Twinkle finished!

I've checked one more item off the UFO list - my Twinkle quilt!

In my last post about this quilt I mentioned that I was a bit hesitant about my choice of magenta thread for the machine quilting. But I think it was a great choice! It isn't as obvious in the darker blocks, but in the lighter ones it really stands out and looks fabulous...

The quilting pattern is an overall swirl - a different one than I've used before, but I'll definitely use it again. I do love a swirly quilting pattern :) Carol Linder in Hampshire did the long arm quilting for me.

The binding fabric is the same as the star points: Art Gallery Oval Elements in Mood Indigo.

The backing (the whole nine yards of it!) is Kaffe's Kite Tails in Emerald - the Pantone color of 2013. I know, I'm so on trend, right?

I want to always remember that my friend, Sharon, gave me all of the luscious fabrics for the quilt front, so I put her name right on the label...

I brought the quilt last week to my Crystal Lake Modern Quilt Guild meeting for show and tell. Here I am reading the label to Sharon...

And this was her reaction :)

That leaves only 6 items on my "Group A - Almost Done! Really Want to Finish!" UFO list.

27 total UFOs, but still, WOO-HOO!!

Quilt stats:
Pattern - Twinkle by Cheryl Wittmayer
28 blocks at 14" square
84" x 98" finished size
Warm and Natural batting
Star points - Oval Elements Mood Indigo
Star Centers - Kaffe Fassett Shot Cotton in Apple
Block Fabrics - 168 unique fabrics from Kaffe Collective, Anna Maria Horner, and Amy Butler
Backing: Kaffe Kite Tails in Emerald

chipping away at the list

I am making progress on my UFO list! Last week I finished the backing for two big quilts and off they went to be quilted.

First is "Rear Window". This is the quilt I had started in February, 2012, when Thing 1 decided she'd like these same color fabrics for her college quilt. Needless to say, I put these blocks aside (which were nearly all complete) and worked on her quilt. A couple of weeks ago my friend Andrea came to sew for the day, and I finally finished it!

While I was working at Quilt in Joy, we had a Blue Underground trunk show, and this is one of their quilts we had hanging in the shop. I loved it so much I copied as many of their fabric choices as I could for my version. I guess it's not really a "version" if it's a near 100% copy, but you know what I mean. It finished at 66" x 81" - nearly twin sized.

And finally my Twinkle quilt made with 168 unique bits of fabric, most of them Kaffe and cut by my good friend Sharon :) I've had this huge quilt top (84" x 98") finished since last fall, but kept putting off piecing the backing because I didn't want to wrangle with the nine yards it required! But now it's done and waiting patiently in line to be quilted by Carol. I stepped out of my comfort zone choosing the quilting thread for this one - magenta! I do love that color, and there seems to be quite a lot of it in the fabrics, so rather than going with the safe blue or green thread, I took a leap. It will either be fabulous or a lesson learned... we'll see!

So I guess I'm still holding steady at 28 UFOs, but these two have moved much closer to dropping off of that list! Enjoy your week, and go sew something :)

more twinkling

My good friend Lorrie at SewMod had me over for a sewing fun day last week, so I was able to crank out 10 more of my Twinkle blocks. My tally is now 14 done, 28 to go! Each block seems to go together faster than the previous one, even with the initial partial seam required from this pattern.

Here's a grouping of pink blocks:

Some magenta/red blocks:

And lastly some purple ones:

Have any of you reading made this pattern before? I'm not a fan of repeating the same block construction forty-two times, but since every single fabric is different, I haven't become bored yet. I've stuck with my plan of only working on these blocks when I'm away on a sewing outing, so that probably also contributes to the lack of boredom.

Lorrie and I are planning another work day this week, but I'd really like to make some headway on my SewMod row quilt, so I think I'll tackle that. I've got some pretty elaborate machine applique borders planned, and the shapes are already traced to the fusible webbing. All I need to do is buckle down and commit already to the fabrics to use. Having Lorrie around always ramps up my ability to make quick decisions. I'm not sure why that is, but maybe it's because she's the speediest quilter I've ever seen! You should head over to her blog and see the fun quilt she's making now from a Cluck, Cluck, Sew pattern with Art Gallery and Kona solid fabrics!

