Moda All-in-a-Row Quilt

Back in early 2016, Moda/Martingale introduced a new book called "Moda All-Stars: All in a Row," along with a fun quilt-along with AMAZING prizes. 

I kinda LOVE row quilts and definitely don't make them often enough. I was SUPER lucky to win a copy of the book AND some fabric!  The stars really aligned for this quilt to come together.  :)

It's made using Sherri and Chelsi's first fabric line, "Bright Sun," which I LOVE.  (I threw in a few greens from my stash for the grass and trees.)  I basically just made one row at a time from the book, picking from my favorites until I had enough for this little quilt. 

I knew this one would need a special finishing touch, so I did some custom quilting in each row.  Aren't those little shorts so cute?

I just love this fabric line.  :)

And these little birdies.  :)

For the back, I decided to use this piece of fabric my friend Abby gave me.  I mean, come on - it has little birds and flowers on it so it totally matches!

I thought the quilt needed just a touch more green, so I chose this pretty print (which matches the dresden flowers) for the binding.  :)

This quilt was SO much fun to make!  Now I want to make another row quilt. For now, this one is listed in my shop HERE.

Quilt stats:

Started: March 2016

Finished:  August 2017

Fabrics: "Bright Sun" by Sherri and Chelsi for Moda

Batting: Pellon 80/20 Cotton/Poly

Finished size: Approximately 44 x 46

Recipient: ???

Methods used: Piecing, FMQ

Binding: Machine to front, hand to back

Time to Make: About 22 hours

Aviator | Up and Away Quilt

Several months ago, my friend Emily (CrazyOldLadies) asked me to make a quilt for her to display in our local quilt shop using her most recent fabric line, Up and Away.

Naturally, she picked Lella Boutique's Aviator pattern.  Aren't the airplanes the cutest?

I loved this pattern, by the way.  It's written so that it uses the ENTIRE fat quarter, which I LOVE (also - detailed cutting instructions for the win!).  I hate it when fat quarter patterns have tons of excess left over.  I'd rather just use it all up. 

This quilt told me it wanted crosshatch quilting in the airplanes and swirly/billowy air currents in the backgrounds.  It was a bit of extra work, but I obliged. Thank HEAVENS for matching thread (wink, wink).

To save time (and because this fabric was perfect), we used the same fabric for backing and binding.  I used Cluck Cluck Sew's life changing tutorial and just folded the backing to the front. 

And there you have it!  I made something that is going to hang in a quilt shop!  It was so much fun and I hope I get to do it again someday.  Any quilt shops out there want to hire me?  ;)

Quilt stats:

Started: February/March 2017

Finished:  April 2017

Fabrics: Up and Away by Emily Herrick (plus one or two blenders)

Batting: Not entirely sure - I'm guessing Warm N Natural

Finished size: Approximately 48" x 65"

Recipient: Corn Wagon Quilt Co. (for now)

Methods used: Piecing, straight line quilting, FMQ

Binding: Backing to front

Time to Make: About 14.5 hours

Lisa's Baby Quilt

Yay for baby quilts!  And yay for new babies!

I was so excited when my friend Lisa announced that she was having her first baby.  :)  I immediately hounded her about her nursery colors/theme so that I could make her a quilt.  She requested navy, gray, and lime green with elephants.  Here was the fabric pull I put together for her:

Her husband worked for Boeing for a little while (I think), so the airplanes were perfect.  The castles print reminds me of Lisa because she has been lucky enough to travel in Europe a few times.  :)

She even had a triangle quilt on her Pinterest board - probably for the colors, but I decided to run with that.  Equilateral triangles have been on my bucket list for awhile and I had just gotten a triangle ruler for Christmas, so maybe it was meant to be?

I used this cute (and SUPER SOFT) minky for the back.  Since baby was due in the spring, I decided to try skipping the batting on this quilt.  It worked okay.  I like the light, drapey-ness (why can't that be a real word?) of it, but I almost went bonkers trying to hand sew the binding.  I think next time I'm just going to use batting.  Or maybe a layer of flannel?

