the final seam so it shouldn't be too hard to fix.  I do need some more fabric though.  Again.
2. Finish Adding Up Nicely.  Done!  I sent it the day before the baby came.

3. Quilt Sarah's quilt. Done!  With about two hours to spare.  I still need to bind it though, so this will be on February's list too.

4. Interlocking hearts quilt (finish by end of April).  I got several blocks finished, and I'm finally happy with the piecing templates that I have.  I still need to do two more magenta hearts and three more green hearts.

5. work on the I-spy quilt  (finish by mid April).  Progress was made on this too!  About 1/3 of the novelty fabrics are in the background fabric now.

6. make the wall hanging for office.  No progress.
7. pretend to work on scrap quilt.  Done!  I love hitting my goal on this one every month.
8. finish green coasters. No progress
9. Aunt's throw. No progress
10. Pillow for family room. No progress
11. Quilt map quilt. No progress
12. Another wall hanging for upstairs. No progress
13. Quilt red quilt for mother-in-law.  I now have all the pieces and could start.
14. Random triangles (finish by end of April).  Triangles cut!  I might end up cutting more yellow ones, we'll see.

15. Fractured quilt.  No progress
16. Jeweled floors. No progress
17. Picture quilt (finish by Christmas). No progress
Addition #1: Simply Solids Bee Block - February. Done!  I feel proud of myself for finishing over a month ahead of schedule.

                                


For February, my top three goals are
1. Finish Sarah's quilt.
2. Finish duvet.
3. Finish the top of the I-spy.

Hopefully I will be able to finish (or at least work on) a lot more, as I don't think the top three will take up too much time and I don't have any goals for the quilter.
4. Interlocking hearts quilt (finish by end of April).
5. make the wall hanging for office.
6. pretend to work on scrap quilt.
7. finish green coasters.
8. Aunt's throw. 
9. Pillow for family room.
10. Quilt map quilt.
11. Another wall hanging for upstairs.
12. Quilt red quilt for mother-in-law. 
13. Random triangles (finish by end of April). 
14. Fractured quilt.
15. Jeweled floors.
16. Picture quilt (finish by Christmas).
17: Simply Solids Bee Block -March
Linking up to Fresh Sewing Day and Just Three

Problems

Problems.  Ugg.  Today I'm describing two that I've had in the last 24 hours.

1) The heart block.  I'm halfway through making these and still don't have the paper piecing template correct.  Most of them I've just fudged and deemed the corners close enough.  But with my latest change I managed to make the bottom points off by about 3/8"...it's really obvious when looking at it.  (I put it in a red box below.)  I'm ok with trial and error, but I don't know exactly what my problem is and I get so excited for each new revision only to have it let me down. 

2) I didn't cut a long enough piece of batting for my Tetris quilt.  I was looking at it this morning coming off the rollers and realized I was about 5" short.  How in the world did that happen?!?  After contemplating that for a bit I started coming up with ideas on how to fix it...take the whole quilt off (yuck), hand sew batting on (I'm terrible at hand sewing), put my other machine on the back table and work it across (maybe), or just put another piece of batting in and hope for the best (sounds good in theory).  None of these sounded great, so I went with the most feasible...put my other machine on the back and walk it across.

I didn't have enough batting left to roll it over to the table, so I also had to get a box.  In the end, this was a really good option.  The box slid well and I had enough slack in the batting that I could do quite a bit without having the move the machine.  Although I wouldn't recommend cutting your batting too short, I would recommend this method if it does happen to you.  This also had the added bonus of letting me re-pin the top as it was getting wonky on one side.  I'm not sure if it helped yet or not.  The whole process only took a little over an hour, so it was annoying but not really a huge deal.  Hurray?

WIP

Happy Wednesday!

1) I started a Tetris quilt-along at Happy Quilting.  This is my first quilt along and I'm sure excited about it.  It's been so cool to see the other blocks that people have posted so far.  Mine is a little different as I'm using a black background and keeping the various shapes the same color.  (I.e., the squares will always be dark blue.)

2) I started making red hearts for the heart quilt.

