Friday, July 22, 2016

Block Happy! Summer edition

Scattered in amongst bigger projects I work on are the blocks I make for two groups--our Great Lakes Modern Quilt Guild online challenges, and my do.Good Stitches Believe circle. Here are the last few months' worth of each. 

I showed these already--economy blocks I made for our March GLMQG meeting. 

But, I didn't show this. Here's how many blocks we had in the raffle--73! Aren't they fun?! And guess who won them?!?! 
Yep, me! 
Now I just have to decide what to do with them. There are a lot, but they are only 5" finished. So I either need to make more or decide on a layout that incorporates additional fabric pieces into it. Any ideas? I can't wait to play with these!

Our May GLMQG block: A Star block with a made fabric center. I was the speaker at our March meeting and gave a demonstration on made fabric--both how to make it, and then how to use it. I was surprised by how many made fabric projects I actually have! 


 My do.Good Stitches April blocks: 

And May:

And June: 

I just got my sewing machine back from a tune-up while I was on vacation--time to get July's blocks completed before the end of the month! 

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Preschool quilting projects

My posts the last few months have been very One Monthly Goal focused. I've been sewing beyond those goals; much of it just hasn't made it into posts! Time to change that. 

In April, right about the time that I was assembling the Row by Row quilt, another project needed time-sensitive finishing. I had volunteered to create a quilt for my middle son's preschool using fabric handprints traced by the kids and the seniors at the church where preschool is held. Hooray for fusible web! Preschool parent volunteers cut out the majority of the hands (thank goodness!); my mom and I finished the rest. 

The quilt was fairly simple to assemble--after I'd laid out the hand prints into rows (each set of two are the tracings of a preschooler's hand and his/her senior partner)--I just added sashing and an outer border. I'd considered using more colors and/or a patterned print, and/or adding appliqued words to the border, but ultimately decided the hand prints were busy enough and nothing else was needed. 
I finished the quilt top in time for it to be displayed the last day of preschool--it'll be quilted and bound by fall to hang in the room when preschool starts again. (Though my son will be in kindergarten--two in school and one to go!)


The second, connected project was a gift for our wonderful preschool teacher. She taught each of my two older boys for two years. This was her last year, and while I would have loved to make her a duplicate of the above quilt, it just wasn't going to happen. Instead, I created a wall hanging, re-using some of the hand shapes from the kids in the full quilt. The Bible verse hand embroidered on the front is "Children are a gift from the Lord." -Psalms 127:3.  My friend Stephanie offered to do the hand embroidery for me--I was so grateful, as I'm not good at that, and she did a wonderful job! I quilted it myself.


Another guild friend, Pam, offered to machine embroider the label for the back. (Thank you again, Pam!) I thought this verse was so appropriate for a preschool, but it was too long for the front of the wall hanging. The label was a perfect spot for it. 

It's always gratifying to use my sewing talents to create gifts for special people! 

Thursday, July 7, 2016

OMG: Time for some machine quilting!

I was searching my computer this morning for a photo of the quilt top that I'm planning to quilt in July as my One Monthly Goal. And I couldn't find it. Which made me realize that I hadn't shared it yet here on the blog!


Love the stained glass effect from the light shining through.

This quilt is another made from my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks. In addition to the 25-patches, I sewed a 12-1/2" square of made fabric in each month's color. My plans for these squares changed several times until I saw this quilt by Rachel from In Color Order

My version uses black as the background--there was enough going on in the star that I didn't need more color! Once I finished the made fabric squares, this quilt went together really quickly. Using sixteen 12" square blocks will do that for you! 

So my July goal is to quilt this quilt! I'm thinking straight lines. Thanks as always to Heidi at Red Letter Quilts for hosting this monthly kick-in-the-butt!