a summery donation quilt

We've had so much excitement at my house in the past three weeks - Thing 1 finished her junior year of college and moved home, Thing 2 graduated from high school, Thing 1 moved away again for a summer internship, and lastly Thing 2 performed in her final year dance recitals and celebrated a birthday this past weekend. No lazy days of summer here!

I have carved out some time to sew most days though and finally completed this donation quilt that I started last November. The free pattern is called "New Wave" by Elizabeth Hartman, and you can download it here.  If you are a long time follower of elsie's girl you might remember the other New Wave quilt I finished in 2011.

This quilt was made specifically for donation to a local breast cancer care center. My quilt guild is currently supporting this local medical facility by providing many donations of handmade comfort quilts for recently diagnosed women in our community who are having surgeries and beginning treatment.

The pattern uses only 12 fat quarters and an additional 1.25 yards of contrast fabric.  I think this combination of fuchsia, lime green, and orange accented with the black makes a bright and cheery quilt! My friend Isis (isis_custom_quilts on Instagram) used her new long arm quilting machine to quilt it for me, and I love the pattern of swirled daisies and the lime green thread she chose.

The quilt backing fabric is still cheerful but not as bright - black line drawings of daisies on a white background.

The bias cut black and white stripe binding and a Crystal Lake Modern Quilt Guild label finish the quilt perfectly :)  It measures 51" x 64" - slightly longer than the pattern is written because I used the Wrights Fat Cats template by Darlene Zimmerman rather than the template provided in the pattern.

The instructions for using the Fat Cats template with this quilt pattern used to be found on Elizabeth Hartman's website, but while writing this I realized they are no longer posted there.  So I'm including some brief tips from my pattern notes about how using this template changes the construction and size of the quilt top.

• you'll need 1.25 yards of sashing fabric (the pattern calls for 1 yard)
• cut your sashing pieces 2" x 11" rather than 2" x 10"
• use the 1.5" and 10.5" lines on the Fat Cats template to cut your wedge pieces
• finished quilt size using 12 fat quarters will be 51" x 64" rather than 51" x 55"

I've already got some fabrics chosen for my next donation quilt - a 56" x 70" 16-patch quilt in batik fabrics that remind me of a fiery summer sunset :)

like, hate, LOVE

This was like...

This was hate...

And now this is LOVE...


It's finished and I couldn't be happier. Happy with how it turned out, and happy I can cross this off the list and move on to other things :)

quilting the New Wave/circling the globe

Finally after many starts, stops, frustrations, and exasperation, the New Wave is quilted!!


I used an all over free-hand design of swirls - large, medium and small - to fill the entire top edge to edge.


Thread on top is King Tut variegated (40 wt) in Crushed Grapes; bottom thread is one of the purples (50wt) from Connecting Threads. Paige (my machine quilting guru friend) suggested in a recent post of hers here, that a lighter weight thread in the bobbin can make for a more successful machine quilting experience on your home sewing machine. And she was right!!


It took me SIX FULL BOBBINS to get this baby finished - SIX!!! I've never used that much thread before on a single quilt top. So much thread in fact, that while I was quilting (and filling bobbin after bobbin after bobbin) that I'm sure it must circle the globe at least three times!

Someday I'll give you the whole sad story about how I marked this quilt three times only to have the chalk rub off -Ultimate Quilt Pounce and I are NOT on speaking terms. But for now, though my neck and shoulders are killing me, I'm just so giddy to have this task done and (I think) done pretty darn well.

And now I see lots of TV couch time in my week ahead to hand-stitch the binding :)

it can be saved!

A couple of weeks ago I was looking in the trash bin at the cutting scraps from my new wave quilt - a bunch of oddly shaped skinny triangles - and thought "now surely something can be done with those!" So I sewed them all together and decided to make a little sewing supply bag for myself. And then I got busy piecing the actual quilt, and all the previously documented uncertainty surfaced, and so the little bag project just sat :(

Now this morning I realized that this little bag project would be the perfect way to test my hopes that purple quilting would cut down on the "green-ness" of the new wave quilt top. So I did a little doodling (a very little bit of doodling)...

... and came up with a free-motion design for the bag. Normally I would draw this design for about 10-15 minutes before actually quilting it, but hey, it's just a little bag for my threads and scissors, so I jumped in right away.

Not my best quilting effort, but I DO think the purple thread helps! And I have a new little bag, and I can proceed with the new wave quilt with a smile on my face :) Thank you again to all of you who told me not to give up just yet - that the quilting could change everything!

NOTE: I loosely used Terry Atkinson's Zippy Strippy Bag pattern for this project. I made several modifications in overall size and construction, so it finishes at about 11" wide, 6" tall, and 1.5" deep. A perfect size for travel toiletries too!