The latest issue of Simply Moderne magazine contains the Mini Pumpkins pattern made using the mini quick curve ruler. I've been wanting to make this pattern for some time and decided that "someday" had arrived.
This went together pretty fast for me. It is only 36" square so that helped. Looking forward to getting this one quilted!
One of my guild's long time members passed away recently after a 3 year battle with cancer. Her husband gave the guild her fabric to be used in our quilts for oncology project. Rather than just taking her fabric to the next guild meeting and putting it out hoping that folks will take it and bring it back in the form of a finished quilt for oncology, it was brought to my store. Some guild members will come next week to begin the task of sorting and cutting it into kits. To start with we are going to cut 2.5" by WOF strips. I came up with three easy patterns that only use 2.5" strips.
The first one is the Strip & Flip Quilt. The tutorial is by Cluck Cluck Sew, but I altered it to use 2.5" strips instead.
Mine will finish at about 45" by 54". I followed the tutorial for the most part. The things I changed are (1) I used 2.5" by WOF strips only; (2) I didn't cut my strips down to 36", I left them WOF; (3) for the solid strips I again used 2.5" strips. I needed 3 and cut the third one in half and sewed each half to the other two strips then cut them to length.
The second pattern is Garlic Knot, also known as Arrowhead Puzzle Block.
I only made a single block to test the directions I found online. I'm glad I tested it because the ones I found were incorrect. They were free directions so I can't complain. I've found that most of the time in this life you get what you pay for. I don't have a link to share for this one since the directions I found online were wrong. Maybe you will have better luck. At some point in the future I may upload my own directions but not today.
The third pattern is called Jiffy Jelly Quilt. It is a free pattern from Moda. The pattern is really nice (an exception to the rule about getting what you pay for) so I didn't feel the need to make a sample.
I hope that with these three patterns and Judy's fabric we can make some beautiful quilts for the oncology department of our local hospital.
Last week I did an in-progress post on my coloring fabric challenge. Click here to read that post.
I'm happy to report that everyone has completed their projects and they are all so different!
Here is mine. I did a simple name banner wall hanging.
Peg put her name on a shirt.
Vicki embellished an apron.
I used Inktense pencils to color mine. Peg used watercolors. Vicki used crayons.
Instead of doing an entire name, you could also just use the first initial on something. I thought an initial on a notebook cover would look cute.
I'm so thrilled to have this one finished!
I love the way it turned out. I tried a new-to-me quilting design. I wanted something vertical and linear-ish, but I didn't want to do straight lines or wavy lines. It was fairly easy for me to stitch once I practiced a bit and it didn't take very long. The fact that this is a smaller quilt helped with the speed too. I'm definitely going to use this quilting motif again.
To see the difference the quilting made on this project, click here to see it unquilted.
Have you heard about the free block of the week Moda is doing? It's called Be My Neighbor.
This is the layout.
There will be 16 blocks. The first four block patterns have been released. One of my employees is making it up for the shop. Her maiden name is "House" so we felt she needed to do this one. She has completed the first three blocks.
If your local shop is not participating, feel free to head over to my shop website, Alamosa Quilt Company, to get the free patterns. Click on the Be My Neighbor logo on the front page of my shop website to go to the patterns and get the details for this free block of the week program.
My shop recently received some cute kid prints.
Included with the line is the adorable panel.
The panel is 36" by width of fabric. So I took a panel home along with a backing fabric and binding. This was one of the easiest and fastest kid quilts I've ever made. I quilted it simply by outlining the blocks and going around the "tape measure" border.
It took me a little over an hour to baste and quilt it! Seriously, I brought it home Saturday afternoon after the shop closed at 3 pm. I had the thing done before dinner. I sewed the binding on after dinner.
It finished at 36" by 42" which I think is a great size for a kid or baby quilt.
For the back I choose the squares print from the line and I used the letters on black for the binding. These are the first and second prints on the left in the first photo of this post.
It's ready to hang at the shop!
I recently received a couple of the "coloring" fabrics I ordered for my shop. One is letters in triangles.
I cut up two of them and gave each of my employees and myself the letters of our names and challenged them to "make something with it." Over the weekend I worked on mine.
I have my name colored but I may add more. I quilted up the background to test out a new-to-me design which I am considering using on my Fancy Forest quilt. I decided that I really like it and will indeed quilt my Fancy Forest quilt using this design. More that another day.
Anyway, I plan to fuse the letters to the background and topstitch them on with black thread. I have a black ribbon that I will add along the tops and I may add a little hand stitching around the letters.