And I apologize if this posts with double spacing between everything. Sometime since my last post Blogger has changed, and I can't quite figure out how to insert single-line spaces between photos and text paragraphs. Everything I used to do produces no spaces, and inserting HTML break codes produces double spaces. If you've had this problem too and solved it, please tell me how!

jumping from here to there

At my February Breakfast Club II class, I asked all the students to count up their UFO (UnFinished Object) projects and bring the oldest of those projects and their total count to our March class. For a project to qualify as a UFO, it has to have been started - meaning some cutting and/or sewing has taken place. It doesn't count if you've just got all the fabric gathered and a pattern selected. That's a future UFO, and a whole different story...

So of course I had to count up all of my own. My total? Twenty-three. I was prepared for a number much higher. And actually, only five of those are actively being worked on right now. So that proves I do have a very little bit of focus, after all ;) And don't panic - I'm not going to show you photos of 23 UFO's - I'm just going to highlight the oldest and newest ones.

Most recently added to the UFO category are these 4 completed blocks from my "Twinkle" quilt project...

You may remember that some time ago a very sweet friend of mine actually cut all the large pieces for this quilt from her stash and gave them to me. Then I hemmed and hawed over which fabrics to use for the star points and center squares. As you can see I finally made those decisions (Art Gallery Oval Elements in Mood Indigo and a Kaffe shot cotton in Apple) and chose this as my traveling project to work on when my SewMod group meets for sew-ins. So forward progress will be slow, but at least it's progress! Four down, thirty-eight to go!

My oldest UFO? It's either this hand-pieced sampler...

Or this "Thru Grandmother's Window" block of the month hand applique (1 of 4 completed, 8 more to go) which are both circa 1997, but I can't recall which class I took first...

I did manage a couple of finishes during my hiatus. Both were Breakfast Club II class projects so there was a deadline - hence the "finished" status! Most recently graduated from "UFO" to "finished" status are some bright batik placemats...

And a table runner using the new Maude Asbury Calypso fabrics...

So how many UFO's have you got? What's the oldest? Do you think you'll ever finish it? Right now I doubt that I'll finish that sampler (it needs to be hand-quilted), but there's a good chance the hand applique will some more progress one day.

Happy Weekend to you all!

my lucky day

I have been fortunate to meet some amazing people at my job. The LQS where I work and teach is a small but thriving business, and the owner is a woman who loves quilting and loves helping customers become the quilter they hope to be. I am a lucky girl indeed to be a part of such a creative and passionate group of people - my team of co-workers and the customers we help everyday.

While I love seeing all our customers, there are a few that I really 'click' with. Sharon is one of those customers - she is a fellow Kaffe "nut", she loves bright and bold colors and patterns, she is always on the lookout for the next project before she has finished (or sometimes even started) the current one... in other words, we are a LOT alike.

A few weeks ago we were ooohing and aaahing over a pattern newly in the shop called "Twinkle" by Cheryl Wittameyer. (Our shop doesn't yet have online ordering, or I'd be re-routing you there of course.) It is very scrappy; you need 168 different fabrics cut 6 1/2" by 8 1/2"! We talked about what fun it would be to use our huge Kaffe stashes to make this quilt. A few weeks passed, I went on vacation, and the next time I was in the shop on my regular Friday shift, she walked into the shop and handed me a small shopping bag. Inside the bag, all tied up nicely with a fabric ribbon, were 158 pieces of her Kaffe (and others) stash, all cut to precisely the size needed to make the Twinkle quilt! I was speechless, to say the least! Here is a photo of all the gorgeous pieces I received...

I couldn't believe she had been so thoughtful, and when I said so she replied (with a big smile), "well it was just as easy to cut two pieces from each fabric as it was to cut one for myself, so that's what I did. One for me, one for you."

It may seem like a small thing, but to me it was an enormous gesture of kindness and thoughtfulness. It really inspired me to give more thought to the little things I can do to make others feel like it's their "lucky day." Thanks again, Sharon! Now I've got to add a few fabrics from my stash, choose my contrasting fabrics, and get busy building this gorgeous quilt :)

Happy sewing everyone, and make the most of these last few weeks of summer...