Monday, January 30, 2017

Monkey in the Middle

I finished my January One Monthly Goal for the link-up over at Elm Street Quilts
I love how fast the quilting on small quilts goes!


I freehand quilted a spiral int the center block and then pebbles in the green monkey strips and various wavy lines in the rest. Circles and a Figure Eight design from Angela Walters' Free Motion Quilting book fill out the borders. I have tried this Figure Eight design before and struggled with keeping the shape. After a failed attempt on this quilt, I decided to sketch the design with a fabric marking pen. I didn't follow the lines exactly, but it really helped to keep me focused! I'll be trying that technique again until I am more comfortable with it. 

Always fun to see the quilting on the back! 

Now to bind this and deliver it to a charity! 
(Binding might be my February goal...)

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Purple Stitch and Flip Quilt Top

I've had blocks from one quilt taking up half of my design wall since October. Every couple of weeks, I'd find time to add a few more blocks and play with the layout. 
(Note to self: Don't make quilts with 4" blocks--you have to make so many!)

I've been wanting to make a big push to get this finished and off my design wall (as well as off my UFO list!), and I finally have. Now it moves to the "needs to be quilted" list. :) 

Which quilt is it, you ask? 
My Stitch and Flip Improvisation quilt I started in Jacquie Gering's workshop in September. 

It went from here: 

to here: 

 to a month or so of this:

to sewn vertical rows:

to a finished quilt top! 

Love these close-ups of the improvisational corners. 

And individual "four-patches"


Can't wait to quilt this! 

Find my original post on this quilt here.

Saturday, January 7, 2017

OMG: January 2017

I'm starting off 2017 with a clean slate of One Monthly Goal projects! Thanks to Elm Street Quilts for organizing this fun monthly goal keeping endeavor!
(ahem, I didn't finish my December OMG project--ran out of embroidery floss mid project and didn't have time to get more)


I made this cute kids quilt back in 2014 using Benartex's Monkeying Around collection. Last year, I sporadically looked for it, thinking I could quilt it and donate it. I looked through all my UFO piles and nothing...
I found it recently in a pile of finished quilts. Totally makes sense, right? 

Anyway, I figure this one will be fun to quilt, and I'll be thrilled to get it out of my UFO pile! Did I mention that it's fairly small as well...a bonus for getting it done quickly! 
So my OMG January goal is to machine quilt this top.