a "For Keeps" quilt for Sarah

Sharing beautiful and useful things with the people we love is the main reason most of us sew, isn't it?  At least that's how I feel about most of the sewing that I do.  I made this simple but lovely quilt for my dear niece Sarah in April.

Sarah is a lovely person inside and out; she's a wife and mom to two beautiful sons, and probably the most kind and genuine person I know. She recently had a bit of a health scare. I wanted to sew a tangible and beautiful reminder of how much she is loved - something she could see and use every day.

The quilt was delivered to her last weekend, and then yesterday I listened to a podcast interview with Amy Gibson of Stitchery Dickery Dock and learned about her "For Keeps" pledge.  It so perfectly sums up how I feel about sewing and making things for my loved ones, and this post seems the perfect place to share it.  Don't worry - I'm also including all the details on the making of the quilt a little further down in the post :)

The For Keeps pledge states:

"I love to sew because it brings me joy, and I love to share that joy with those around me 

by making things that are used and enjoyed every day.

I don't sew because it's trendy.

I don't sew because it might make others like me more.

I don't sew because I have to.

I am taking this pledge to refocus my heart and to remind myself of why I sew, and who I sew for.

I pledge to make things I love

For the people I love

To use every day.

I will sew for keeps."

Perfect, right?!

And now back to the quilt details... Sarah's Pinterest boards gave me great insight into her home decor preferred colors, and I know that she loves simple classic designs.  I immediately thought of the "Small Change" quilt in the "Quilts Made Modern" book by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr.

Twenty different shot cottons by Kaffe Fassett and Pepper Cory make up the palette for this quilt.  I used a half yard of the bottom grey and quarter yards of all the others cutting two (four from the grey) 3.5" x 42" strips from each.  The strips were then randomly sewn into 3 strip sets which were cross-cut into 3.5" x 9.5" sections shown below.  I advise pre-washing shot cottons especially the Pepper Cory shot cottons - the shrinkage rate of these beautiful fabrics is greater than other quilting cottons which could result in a very puckered finished quilt when it is washed and dried for the first time.

These three-square sections were arranged in an 18 x 24 square grid to determine color placement. I also used the monotone (black and white) setting on my phone's camera to check that the light and dark values were spread across the quilt.

A new quilter in the area - Isis in Huntley - quilted this all over classic fans design in a mauve thread.  She did a fantastic job!

The backing and binding is a solid from Lotta Jansdotter's line Glimma for Windham Fabrics. The color is chameleon-like; it's a dusty grey/mauve/lavender that changes depending on the lighting and what colors are next to it. Very versatile, and I really love the way the quilting texture is highlighted on this solid backing.

I've been keeping a record of most of my projects in this swatch journal. Orderly rows of fabric squares and neat handwriting push all my buttons :) And how fun to have a tactile record of the items I've made for my loved ones!

Let me know your thoughts on the For Keeps pledge. There is a free printable available for your sewing area and a blog button too on Amy's Take the Pledge webpage. I've added the button to my sidebar :)

You can get more information about the podcast interview with Amy here. Sandi Hazlewood does a fantastic job with her Crafty Planner podcasts; you'll want to subscribe and listen to all the episodes!

mystery medallion 2016

The Crystal Lake Modern Quilt Guild is sponsoring a new challenge this year - a Mystery Medallion program where we each create a quilt center block of any size to start and add a border each month for the next five months. The fun (or challenging) part is that no one knows what the requirements for each of the five borders will be; they are revealed month by month. So no planning or scheming ahead of time - just jump in and make it work each month!

My quilt center is an English Paper Pieced (EPP) star on a background of "made fabric" (a bunch of low volume scraps sewn together), and it measures 22.5" square.  The star is machine appliqued to the background with a short straight stitch around the outside edge.

The background fabrics were left over from blocks I made for a quilt shop sample in 2014; it hung there as a sample for quilt kits they were selling, and after that I'm not sure where it ended up. The "plus" blocks were made from a pattern found here.  I really did love it, so one day soon I'll have to make another and keep it for myself (adds yet another project to the much too long already project list.)

The hexagons in my quilt center were made even before 2014 when I was first learning how to EPP one spring break vacation in Florida. I was never sure what to do with them, and at one point they were sewn together in rows. Maybe I was planning to put them on some pillows? Who knows!

But sometime last year I saw a photo of a star made from hexagons so I took the rows apart, and sewed them into the large star shape composed of 73 hexagons. So the star and the background piece have been hanging around on the design wall for quite some time just waiting to be used in a project.

The whole point of a Mystery Medallion Challenge is to let go of control and practice your design and color skills each month when the new border requirements are revealed. At our meeting last weekend we learned that January's border must include snowball blocks and use the color red violet.