Since the greens in this quilt didn't end up quilt as lime-y as I wanted, I picked this bright lime green for the binding.  :)

And there you have it!  My first triangle quilt.  It was fun!

 Quilt stats:

Started: January 2016

Finished: March 2017

Fabrics: Dear Stella (pluses), Up and Away (green airplanes), Flight (navy airplanes), Magic (castles), Equestrian (arrows), and some others I can't remember

Batting: NONE

Finished size: Approximately 44" x 52"

Recipient: Lisa and Baby Boy

Methods used: Triangle piecing, straight line quilting

Binding: Hand Stitched to the Back

Time to Make: About 8.5 hours

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Improv ABC

It's Bloggers Quilt Festival time again!  (If you don't know what I'm talking about - check out this link HERE.)

I have two recent finishes to share with you this time around.  They are very similar, and yet very different.  I'm excited to show them to you.  You can see my other quilt HERE.

 So.  A little bit of backstory.  Every quarter or so, the Nebo Modern Quilt Guild issues a challenge to its members.  Our most recent challenge was to make letters or words out of fabric.

 A few days after the announcement was made, I saw a DARLING post on IG (this one, right here - by Quiltingmod).  She had the awesome idea to make an ABC quilt using novelty fabrics - each letter represented by something that starts with that letter.

 If you know me at all you might know that I sort of LOVE I-Spy quilts (check out this one HERE).  WHY DID I NEVER THINK TO MAKE ONE LIKE THIS???  I was instantly inspired.

At our next guild meeting, one of our lovely and amazing board members gave a presentation on how to make letters - improv style.  Good, good.

 And then a few days later I was the lucky winner of a giveaway on IG (from the amazing Sweetfeetstitches) - a whole pouch STUFFED with novelty scraps. 

Obviously I was meant to make this quilt.  I had a TON of fun picking out fabrics for each letter and then making each block up as I went along.  (Don't you just love those toasters?)  Let me just say - I learned a TON about improv piecing while making this quilt.  Who knew uppercase Ys were so hard to make?  (Hence the lowercase y in my quilt... And thanks Sonia for helping me figure out which fabric to use for that elusive letter y.)

I was originally planning to sash these blocks so they could float on their own, but when it came time to assemble them, they wanted to be smashed together.  So I smashed them all together and I think it turned out pretty cool.  The bottom row was struggling a bit, so I made an exclamation point (from a text print! - thanks to Natalie for the idea) to go with it.  In case you couldn't tell what that was (the dot got chopped off in the quilt trimming process).

As for quilting, I knew all along that this quilt wanted to be quilted with straight lines.  And that it wanted to be bound with the same grunge fabric I used for the background.

 Unfortunately, I didn't have enough grunge leftover for the binding, so I used this cream texty print instead.  It's pretty close.  :)

Even the backing has letters on it.  This Scoot fabric has been in my stash forever.

Wouldn't this quilt look amazing hanging on a wall in a nursery somewhere?  (Obviously my wall isn't big enough, sigh).

 I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with this in the long run, so I'm listing it in my Etsy shop to see if anyone bites.  :)  (Check it out HERE.)

Quilt stats:

Started: June 2016

Finished: September 2016

Fabrics: novelty scraps, moda grunge in cream

Batting: Pellon 100% Cotton

Finished size: Approximately 42" x 42"

Recipient: ???

Methods used:  Improv Piecing, Straight Line Quilting

Binding: Hand Stitched to the Back

Time to make:  Roughly 13.5 Hours

This quilt could fit into so many categories, but I decided to enter it in the Modern Quilts category of the Blogger's Quilt Festival.   You can see all the modern quilts HERE.  Check out all the quilt categories HERE.

