Do.Good Stitches: Star Cluster Nine Patch

I have another Do.Good Stitches quilt to share with you!  Our January quilter ended up leaving the group, so I offered to take over her month.  I didn't have a lot of time to choose a block, but I've been dying to try this cluster star block for awhile so I went with it.  Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to test it out before posting it for all my bee mates to make and it ended up being a little bit harder than I expected.  Mostly because there are lots of tiny HSTs.  But everyone did such a great job, even though I know this block probably wasn't their most favorite to make.  At least the second block I requested from them was easy!
ANYWAY.  The tutorial for the star cluster block can be found HERE.  We made the 12 inch version, so I recommend the 16 inch version.  :)
I asked my bee mates to make their blocks in whatever colors they consider girly.  Since I'm having my third boy in a month or two, I figured it would be fun to play with girl fabrics for once.  :)  The blocks turned out amazing and they go together really well!  Here is the finished quilt:

I used a purple flower print for the back, but it's pretty busy so you can't really tell.

Of course I had to make a label:

For the binding I decided to go quick and easy and just folded the backing over onto the front.  Whew!

And now I want to talk about the quilting.  I decided that this quilt would be a perfect one for practicing lots of different FMQ designs.  I also knew that I wanted a good mix of straight and curvy lines, plus a good mix of large scale and small scale designs.  So I took Angela Walters' Dot to Dot Quilting class on Craftsy and used her designs for about half my blocks.  It was fun coming up with something different for each block, and I definitely got some good practice in!  It's also a good thing this a charity quilt and not a show quilt.  I know the recipient will love it either way.  :)
I used Aurifil 50 wt thread in white and it blended in REALLY well.  A little too well in some spots - you can't really see the quilting designs.  But sometimes that's a good thing, right?  (I'm well aware that my quilting is NOT perfect!)  I quilted a pebble/bead design in all the sashing and now I know that white quilting on white fabric shows up better than anything else.  :)  But I kind of love the effect.
NOW.  For documentation purposes (I will be boxing this quilt up tomorrow and will never see it again), here are photos of every single block.  I'll spare you the commentary.  ;)

And a few more photos just for fun.  The back is so busy that you really can't see the quilting on the back at all. 

I have really awesome bee mates.  They did such a great job and I loved seeing the different fabrics they used for their own personal interpretation of "girly."

This quilt will be donated to a Juniors House to benefit children who have been victims of abuse or neglect.  I hope some little girl loves it!

Until next time!

Quilt stats:

Started: January 2015

Finished: March 13, 2015

Fabrics: Various

Batting:  Pellon Nature's Choice 100% Cotton

Finished size: Approx. 45" x 60"

Recipient: Junior's House

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

Binding: Backing folded over and machine stitched to the front

P.S. this was my March goal for ALYOF (#106), so I will be linking up HERE:

This was also goal #2 on my Finish Along Quarter 1 List.   I'll be linking up HERE:

March

I made another pillow!  I'm liking this trend and I already have a pillow design in mind for April.  :)

I've been seeing lots and lots of plus quilts around lately, have you?  I decided to try my hand at one in pillow form.  And of course, in honor of St. Patties day in March, I made it all green.  Lots of scraps went into this one.  Wahoo! 
For the quilting, I considered doing some matchstick quilting (have you heard?  Matchstick quilting is THE thing lately).  But in the end, I went with simple straight line quilting because I know that's what hubby likes best.  He's so spoiled.  :)

For the backing, I really wanted to use up the rest of those clover-like leaves, but it turns out I didn't have much left.  Not quite enough to properly overlap in the back.  So I added this little button to my envelope closure to keep everything from falling out.  Also, I've been following Amy's Pillow Collective blog hop over at Amy's Creative Side.  Many of her guest bloggers added binding to their pillows for a nice finished look, so I decided to give it a try and I LOVE it!  It's so easy too.  Win win!

Next up - Clamshells! 

p.s. I need to link up my March goal with Shanna and Melissa over at ALYOF.  I have a lot of projects to finish before the baby comes (T-minus 8 weeks!), but I'm choosing to finish my latest Do.Good Stitches quilt for my March goal.  It's all basted and ditch quilted.  I'm going to practice lots and lots of fun FMQ designs on this one.  Wish me luck!