3) I am almost done quilting a baby quilt!  It's been super fun and has gone really fast.  I started it on...Saturday I think and have only done a little bit each day.  It is a FMQ with squares and rectangles.  My lines aren't perfectly straight, but overall I'm happy with it.

I'm joining WIP Wednesday.

Progressing along

Here's what I've been up to:

1) Hearts! I now have two blue and one yellow one done. The templates are almost correct, so they're going a lot faster.

 

2) Quilting practice.  I'm doing some playing around with some random things, some basic things, and also trying to figure out how to quilt the hearts.  I'm thinking a basic stipple with some teardrops (as in, all the loop-d-loos go downward) like the top of the whiteboard picture.  What do you think?

3. Buying fabric.  There was a tent sale today.  Obviously I need fabric to practice on.  And...some more too.  But it was on sale!

4) Oh, I almost forgot.  I got the linky all set to go for Behind the Seams.  This month we're featuring our oldest fabric. 

I'm linking up with Plum and June, Quilting by the River, and WIP Wednesday.

Progress

I finished some more coasters.  Only 1.5 left.

I finished my hearts!  I had to redo two of the side blocks that I thought were done, but most of the points come together well.

So now before I start the next one I want to figure out the design...and was hoping you could help.  So I quickly made up some ideas.  Emphasis on the quickly.

A) rainbow, all colored hearts on the left.

B) Diagonal rainbow, mix which side the white heart is on

C) Random, mix which side the white heart is on.  (I might not use this exact layout, but it gives a good idea at least.)

Any other ideas?

Linking up with Quilting by the River and WIP Wednesday.

Heart Progress, Behind the Seams

Today I'm linking up with Sarah's Whoop-whoop party!

Slow going on the hearts.  I was all excited two nights ago because I got the two hard pieces put together, but then last night it took me forever to figure out how to actually get those pieces together.  And the baby needed extra attention.  I managed to get the middle block together this morning, so I only have square pieces to put together now...hopefully that will be easy!

And here's the info on my linky party!

 

The introduction: I often feel like I don't really have much progress to show on projects.  Sure, I'm making progress, but sometimes it takes me two solid weeks to quilt a small quilt.  And I'd like something interesting to post about in the meantime.  So we'll be covering topics that are related to sewing/quilting but don't relate to how much progress you're making.

The mechanics: On the 15th of each month I'll post the topic for the next month's party.  Sometime during the month you can write a blog post about the topic...whenever works for you.  (Please include the link to this post or use the button on the side bar.)  Then link up on the 15th of the following month!

Next month's party: The oldest fabric in your fabric stash.  (Or at least the one that you think is the oldest.)  Some things to include might be a picture of the fabric, how you got it, what you think of it (do you like it?), how old you think it is, etc.

Future topics: Here are more that I'm considering.  If you have any other ideas, I'd love to hear them!

*The location you normally take your quilt pictures - zoomed out and/or without the quilt.

*Critters on a quilt - and who can get the most on at once?

*5 minute clean up - pictures before and after

*Various elements of your sewing area - fabric, ironing board, trash can, thread storage

Locked Hearts and Linky announcement

This week I started work on my heart quilt.

I also continued to make many mistakes. This white piece can at least be used in another block.  I now know that non-square blocks have an orientation.

And this mistake.  It needs to be paper pieced because it's on an awkward angle, and I didn't realize that you get a mirror image of the block when you're done.  So I've managed to learn two things to not do this week.  That counts as progress, right?  Please?

I'm also thinking about starting a linky party called "Behind the Seams."  It would be a sewing/quilting related topic, but wouldn't really have anything to do with the progress your making.  Things like what your sewing area looks like, your oldest piece of fabric, one of your quilts with an animal on it, etc.  So that when we are still working on the same thing there is still something to post about.  I like to post but am so slow that I don't want my readers to get completely bored seeing the same thing a million times.  I'll give you the topic the month prior and then you'll have a month and you can post at any time.  Then we'll link up!  I'm going to post on the 15th of the month, so the first topic will be coming up this Friday.  Sound like fun?

Speaking of linky parties, I'm joining up with Quilting by the River and WIP Wednesday.