RED VIOLET?! Sweet - one of my favorite colors, and I happen to have lots of it in my stash.  I gathered a few fat quarters that were primarily red violet, tossed in a couple more that were primarily yellow (but still contained pink/violet), added a stack of more low volume scraps, and started cutting.

Since my center square measured 22.5" I needed to add a "spacer" border to increase the size to 24.5" in order to accommodate the 4" snowball blocks I planned.  This Peppered Cotton in Fog by Studio E has just enough contrast to set it apart from the backgrounds, but it doesn't overwhelm and grab all the attention.  It was cut at 1.5" width to finish at 1".

The 28 snowball blocks are each 4" finished, so now the quilt center measures 32.5".  I cut each center of the snowballs at 4.5" square and each corner background fabric at 1.75" square.  You can find a handy tutorial for making snowball blocks here.  Mine look more like stop signs (I probably should have made the corner pieces smaller) but whatever - I love how it's turned out!

Even if you aren't a member of CLMQG, you can follow along and make your own Mystery Medallion quilt.  Each month the new border requirements will be posted on our website, and photos of members' progress can be found on our Facebook page.

gift sewing - Tessa Basket

It's so much fun making gifts for others! Early in January I made this cute tote bag for a sewing friend who has made several amazing gifts for me over the years. The gift-giving bar has been set pretty high by her, but I feel like I met the standard with this bag - it turned out so great I almost didn't want to give it away. But her reaction upon opening it made me so glad I did :)

I used the "Tessa Basket" pattern by Pink Stitches available here as a PDF download and Amy Sinibaldi's (of NanaCompany) version as my inspiration.

The fabrics used in my version are an eclectic mix of Cotton & Steel prints, Hobby Lobby quilting cottons, and a charcoal grey shot cotton from Studio E's Peppered Cotton line.

The pattern doesn't provide exact cutting or finished dimensions for the bag, but I knew I wanted it to be a good sized tote that could carry a lot of sewing supplies :)  I cut a few strips from 15 different fat quarters in widths varying from 1.75" to 3" and then strip pieced them into two panels each approximately 18" wide by 13" long.  The 5.5" x 18" charcoal shot cotton was then sewn across the bottom perpendicular to the print strips making the entire panel about 18" square.

After using Spray n Bond to glue baste a layer of muslin and lightweight cotton batting to each bag panel (layered just like a quilt "sandwich"), I quilted them with random straight lines in a medium grey thread.  The panels were then trimmed to 17" wide by 18" long before using the pattern template to cut the top curves that later accommodate the straps/handles.

Bag construction was fairly typical - sewing the sides and bottom then making a boxed bottom with a diagonal seam at the corners.  The finished bag dimensions are approximately 12" wide x 13" tall (excluding straps) x 5" deep. 

I'm showing both sides of the bag so you can better view the placement and different widths of the fabrics I used.

The Tessa Basket pattern calls for cutting the 1" wide cotton webbing straps to a length of 11".  I like bag straps long enough to comfortably wear over my shoulder, so I cut the webbing for this bag at 16" per strap.

Don't you love this cotton webbing with the running stitch accent on the sides?!

The bag interior is no frills (meaning no pockets or zippers) in a fun feather print cotton available at Hobby Lobby.

When I make this pattern again I'll add some pockets to the interior and possibly use a lightweight interfacing on the lining fabric to give it more heft.  This version stands upright easily on its own; I think the lightweight batting worked well due to the density of quilting on the exterior.  If you want to do less quilting I believe you could replace the muslin with a layer of mid-weight fusible interfacing to provide the same level of stability to your finished bag.

A Google search on "tessa basket" reveals many images and links to other bloggers' reviews of this pattern.  Because you can use any combination of fabrics and cut them any size you wish to make the panels, this pattern is easily customized and can yield an infinite variety of one-of-a-kind bags.

epic college map quilt complete!

I could not be happier with the way this quilt turned out!  It is exactly as I pictured it in my mind thanks to the amazing quilting done by Carol Linder in Hampshire, IL.

The map portion is quilted in a 3" grid to mimic the latitude and longitude lines on a wall map. Thing 2 made a list of 40 city and country names that she wanted to be placed randomly over the quilt top in lower case script - places she has visited as well as places she hopes to visit in the future.

Carol had some difficulty finding a script font that would string letters together to form words; all of the script fonts she already owned would stitch a hard start and stop for each letter. That's a lot of starting and stopping spread over 40 words!

But she persisted and was able to find this font, and it's perfect stitched in medium grey thread!

The final requirement was that the words interrupt the grid lines and be randomly scattered across the quilt in both the horizontal and vertical directions but only in the "ocean" areas, not on the continents. And again, Carol rose to the challenge plotting out all the lines and words on her computer to perfect their placement.

She had to quilt all the lines in one direction first, then remove the quilt from the long arm and rotate it to quilt the perpendicular lines. It all worked perfectly!