A New Pillow for Valentines Day

Every year in February I get the itch to make a pillow or two.  I don't really have any Valentines decor, so this year I finally sat down and made something!  I've also been wanting to try hexies for awhile too.  They are actually surprisingly fast and easy (and stitching from the couch is a nice change)!  And since there are no hearts on this pillow, maybe I can use it for more than just Valentines Day?


I was inspired by THIS mini from Modern Handcraft for my pillow top.  I used a mix of low volume prints for the background and I love how it turned out!

The texture on this pillow is pretty awesome.   I love this quilting design. 

Once the quilting was done, I decided I wasn't quite finished so I added a few ghost hexies in the "negative space".  Can you spot them?

Since I originally planned four columns of hexies for the top and ended up liking the look of three better, I had a few hexies left over.  I decided to try my hand at actually hand piecing them together the traditional way.  Then I appliqued them to this gray solid, which I was happy to find in my stash.  Now the pillow is double sided!  And of course an envelope enclosure for me!

I didn't take the time to look up a tutorial or anything, just tried to stitch these together from memory based on that one time we had an EPP class at Quilt Guild...  I hope I did it right!

And I couldn't help but share the rest of my Valentines decor with the new pillow.  Mostly because I love these monthly themed blocks so much!  The sun pattern is from April May Designs HERE (I made the whole set for my sister and another set for myself - check out my post HERE).  The Subway art printable is from Just Another Hangup HERE.

Now... what to make for March??

A few blocks and a WIP

This is just a quick post to let you all know what I've been up to!
I thought that my Etsy shop would die down after Christmas, but I was wrong!  Once I finally got caught up, it was SO WONDERFUL to work on a few quick "me" projects and I really went to town!
Because I'm awesome, all of these are iPhone photos.  ;)

First up, one of the members of our Do.Good Stitches quilt bee dropped out at the last minute so I offered to take over for her in January.  I chose this star block and a simple nine patch block for my bee mates to make.  The star block was a BEAST (those pieces are tiny) and I think everybody probably hated me at some point for picking it, but look how awesome it turned out!  If I had known it would be so hard, I might have picked a different one but since I only had a day or two's notice, this is what I went with.  SORRY BEE MATES!  Next time I am going to pick something super fun and easy. 

But seriously, this quilt is going to be gorgeous.  I just received the last blocks in the mail and I'm excited to put it together.  I want to try practicing some semi custom quilting in this one.  Any suggestions?

And then Brittney picked string blocks for February and I was super pumped to pull out all my string scraps and go to town.  I love a good stash busting block.  She only needed two from each of us, but I couldn't stop and made four!

These blocks were also awesome for stash busting!  My local quilt guild is going to make a couple charity quilts using these solids-only courthouse steps blocks.  They were quite liberating to make.  :)

And of course, I've been making blocks for the Blocks From the Past quilt-along.  These are just a few of the blocks I've made so far.  Blog posts coming soon!  As for now - check out the link in my sidebar for more!  We've already seen posts from Natalie, Konda, Marion, and Machelle.  Check them out!

And now for my favorite WIP!  My awesome Sister-in-law FINALLY got engaged!  We are super excited for her and her amazing fiance.  (KORINA, do you read my blog?  You should let me know if you do so I can stop posting spoilers!)  I immediately sent her my entire pinterest board for quilts and said "Narrow this down for me."  She picked a few and I decided to go with Jaybird Quilts' "Radio Way" pattern.  My SIL requested light green, white, and black (no yellows, possibly some blues).  And then she said she trusts my judgement (YAY!).  This is what I ended up with.  It's a mix of gorgeous Up Parasol (Heather Bailey) prints, a couple of Amy Butler prints, a jelly roll I picked up at Joanns a long time ago, and a jelly roll of black and white prints I snagged off of Etsy.  I am LOVING these colors.  I just hope they're not too yellowy...

This quilt was SO fast to put together.  It was probably less than a week from the above picture to a finished King sized quilt top!  I love that Korina picked something so simple.  :)

Speaking of too much yellow, don't you just LOVE the awesome wall color in my basement?  YIKES!  Personally, it's too much yellow for me but it's staying for now...