This quilt is also #3 on my Finish Along list for this quarter.  Wahoo!  When the time comes, I'll be linking up here:

Maggie's Baby Charm Quilt

A dear family friend is having her first baby soon.  I needed to whip up a quick baby quilt for her shower last weekend, and this is what I came up with:

The design was inspired by this quilt I've had pinned on Pinterest for forever.  Maybe you've seen it before?  I designed this particular version myself, it was pretty easy.  The best part?  It uses EXACTLY one charm pack. Yep.  42 (well, 41.5) 5" squares and some yardage.  Whoop! 

The backing is this cute green flannel I've been hoarding for awhile.  I didn't have quite enough of it, so I snuck in this strip of orange dimple dot minky for fun.  :)

For the quilting, I went with an overall pattern because I needed something fast.  Every time I do an all over quilting design, I wonder why I don't do it more often.  I LOVE how this one turned out!

The fabric is called "Block Party" by Sandy Gervais for Moda.  I gave the boys a couple different charm packs to choose from and they picked this one.  My friend is having a girl, so hopefully this works for her!  Also, I can't wait until my boys are tall enough to hold ALL my quilts for me!  ;)

 

Quilt stats:

Started: April 2, 2016

Finished: April 7, 2016

Fabrics: "Block Party" by Sandy Gervais, Kona White

Batting: Pellon Nature's Touch 80/20 

Finished size: Approx. 38" x 39"

Recipient: Baby Cheney

Methods used:  Piecing, Free Motion Quilting

Binding: Hand stitched to the back

Time to make:  Approx. 8 hours (half of which was hand binding, LOL)

Emily's Picture Perfect Baby Quilt

I made something!  Yay!

A friend of mine had a cute baby a month ago and she NEEDED a baby quilt from me, so I whipped one up back in January.  It is always so fun to work on a baby quilt.  They are so quick and easy - practically instant gratification.  :)

I was lucky enough to receive Kristin Roylance's book "Sew Sweet Baby Quilts" for Christmas.  It is SERIOUSLY SO ADORABLE!  I loved it so much I splurged and bought her first book "Cute Quilts for Kids."  This is really saying something since I've never actually bought a quilt book before.  I usually prefer to figure out my own patterns.  Anyway, check her out HERE.

I was determined to make one of these cute quilts for baby Emily, but in the end I went with a stand-alone pattern she had handed out at a guild meeting many many months ago (did I mention she's local?  Even better, right?).  It was really nice to work from a pattern where someone else had already done all the math and all I had to do was follow directions.  :)

The pattern is called "Picture Perfect" and it features these fun 3D flowers.  It came together really quickly.  The flowers were probably the most time-consuming part of the whole quilt.

The fabric (most of it) is called "Blushing" and it's by Margot Languedoc of The Pattern Basket.   I was super lucky to win it in a giveaway awhile back.  It's SOOOO pretty!

For the back, I found this super soft and cuddly fleece at Walmart.  It was actually kind of funny, the lady warned me before cutting it up that it was on the pricey side.  I told her I'm used to buying my fabric from quilt shops, so this was nothing to me.  :D  It actually was on the pricey side (for Walmart), but SO worth it.  It is divine.

The thick, plush backing ended up making quilting a bit interesting, though.  The fibers making up the fabric are so long, that they popped through to the top of the quilt with every. single. stitch, making it look like there were little pink dots throughout the whole thing.  So I ended up doing half the quilting from the BACK of the quilt!  It was a little weird, and hard to see where I was going, but it worked out.  :)

The sweet mom I gave this too was very grateful, because she's made a quilt or two before and knows what a labor of love they are.  Now.  I need to make more baby quilts.  Who needs one?

Quilt stats:

Started: January 2016

Finished: February 2016

Fabrics: "Blushing" by Margot Languedoc of The Pattern Basket

Batting: Pellon Nature's Touch 100% Cotton

Finished size: Approx. 41" x 41"

Recipient: Baby Emily

Methods used:  Piecing, Free Motion Quilting

Binding: Hand stitched to the back

Time to make:  Approx. 11 hours

 This was finish #6 from my Quarter 1 Finish-Along list.  Linking up!