Fist UFO finish of 2015 - The Beach House Quilt

In the summer of 2008 I started working on a quilt for my parents to commemorate their 25th wedding anniversary coming up in April of 2009. I thought 6 months was plenty of time to finish a quilt. I wanted to make an ocean waves block with green, purple and black and white prints and solid black center boxes. I did lots of math and made tons of triangle units.

My original sketches and math.

But then I got busy, or bored or who knows what, and their 25th wedding anniversary came and went without a quilt. And then several more anniversaries. Last fall when I joined the Portland Modern Quilt Guild I was looking through my stash for a project to work on for sew day and came across the paper bag with all the triangle units. I decided to abandon the ocean waves and figure out something new. I played around with many different layouts but ended up with this one that results in concentric squares formed out of triangles. I managed to put the whole quilt together, quilt and finish it in time for their 31st anniversary two weeks ago. I decided to call this design “Beach House” since I started on a path to ocean waves and I think it ended up looking a little log cabin like.

This quilt is not quite big enough to fit on the bed, but is a good size for a picnic (and has a nice dark back) or for snuggling up on the couch.

The blocks are all fabrics I bought or had in my collection in 2008. The sashing, border and binding are a combination of Kona and scraps. The back is a mystery fabric my friend Amy gave to me that was in her stash. I used some leftover HST to join the back pieces together.  

I quilted this on my home machine with my new walking foot and a crosshatch pattern following the diagonals of the blocks.

I was in a bit of hurry with the binding and was trying to use scraps and so I did not do mitered seams when I was sewing the strips together. I have always done mitered seams because “that’s what you do.” But I didn’t know why until I was trying to hand stitch the binding on. Turns out straight seams are kind of bulky! It worked out and I think it looks fine, but I have learned my lesson and will take the extra five seconds to do mitered seams for future quilts.

I really love how this turned out, and I’m so glad to have it off my UFO list. And my parents love it too

Pink Baby Quilt

I made a quilt for a friend who is due at the end of February. This is a quilt that I made years ago. The stars are from a block of the month class that I took and I really liked that block so I made a whole quilt of them.

I bought the backing fabric at Cool Cottons during their “we don’t want to count it for inventory sale”

Backing fabric is a Kaffe Fassett. Quilt label is hand lettered with sharpie.

I had the whole thing pieced and sandwiched, and then I couldn’t decide how I wanted to quilt it. I tried some hand quilting, but I couldn’t get my stitches even. So the whole thing sat in the WIP pile for years.

There are lobsters and octopi!

In October my friend announced that she was having a girl. Finally this quilt could have a recipient, instead of just “oh I liked the colors together.” I was inspired by a quilt Sam Hunter showed off at PMQG. It ended up being pretty easy to quilt, and I really like how it turned out.

I actually showed it to my friend at Thanksgiving, because I wanted to make sure she didn’t completely hate it. (People can have very strong feelings about pink.) The baby shower is next weekend (and I’m hosting!) so it will head off to it’s new home soon. I hope the baby likes it!

Quilt UFOs

Image via Sam Hunter

A UFO is an Unfinished Object. I recently joined the Portland Modern Quilt Guild and this year they are doing a UFO challenge. At the start of the year we have to commit to the UFOs we will finish this year, so here is my list before I turn it in on Thursday.

1. Bunting Quilt 
2. Green/Purple/Black Triangles
3. Vintage Dresden Plates
4. Green Map of the States
5. Rainbow Stars
6. Empress Tiles
7. Pink and Green Pinwheels

Several of these are tops that are finished and are just waiting for the right recipient, or enough money to buy the batting and backing. The rest are blocks or pieces that need a little more work to get to completion. 

Follow along as I try to complete all of these in the next 12 months. Can she do it?

I have nine of these blocks that need to be turned into a top. 

Hexie update

Remember all the hexies I had prepped? Well here are all the ones I have sewn up so far. Not quite enough to make a quilt but its getting there. I've been working on them here and there when we go on road trips. 

Rainbow Quilt

So a few years ago the mother of one of my best friends was clearing out her sewing room and got rid of a ton of scraps. She gave them to me since I was quilting a lot at that time and she knew my budget was tight and figured I could use free fabric. Of course! I have used a ton of these scraps to make a few different quilts over the years and much of the fabric for my duffle came from these buckets.

But there was a real gem buried at the bottom of one, a nearly finished rainbow quilt. I have know for a while that it was there and really should get completed but I had other things taking up my time. This week I decided I needed to bring it closer to completion.

When I found it there were five pieces plus some strips for the border. A few of the outer pieces had part of the border attached but not all of the border was there. It looked like her original plan was to have the rainbow quilt and then a solid gray border and then a black and white checked outer border.

For now this is as far as I’m going to get, but I would like to finish the quilt the way my friend’s mom intended. I’ll have to find just the right piece of gray for the border. And any thoughts on what I should use for the back or binding?

I’m thinking this would make a really fun baby quilt so I’ll definitely need the back to be something on the darker side of things so that it can go on the ground and be a play-mat and not show too much dirt. Maybe the same gray that I find for the border?