And here's a peek at the top.  Now I just need to decide how to quilt it!  Yikes!

Thanks for stopping by!

The Twin Twin Quilts: Broken Herringbone and Jungle Path

It's time to share with you the quilts I made for my boys' third birthday back in December.  We got the boys their first big boy beds - twin size - and of course I had to make some quilts to go on them!  I finished these just under the wire, but finally just now went outside to take some pictures of them.  Unfortunately, I didn't take a lot of process pictures along the way.  Although I did blog about their beginning HERE (a long time ago...).

To make these two quilts I bought a fat quarter bundle of the entire Cruiser Blvd line by Sheri McCulley for Riley Blake (which we love because the Hubby is a transportation engineer and this fabric is full of road signs and vehicles and stuff).  Then I split it into two colorways.  Green for Jaxson and Blue for Bronx.  So their quilts ended up looking pretty different, but most of the actual print designs are the same.  I narrowed the quilt designs down to 7 or 8 and the Hubby picked his favorite two.

Here they are!

First up, Jaxson's Green Broken Herringbone quilt.  Inspired by this quilt, block tutorial found HERE.

These are pretty much the only "process" photos I took.  I finished Jaxson's quilt top and he wanted to test it out.  I think it will be big enough!

Of course, Bronx had to get in on the action too!  Both boys really loved watching their quilts come together.  Luckily, the each claimed one of them and attached to it right away.  :)

This particular block yields LOTS and LOTS of funky shaped trimmings.  Not one to waste fabric, I pieced all the funky pieces into four rows and used them to make the quilt a little longer at the top and bottom.

Finished!

Close up:

For the quilting, I decided to honor the Hubby's wishes and went with really simple straight line quilting.  Basically I just stitched 1/4" from the edge on the inside of each sashing strip.  The back looks kinda cool.

I had a TON of sewing machine issues (and ended up taking it to the shop the day after finishing) with this quilt, but I had to push through them because I was on such a tight deadline at the end there.  The wonky, wrinkly sashing quilting bugs me but I'm pretty sure Jaxson doesn't care.  ;) 

My FAVORITE part of the whole quilt!  I traced the boys' hands onto a corner and quilted around them, then stitched their names inside.  My original plan was to do the hand prints Trapunto style, but - well, I forgot.  And this picture is super fuzzy, but it's the only one I have of Jaxson's hand print right now.  I love that I have something to document how big they were at the time this quilt was made! 

And I very belatedly remembered to add the labels, but I did!  Those yellow pieces are literally the last pieces I have left from the bundle!  I'm ALL about using every last piece of fabric if I can!  Sometimes it just takes a little bit of planning.  
Also, Jaxson's quilt is bound with this little hexagon print.  Hand sewn to the back, of course.  :)

The back is a mixture of large cuts I picked up at Joanns.

And now Bronx's Quilt:

The pattern for this one is called Jungle Path and can be found at the Moda Bakeshop HERE.

A close up.  I just love those arrows and road signs and little cars!

Here is Bronx's little hand.  So sweet!

Bronx's quilt is bound in this striped/road print.  I love it!  I actually made both bindings completely on the bias using THIS awesome tutorial.  

I was able to find a bigger cut of this blue fabric, so less piecing for the back!  Win!

It's hard to see it here, but for the quilting on Bronx's quilt I once again kept things straight and simple.  I stitched down the middle of all the white sashing and added a little extra quilting to the center four patches.  

And here they are on their big boy beds!  The boys did an amazing job transitioning from cribs to beds and they love their quilts!  Whew!

Quilt stats:

Started: January 2014 (cutting started June 2014)

Finished: December 5, 2014

Fabrics: Cruiser Blvd by Sheri McCulley for Riley Blake

Batting:  Warm N White

Finished size: 

Jaxson's Green Broken Herringbone: 61" x 91"

Bronx's Blue Jungle Path:  57" x 89"

Recipient: Jaxson and Bronx

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

Binding:  Machine stitched to front, hand stitched to back 

Previous Posts: HERE 

Linking up: