I Think She Likes It!

Posted on December 31, 2013 by Kim M

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! My husband and I travelled to Indiana to spend Christmas with my family. It was really cold with no snow to enjoy but we still had a great time with both my immediate and extended families.

While I was home, I had the opportunity to give my cousin the quilt I’d made for her new baby. Well, semi-new. Baby Allie was actually born in July but I hadn’t been home to meet her yet so in my mind that still makes her new.

Everyone was really impressed that I had made the quilt by myself and couldn’t believe this was the first thing I’d quilted. My cousin and baby Allie really seemed to like it!

I told my cousin that I didn’t want this quilt to be folded up in the closet unused to keep it nice. I want baby Allie to be dragging it around the house and playing on it. Allie even got some play time on it that afternoon!

It was really neat seeing something I made being used and enjoyed by someone else and I’m sure this won’t be the last quilt that I make as a gift.

Hope you had a wonderful and safe holiday and a happy new year!

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Two Quilt Tops

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Kim M

Sorry I haven’t posted much lately. Life has been really busy and I haven’t had much time to spare to sit at my sewing machine and work on my projects. I feel like I’ve been “go, go, go” between out-of-town weddings (we’re going to another one this weekend too!), work, tennis, and starting to think about Christmas shopping.

But I have put in enough time to have some progress to share on two of my projects. First off – I have 100% completed my first quilt top! Last night, I sewed the last seam on the baby quilt top made of 180 HSTs for my cousin’s baby.

Now I’m ready to try my hand at basting, quilting and binding!

I’ve also finished the main, center section of the Modern Trees Quilt Along over at Christa Quilts. I still have borders to add before quilting this project (including my applique string of lights that I haven’t gotten a chance to start yet) but I’m at least starting to see how it is all going to go together and I love how it is looking so far.

I’m glad that the prints that I chose really do look basically like solids when viewed from a distance.

I’ve also decided that my back deck works really well for quilt pictures. I wish the trees had better fall colors though!

Now I need to get a walking foot for my machine so I can start my straight line quilting on the HSTs baby quilt! Wish me luck!

Blocks for Modern Trees Finished

Posted on September 30, 2013 by Kim M

I had some good time to sew this weekend and I was able to finish the blocks for the Modern Trees Quilt Along over at Christa Quilts. I’m really happy with how they’ve turned out. There are a couple edges that aren’t perfect but they should be hidden in the seams once the blocks are sewn together.

I’ve been testing some layouts and here’s the one I’ve liked best so far:

Now I’m ready for the next step in the tutorial!

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Cutting Fabric for Modern Trees

Posted on September 26, 2013 by Kim M

After posting about how I was going to make a Modern Trees quilt by joining Christa’s Christmas Quilt Along over at Christa Quilts yesterday, I was excited to jump into cutting up the fabric I’d bought.

I know Christa was planning to make her Modern Trees quilt with solids but I really want to use some prints. Maybe it is that I’m still new to quilting but I just love the fun patterns and designs you can find in prints. So I decided to compromise and went with relatively small patterned prints that appear at least mostly solid. And I did go with solid brown for the trunks!

I also went ahead and bought all of my fabric for the backing, binding, and the border around my X-mas lights. (Jo-Ann Fabric was having a good sale!) I’m using the red and green plaid as backing, the red stripes for the border, and the red and green stripes for binding.

I’m using Kona Snow for the background and bought some solid fat quarters for making my string of X-mas light border.

Following Christa’s guide, I started cutting out my triangles for my trees. As I only had 6 colors, I had to choose three of them to get 3 triangles and three of them for just 2 triangles to get my total of 15. I tried to balance this with one dark fabric, one medium fabric, and one light fabric falling into each group.

I also cut my white strips for both the tree background tops and for the strip piecing of the trunks (although I didn’t get to cutting my brown trunk fabric yet).

While I think everything is looking good so far, I’m definitely going to have to allow more time than the quilt along recommends. Christa had indicated that what I did last night took her about 45 minutes and let’s suffice it to say that it took me a little longer. We’ll blame it on trying to catch up on my DVRed TV shows at the same time. I was distracted!

Have you ever made a quilt with just solids? Or are you too drawn to prints to totally give them up?

Joining Christa’s Christmas Quilt Along!

Posted on September 25, 2013 by Kim M

So I can’t decide if I’m a glutton for punishment or if I’m simply crazy but I’ve decided to join Christa’s Christmas Quilt Along over at Christa Quilts and make a Modern Trees quilt. For those of you keeping count at home, that brings me up to 3 quilts that I’m working on at the same time (all while learning what I’m doing as I go). Yeah – I think I’m crazy!

But you see, after seeing how fun the Modern Trees quilt looked, I simply couldn’t resist! Check it out:

I love all of the different colors! And if I’m being totally honest, I love that Christa will be basically walking me through it step by step.

But then, being me, I had to go make life a little more complicated. The finished quilt top for the quilt along is 30″ by 40″. But I wanted it to be bigger so that I could actually snuggle up beneath it. So I’ve decided to add a 10″ wide border on all sides to make my finished quilt 50″ by 60″.

I’d seen this quilt awhile back made by Penny at Quilt2sr5:

I loved the Christmas light border and knew I’d have to do that at some point. This seems like the perfect way to make my Modern Trees quilt big enough to snuggle with!

The border design actually originally came from The Christmas Trees pattern in the “A Slice of Christmas” eBook by Piece O’ Cake designs.

Penny from Quilt2sr5 did the same thing I’m planning to do – put the Christmas lights border around a different Christmas themed center.

So doing a little copying and pasting to attempt to combine the images of the quilt along quilt with my desired border, I’ve made a (slightly imperfect) mock-up of the quilt design I’ll be making: