Finished: Korina's Radio Way Wedding Quilt!

It's finished and I love it! 

I present to you:  Korina's Radio Way Wedding Quilt (don't knock the creative title, okay?) I finished it (quite literally) just in time for her bridal shower.  I wanted to give it to her then rather than at the wedding for purely selfish reasons.  :)  I loved seeing her reaction and having her tell me it looks "just like the picture" and that "the colors are perfect."  WHEW!

It's a large Queen/small King.  That's me and my brother attempting to hold it up.

Here's the story.  As soon as my sister-in-laws fiance (finally) proposed, I was super excited to get started right away on her wedding quilt.  I love a good excuse to make a big new quilt!
So I sent her a link to my (rather extensive) pinterest boards and she chose a few designs that she liked.  Luckily for me, she seemed drawn to the more simple but modern designs.  I went for this design by Julie Herman called "Radio Way" - genius pattern by the way.   She said she wanted something with light green and black, but no yellows.  And that she trusted my instincts (Wahoo!). 
SO.  I just so happens that I had an old Joann's jelly roll in my stash with lots of lime green, aqua, and gray.  From there I found a bundle of the gorgeous Up Parasol line in greens/aquas and paired it with another jelly roll (from Etsy) in blacks and whites.  I also threw in a few extra Amy Butler prints from my LQS (they were on sale!!)  I even found a jelly roll with a white tone-on-tone print to use for the sashing.  I really love the colors in this quilt.
And it worked up SUPER fast!  I'm pretty sure (nope, I'm positive) that the quilting took longer than the piecing.  I LOVE working with precuts!

 
For the back, I used up some leftover yardage I had on hand, plus my three extra blocks.  I love being able to use every bit of fabric with no waste.  :)  Oh yeah, the solid is a sheet from Walmart.  I couldn't bring myself to buy 8 yards of quilting fabric.  I also couldn't bring myself to buy a king sheet just so that I could avoid piecing a back.  Pieced backs aren't really that fun for me to make, but I LOVE the end result!

For the quilting, I knew I wanted something slightly custom (no overall meandering here!), but simple.  In the end I was inspired to do some Angela Walters inspired "curved" dot-to-dot quilting mixed with a little bit of Leah Day sashing designs.   It took a lot of time, and made my wrist sore (have I mentioned yet that this quilt is a small KING size?), and I had TONS of tension issues (who says Aurifil is the best thread out there?  Cuz it sure broke a lot for me) but I really love how it turned out.  Even though those long curved lines are mostly pretty wonky.  Ah well.  Do you want to know the secret to quilting a King sized quilt on your home machine?  Excellent basting and stitching in the ditch around all the blocks before you do any FMQ.  My quilt is virtually free of puckers!  YAY!

You can see the quilting really well on the back of the quilt, which is awesome:

Here's a close up:

And a shot of the front:

I also remembered to add a label!  I kept it simple, but this time I used my printer, rather than my own handwriting.  :)  The label was actually a big hit once one of the girls discovered it at Korina's bridal shower.  Everyone thought it was so sweet that their wedding date was on the back.  I guess it's all in the simple things!

A big thanks to a bunch of my guild friends for helping me choose this binding!  It's from the Reunion line by Sweetwater.  It was just the right shade of gray and I love the little pops of green and blue.  I cut it on the bias, of course - because it looks amazing that way.  :)  And it's hand sewn to the back, of course.  I was sitting on the couch binding it minutes before I left for the shower...

And there you have it!  Now.  Who's getting married next?

Quilt stats:

Started: January 2015

Finished: March 28, 2015

Fabrics: Fabric Central "Delicate" collection (from Joanns), Up Parasol (chartreuse colorway), a few Amy Butler prints, various black and white prints

Batting:  Pellon 80/20 Cotton/Polyester (prewashed for shrinkage)

Finished size: Approx. 100" x 100"

Recipient: Korina and Garrett

Methods used:  Strip Piecing, Free Motion Quilting (on my home machine)

Binding: Reunion by Sweetwater.  Cut on the bias, machine stitched to the front, hand stitched to the back

Total time to make: Approximately 40 hours

A Couple of Quilted Hot Pads and some Bee Blocks

Last week I got to go to a bridal shower for my cousin.  Now that I have learned to make things, I love going to bridal/baby showers.  I love having the excuse to work on a fun, small project.  I couldn't decide between oven mitts and hot pads, so I compromised and made these hot pads with pockets.  I love how they turned out, even though they took quite a bit longer than I planned..

I did some research and found out that the bride's wedding colors are going to be mint green and silver (how gorgeous is that going to be, BTW?).  I immediately thought of this Lizzy house Pearl Bracelets print and since I didn't have anything remotely close to "mint green" in my stash, I went shopping!  I was super excited to find this Lotta Jansdotter Bella print that matched so well. 

The binding is from my stash - it's a little more mint blue, but I think it works.  And as luck would have it, the bride told me that these are her favorite colors, AND she loves polka dots!  I KNEW the Lizzy House print was the best choice.

I decided that I hated the original print I had used for the lining of the hot pads, so in the end I added the green/gray prints to the inside - that's why they aren't quilted like everything else.  Trust me, it looks TONS better!

I quilted one hot pad with pebbles and the other hot pad with echoes around the letter W (for their last name) and the big flower.

I didn't have quite enough fabric for binding, so I got to include a little pop of lighter gray in the corners and I like how modern it looks.  I stitched it down by hand because I really wanted it to look nice.  OUCHIE!  My fingers were sore after stitching through all of those thick layers!

I even remembered to add a loop for hanging!  Go me!

In other news, I have finished all of February's bee blocks!  Brittney asked for Ribbon Star Blocks in warm and cool colors.  Here are my two blocks:

I decided that I didn't like my original warm block.  I used some fabric from my stash for the background and I think it was a cotton/poly blend because it didn't sew very well and got SUPER wrinkly when I ironed it.  Sheesh.  No more cheap fabric for me!

Anyway, I felt bad for sending her a crappy block, so I made a new one - this one entirely from scraps.  Even the center is leftover from my Hello Sun blocks.   I like this one TONS better!

Also, I've been going to a new guild in my area.  I'm so excited that the Nebo Modern Quilt Guild has been formed!  It is SO much closer and more convenient for me to attend than some of the other modern quilt guilds I have considered.  I love it, even though I am obviously the youngest one there and there aren't a ton of ladies in my age range.  :p  It's all good though, we still have something in common and that's that we love to make quilts.  We have started a BOM for 2014 and here are my first two blocks.  The flower was done using needle turn applique - a completely new technique for me.  It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and I might do it again, but I do love the ease and quickness of raw edge applique!  ;)  I'm using a couple of charm packs of Joel Dewberry's True Colors line that I won HERE.  It was an awesome win and I'm excited to work with the colors. 

The End.


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