A repeating looped stitching pattern in olive green thread fills all of the flying geese units.

Bridges on the back symbolize Thing 2's interest in Civil Engineering and Physics.

We haven't washed the quilt yet, so it's still crisp and crinkle free, but I'm anxious to see how it looks after washing.

That will have to wait a few months though, because it's living in it's new college home now.

I asked Thing 2 if she was disappointed that more people wouldn't be able to see her quilt since the bed is lofted so high. Her response - "Mom, so many more people are going to see the quilt on your blog than would ever see it here on my bed!" :)

Next time I'll show you the coordinating pillow sham I made with some of the extra flying geese units.

If you would like to know more about how I created this quilt top, you can read these earlier posts:

• epic-college-map-quilt
• progress-report-epic-college-map-quilt
• applique-finish-line
• and-done

and done!

The Epic College Map Quilt top for Thing 2 is finished! I spent much of last week churning out 200 flying geese blocks assembly line style, and then last Saturday I started playing with the layout of the blocks and ended up finishing the entire top :)

I had it in my head that 198 flying geese blocks (finishing at 3" x 6") were needed for the borders, but I really only needed 98. As I sat on the floor Saturday positioning the blocks I kept wondering "why does it seem like there are way too many of these?" Ummm... because there were too many! When designing the pattern I had intended to use my Sizzix dies to cut all of the pieces which included 196 background fabric triangles - aha! That's how the extra 100 got stuck in my mind! But then I decided to use the Eleanor Burns flying geese method (shown below) because there is no triangle cutting involved and very little fabric waste. So the lesson here is always check back with the pattern before cutting - and that no matter how long you've been sewing there is always something to learn!

Now for the fabulous 4-at-a-time-super-easy-and-accurate flying geese method that I used - you'll need a "Quilt in a Day" Flying Geese ruler.  There are two sizes available; mine makes blocks 1.5" x 3" or 3" x 6".  I'm using a Frixion pen to mark my fabrics because the ink vanishes when you iron it, but you should definitely test this on your fabrics first!

To make 4 flying geese units that finish at 3" x 6" cut one 9" background fabric square and one 7.5" main fabric square.  Place the background (grey) fabric square right side up and mark the center diagonal line.  Place the main (pink) fabric square right side down over the background piece and mark the center diagonal line.  Center the main fabric just by eyeballing it, but make sure the diagonal line matches up with the background.  Pin in a couple of spots to secure.

Now sew a 1/4" seam on both sides of the drawn line.

Cut on the diagonal line.

Press each unit with the seam allowance toward the background fabric.

Place the two units right sides together with the main fabric pieces opposite of each other.  DON'T NEST THE SEAMS - align the outer edges of the two pieces.

Mark the center diagonal line on the top unit as shown and pin to secure.

Sew a 1/4" seam on both sides of the drawn line.

Cut on the drawn diagonal line.

Make a small snip in the center of each seam allowance to aid in pressing the seam allowances correctly.

Press the seam allowances toward the background fabric again.  Here is a shot of what your two pieces should look like from the back and front.

Align the marked triangle on your Quilt in a Day ruler with your block as shown.  (Those little tan dots are sandpaper disks I stuck to the back of the ruler to help keep it from slipping around on the fabric.)  Trim the excess fabric along the right and top edges of the ruler, then pivot the fabric and ruler so you can cut the left and bottom sides.  If you have a rotating cutting mat on hand definitely use it for this step.

And from two squares of fabric you now have four perfectly sized identical flying geese blocks!

I repeated this process 49 more times to get my 200 blocks (even though I could have stopped at 24 repetitions - hehe!)

200 flying geese ready to go!

This is the background fabric that Thing 2 has chosen; it's from the Waterfront Park line by Violet Craft for Moda.  Line drawings of bridges in white on navy - perfect for a Civil Engineering major :)

Monday morning this is off to the quilter!  I probably won't see it again until mid-July, but I'll be sure to share photos of the finished product before it heads to it's new (dorm) home in mid-August.  Oh, and she loves it.  She really loves it :)

Final stats:

• Quilt will finish at 66" x 93"
• Applique center finished at 42.25" x 81"
• Side borders to applique section (added before flying geese) finish at 6" x 81" and 5.75" x 81".  These borders were not pieced - they were cut on the lengthwise grain to avoid seams.
• 6.5 yards of background fabric is probably what is needed to make this quilt without sewing an extra 100 flying geese.  7.5 yards is what I actually purchased and cut. 
• Flying geese units were made from applique scraps and quarter yard cuts.  Fabrics used include several Studio E Peppered Shot Cottons, a few P&B Textiles blender prints, as well as AMH, Parson Gray, Juliana Horner, and Denyse Schmidt prints.