Saturday, September 29, 2018

Fifth Saturday September

Today is the fifth Saturday of the month, which means it's time to present our next challenge projects at Boast & Toast, at Not Your Mama's Quilt Store. I'm not there for the fun today, but I dropped my project off ahead of time. I hope someone takes lots of pictures, because I love seeing what everyone has done!
This time the challenge fabrics were the cosmic print, the red tone on tone and the black grunge in the photo above. I added some extra black grunge and some pieces from my  stash that picked up the same colors. Oh and the tiny aqua border too...
My finished quilt is called "left out". Although the triangles are all the same size (cut with a ruler), I improv framed them so each square is different. The finished quilt is about 36 square. I quilted it on my domestic machine using one of the grid patterns from Jacquie Gering's Walk book, which I just love. Mostly red guetermann thread (my machine prefers guetermann) with a touch of aqua quilting. Can you find it?

Hope you're having a great, crafty weekend.

Sunday, September 16, 2018

wedding quilt


My best friend's daughter married her college sweetheart this weekend. We were so thankful to be included in the festivities. She had requested a quilt for their bed, mostly in blues, so of course I was happy to make one for her. I mixed in some greens and purples, mostly grunges and solids.
I used a pattern from the quilt book We Love Color which I had made before, but I enlarged the blocks so the quilt would be bigger. It's a fun pattern because the centers of the pluses are basically improved.

My pal Diann quilted it for me...

her quilting choices are always spot on.

 Wishing them all the happiness in the world.

Sunday, September 9, 2018

weaving more towels

I love having such a great assortment of colors of yarn to play and experiment with! I just finished up these towels using a combination of red and orange yarns...
I'm tempted to use these in my own kitchen... we'll see! The yarn is a combination of Valley 8/2 cotton from WEBS and  Bluegrass Mills cotton 6/2 yarn from The Woolery.
They are done in waffle weave using a 10 dent heddle on my rigid heddle loom. The binding is an Allison Glass quilting cotton that I love!
With my extra warp, I played around with learning how to do a clasped weft. This is something I look forward to exploring further! On the bottom is a clasped weft with doubled threads, on the top is single. I think I like the subtlety of the single threads much better...

I also wove some solid fabric to use for bag making. And now my loom is bare... time to warp up something new!

Friday, September 7, 2018

Amber Clutch

Svetlana Sotak from Sotak Handmade has done it again! Her newest pattern, the Amber Clutch, was released this week and I was lucky to get to pattern test for her again. Testing for Svetlana is such a pleasure, as her patterns are professionally done, easy to follow and produce such great finished products. This one was no exception.

I had some good sized pieces of my fifth Saturday challenge fabric sitting on my cutting table & decided it would make great bags. (don't worry, you'll get to see my actual challenge finish soon! I'm really happy with it). Anyways, back to the bags...
They turned out so cute! I even added my personalized leather tags to the front. As you can see, the pattern comes in two sizes (the small one is just big enough to hold my iPhone 8+).  The larger clutch has a welt pocket to hold extra small items...

opened up it looks like this...
I loved making these so much, I decided to jump in and make one from a piece of my hand woven fabric...
I even put in the welt pocket! Using Svetlana's awesome directions, it went in without a hitch (I MIGHT have held my breath snipping and turning my handwoven fabric but I shouldn't have!)
I will definitely be getting braver with my hand woven pieces after this!
Here's a peek at the cute lining fabric I used (quilting cotton)

Hop on over to Svetlana's blog for more cute clutch pictures and a link to her shop!

Wednesday, September 5, 2018

my Curated Quilts entry

I love playing with the Curated Quilt mini challenges each quarter. This time the prompt was House.....
Here are my City Dwellings. totally improv (you can tell because the rooftops don't fit right, LOL). I had fun quilting each row house in a different manner.
It measures about 12" square. You can see all of the quilts that were entered here. I love to see all of the different ideas!

Monday, September 3, 2018

Bee blocks for Ailish

Our latest solid seven bee blocks are for Ailish and I popped mine in the mail a couple of days ago. I was really excited by her prompt.... she wanted improv rainbow blocks using curves. I had so much fun with these! First up an improv dresden rainbow....
I wasn't real excited about the way I added the square in the corner, but overall it's a fun block. Then I had this idea using some gentle curves...
And I absolutely love the way it turned out! Ailish was not concerned with size or that the blocks were square, which was helpful.
My third block was a fun one too...
All totally different which was fun for me! I love being a part of this bee so much. Hope you like the blocks Ailish!

Saturday, September 1, 2018

I'd Rather be Reading

In several of my quilty groups lately I have tossed out the question.... "if you're not quilting, what are you likely to be doing instead?" My answer? Reading! I'm a lifelong lover of books and reading. Some of my earliest memories involve loading up on books at the library.... first picture books with my Mom, later early readers and then chapter books. When Mom would chase us outside to play, I would usually sneak a book with me and curl up under a tree (or in the tree!) to read.

Recently, I had the pleasure of reading Anne Bogel's soon to be released second book, "I'd Rather be Reading". Some of you might know Anne from her blog, Modern Mrs Darcy, or her podcast What should I read next? Lately, Anne is one of the sole reason's my TBR (to be read) list is longer than it's ever been.
While I'd Rather be Reading could be a read-in-a-day book, I chose to savor it over several days. I will admit, the book sent me down several rabbit holes. One afternoon, I found myself curled up on the couch happily watching the movie You've Got Mail! Anne had talked about the movie in her book and I hadn't seen it in probably 15 years or more. What a delight! Now I can't wait to visit the bookstore in New York City that inspired the movie. Books of Wonder just happens to be a few blocks from where I'll be staying on the upper west side of Manhattan next month. Serendipity I say! I half expect to run into Meg Ryan while I'm there...
This awesome book, which releases on Tuesday, is the perfect holiday gift for all of your reading friends. Anne's delightful storytelling made me want to read other books even more (I reached my 2018 reading goal in August. Not a coincidence). Also, there are amazing preorder bonuses if you order it before the release date. You can check those out at IdRatherBeReading.com. Look at all of these goodies!
You should know that I did receive an advanced copy of I'd Rather be Reading for free. However, if you know me at all, you also know that all of the opinions in this post are my very own, from my heart.