Wednesday, May 31, 2017

OMG: Quilt Top Finished!

My One Monthly Goal for May was to finish my Fly Away quilt from the Heather Jones workshop in March. 

I pinned the borders onto this quilt (that's all I had left to do for my goal) a week ago, and then this quilt sat on the floor while I dabbled in other things, like sewing pieces for this quilt

Amazing how sewing blocks segments is more fun than adding borders. And amazing that it took me 31 days to add the borders! :) That's why I love One Monthly Goal--without it, the pinned quilt would still be sitting on the floor of my studio! 

I'm looking forward to quilting this Jacquie Gering style! But for now, I'm just happy to have the quilt top finished. 



Sunday, May 7, 2017

May OMG: Adding borders!

My OMG for May is simple--add the outer saffron solid border to this quilt, from Heather Jones' Fly Away workshop. Quick and easy to do, yet I haven't gotten it done in the last 3 weeks. So now I have a deadline! 


(And...if you read my April OMG post, unlike that quilt, I KNOW I have enough fabric for the border here, so there shouldn't be any surprises!)

Thanks, Patty from Elm Street Quilts, for hosting OMG to keep us motivated!

Friday, May 5, 2017

A Chorus Line class at Quilt Market

Last year for my mom's birthday, I "gave" her a quilting class that we'd take together. We both quilt a fair amount, but since she lives in Wisconsin and I live in Michigan, we don't sew together very often. We chose Debbie Caffrey's "A Chorus Line" quilt class at Spring Quilt Festival in Chicago. We had a fun day--taking the class, walking the show (during the lunch break!) and grabbing a quick dinner afterwards before heading back to our respective homes. 

Here we are with Debbie, our sample blocks, and Debbie's class sample in the background:

Chain pieced triangles. Debbie had plenty of cutting and piecing tips and shortcuts to share with us. 

My blocks at the end of the day. I tend to sew pretty quickly, to maximize my kid-free sewing time! :) 

Mom's first few blocks. She's using the cool blues, greens and teals from Benartex's Dreamscape collection. Great texture in these prints!


When at Quilt Festival, you have to take a photo in front of the sign! 

We finished the day at Roti, a quick and delicious Middle Eastern restaurant.
Yum!

 I struggled a lot to choose a color palette and fabrics for this quilt. I really wanted to work out of my stash, but just couldn't find inspiration. I ended up at my local quilt shop and walked away with these fabrics:

I fell in love with the stripe and planned to use the brights to contrast with it. I still wasn't totally satisfied, and at the last minute, I grabbed a stack of low volume prints with white backgrounds. That proved to be key to my design. Mom and I took a quick trip to Material Matters, a fun quilt shop in Thiensville, WI, and I found some gray prints. Instead of using white and light gray in the blocks, I chose to use white and light gray prints. That subtle change made all the difference in my mind, and I went to the class excited about my fabric choices. 

Here's where I am right now. I have all twenty-five of my blocks done. Time to sew the flying geese and square-in-a-square units to create the outer star points. 
I can't wait to keep working on this! I'm most interested to see if the stripe will actually work when this is all assembled, or if it will be too busy. If it's too busy, I'll find something else to use it for!

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Heather Jones' Fly Away Class

Heather Jones lectured at our latest Great Lakes Modern Quilt Guild meeting (a cold, rainy Saturday...perfect to be inside talking about, viewing, and sewing quilts!). 

In the afternoon, we participated in her Fly Away workshop--a graphic quilt made of large-pieced blocks. 


I went out of my comfort zone, color-wise, for this quilt. I had yardage from Contempo Studio's Sevilla collection in gold, black, cream, and gray. I purchased a coordinating gold solid to go with these fun geometric prints. 

During the afternoon workshop, I got all of my half-square triangles stitched and laid out the quilt center on the floor: 

Right now, I have that entire center assembled. All that's left is to add the outer gold border. (It's hard to judge size from this photo--the finished quilt is 72" square!)
 I'm looking forward to quilting this using some of Jacquie Gering's walking foot machine quilting techniques. 

We also held a pincushion swap with the Oahu Modern Quilt Guild, and this was our meeting to drop off our pincushions. But--lucky us--the Oahu Guild's box had arrived that week, so we received our pincushions from Hawaii!

Here's the pincushion I made: 

Our pile of pincushions, ready to fly to Hawaii:

The pincushions we received from the Oahu guild:

Here's the pincushion I received, all made out of selvedges. Isn't it fun?