Monday, February 27, 2017

sidetracked....

Last week, Tisha, the owner of Not Your Mama's Quilt Store posted a video of a new product they had gotten in. 1/4 inch hexie papers! Yes you read that right. Not one to avoid a challenge, I ran right over there and bought a package. By the end of the day I had made a hexie flower....
Seriously, those hexies are SMALL! I searched my stash to find something small enough to fussy cut and these little mice fit the bill. Aren't they adorable?

I kept adding solid hexies until I had this....
At first I thought I'd make it into a bookmark, but it really wanted to become a pin cushion. Who am I to argue? I added some borders and a backing, filled it up with walnut shells....


so much fun! and totally not on my (long) to-do list, but oh well!



Ok, time to get back to that list...... until something else distracts me!



Sunday, February 26, 2017

Modern Quilting challenge

I always enjoy when my guild (McKinney Modern Quilt Guild) issues challenges to us. At our February meeting, we each chose a modern fat quarter from a bucket (we had each brought one to contribute). From another container, we chose a piece of paper with one of the elements of modern quilting written on it. The challenge was to go home & make something using the fat quarter and modern element.
I received this awesome Cotton & Steel print and the element "negative space". Fun! I decided to add in this dark blue peppered cotton for my mini quilt.

Out came my trusty graph paper. I quickly came up with this simple sketch:
After I fussy cut my fat quarter, my mini quilt came together pretty quickly:


The biggest challenge for me with negative space is that you have to make it interesting somehow! I'm not the best machine quilter, but I'm getting better at it. For this quilt I used some straight line quilting to echo the diamond shapes on the right side and some zig zags on the left side. 

I can't wait to see what my guild mates have done for their challenges! We'll be sharing them at our March meeting.


Friday, February 24, 2017

Liberty EPP plus pillow

One of my first quarter goals for the finish-along was to take strips of this beautiful stack of Liberty:
make them into plus blocks:
And make it into "something" which quickly became a pillow:
there's something about Liberty prints that's just so yummy, isn't there? And English Paper Piecing with Liberty Lawn? Oh man! they stitch so beautifully. I really enjoyed this project.

I used a pretty pink grunge from my stash for the back, and bound the edges in one of the Liberty prints that was just too big for the EPP piecing:

This is my fourth finish for the first quarter in the Finish-along. One more to go!




Saturday, February 18, 2017

springtime towels

In an effort to use up some of my scrap cotton yarn, I warped my loom in a rainbow of stripes that made me believe in spring...
of course, in the process of "using up scrap yarn" I ran out of some colors prematurely and had to run to Walmart and buy more. LOL

Some quick plain weaving later and I have four lovely towels...
one plaid towel (with a slightly incorrect color order, but if I hadn't told you, you wouldn't have noticed, right?)
And three striped towels...
yes, I know there are only two in the photo. trust me there are three total
All of the ends bound in a bright & cheerful striped fabric...

yarn: peaches & cream cotton from Walmart
heddle: 8 dent, warped at 20 inches





Thursday, February 16, 2017

MQG Mini Swap

Now that Sandi has received the mini I made her in the Modern Quilt Guild  mini swap, I am happy to share it here with you! This was the MQGs first swap and I was happy to be a part of it.

My graph paper notebook has been getting a real workout lately. As usual, that's where my ideas for Sandi's mini started. She had said she liked alternate gridwork, solids and low volume so that was my jumping off point.
I've been having some fun with wonky churn dashes for a while now, and I decided to explore these a little more. The small churn dashes in this mini are only 3" square!

Once I had it all pieced, I machine quilted with some straight line grids...
Then I added some big stitch triangles here and there...
I had a lot of fun with this one! I hope you enjoy it Sandi!

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

pillow swap

One of my favorite swaps we do occaisionally at the McKinney Modern Quilt Guild is the scrap swap. We each bring a big bag of our own scraps, swap them at the meeting, then make something for the original scrap owner. Last month we swapped bags to make pillow covers. I came home with this yummy bag of scraps from my friend Chris....
Chris loves all things scrappy, and stars, so I set to work to make a scrappy star pillow for her. I really love the way it turned out...
Honestly, it was hard to give this one back to her last night! I even had some fun with the back...

see that little English Paper Pieced star at the bottom? It's a label!
I can't really help but include a little EPP in just about everything I do. 

Checking this fun project off of my 2017 Finish-along first quarter list!
see how pretty it looks on my front porch? sigh....



Saturday, February 4, 2017

I made a shirt...

I've had this piece of gray cotton interlock in my stash for a long time. Who knows where I bought it or what it was originally intended for. One day I decided it needed to become a shirt. Dug through my patterns and found New Look S0184 (again, I've had it forever and never made it!). By the end of the day I had this awesome, comfy shirt which fits me PERFECTLY (how often does that happen???). The back is super cute...
I'm pretty sure I'll be wearing this a lot. I should probably make a few more actually! Anybody have a good source for cute cotton knits? Oh, and this was on my first quarter Finish-along list so yay! There's that!

Have a great weekend friends! Hope you get some creative time.