Cutting and Piecing Nicola and Matt's Quilt

Once I had washed, dried, and ironed my set of 80 fat quarters I was almost ready to start cutting it up. First however, the pattern asked me to divide the fabric up into two categories, one group of fabrics with large prints and another group of fabrics with small prints. The large print fat quarters were then cut up into larger pieces and the small prints were cut into smaller pieces. It took me a full day to cut up all of the fabric but it was pretty enjoyable because I used the time to catch up on the last season of The Office. :) Soon I had several big piles of fabric. In the picture below several of the big ones are layered on top of each other.

Next up, I needed to assemble the pieces into small blocks that I would then arrange and sew together into the two big quilts. The pattern allowed for quite a bit of flexibility and it was quite fun to lay out the fabrics and put different patterns together. 

Once I had sewed several sets together I laid them out in the family room to see how the fabrics looked together. 

After several more days of sewing I finally finished all of the blocks and was ready to lay out the final design of the quilt and sew it together. When I started this task I didn't realize how challenging it would be. I grabbed my pattern and began laying out blocks that I thought looked good together. In the end I had two quilts that looked like this: 

Quilt A: 

Quilt B: 

When I finished laying out all the pieces and gazed at the two quilts, I wasn't quite pleased. They seemed so busy, more like a crazy quilt than one that was made using a pattern. I shared the photos with my mother to get her opinion and together we decided to try making a bit of a change. I picked up the pieces and started over, this time trying to make a blue quilt and a green quilt by reorganizing the pieces. After about an hours work I ended up with: 

Quilt A (green): 

Quilt B (blue):

I agreed with my mother that these new arrangements were a bit better. I decided to sleep on it and when I woke up the next morning I realized that I still wasn't quite satisfied. Although I was running out of time, I decided to pick up the pieces once more, re-organize them, and lay them out once more. This time I decided to make a light and a dark quilt. The end result:

Quilt A (light): 

Quilt B (dark):

Light and Dark Quilts:

I still wasn't entirely sure about the busy pattern of the quilt but I liked this last arrangement best so I sent pictures of the two quilts to Nicola and asked her to pick the one she liked best. She chose the dark quilt an I spent another couple of days sewing the blocks into rows and then sewing the rows together to make the final front of the quilt. 

As I continued sewing and ironing the backside became quite a patchwork of seams and colors. 

Needless to say, I was quite excited when I finally finished (as you can see, the finished quilt will be quite large)!

I was also very tired: 

The day before we left California for our big trip, I sewed up the fabric for the back of the quilt and when we were in Bellingham I dropped off the front and back with Betsy of Nautilus Longarm Quilting. Since the quilt is so big I decided that it would be pretty challenging to do the quilting myself in time for Nicola and Matt's wedding. Having the quilt professionally finished seemed like a great option and it is so exciting to think that it will be all finished up next time I see it! I hope Nicola and Matt like how it turns out!

~ElizabethRose~

Piecing Sammy's Quilt

Back in January, Woodley and I hosted a baby shower for our dear friends Patty and Edo who were expecting their first child. I planned to sew a quilt for the baby and had pieces of quilting fabric and fabric pens ready at the baby shower for an activity. I asked all of the guests to write a special message to the baby on the pieces of fabric and later at the shower we all read them to Patty and Edo. 

Little Sammy was born in early February and I am sorry to say that I have yet to finish his quilt. I've been working on it here and there and I have a general plan but I really need to buckle down and get it pieced. 

For awhile I was worried that I wouldn't be able to find a convenient way to sew up the hexagons I had asked the guests to write on. Woodley came to the rescue though and suggested I add triangles to three sides to create larger triangles which could easily be sewn together. I found some pale blue fabric covered with robots and rocket ships that matched the shades of the hexagons. 

Here's one of the finished hexagon-triangles (note the special message for the baby!): 

I had enough triangles to make 5 large hexagons and I am now trying to decide which fabric I should use for the background behind the hexagons. I can't quite decide. The first option is Amy Butler's Martini Yellow Fabric: 

The second option (which I may be leaning towards) is Linework Robots by David Walker for Free Spirit:

My goal is to finish up the quilt by the beginning of August (which shouldn't be hard if I actually start spending some time working on it). Let me know if you have any ideas about which fabric I should pick!

Thanks!

~ElizabethRose

Quilting Projects

For far too long my poor sewing machine has been sitting downstairs feeling neglected. This week I finally got my sewing supplies together enough to continue working on some quilts I planned several months ago. 

The fabric above will be used in a quilt for little Sammy, the 3 month old son of our friends Patty and Edo. At their baby shower back in January I asked all of the guests to write a special message to the baby on some hexagon shaped pieces of cloth. The plan was to use them to make Sammy a baby quilt. Unfortunately, here it is May and I haven't even started piecing the quilt together yet! At least now I have a plan and fabric and I'll start cutting out the rest of the quilt pieces later this week. 

My big accomplishment of the day was finishing up the piecing for a quilt I'm doing for my cousin Kattlyn's son Jacob. I bought the fabric for it late last summer (intending to make it as a 1st birthday present, then a Christmas present, and now... well maybe an almost 2 year present). 

I've heard that Jacob really likes airplanes and trucks so I tried to find fabrics featuring them. I ended up picking out 3 blue fabrics (2 with airplanes and 1 with clouds), 3 green fabrics (1 with trucks, trains, and boats, 1 with grass, and 1 with leaves), and 2 yellow patterns (1 with dots and 1 with stripes). I had originally planned to lay them out in a random pattern with the yellow as a border around the edge. However, Woodley convinced me that it would be much more fun to create a picture on the quilt with the sky at the top and the grass at the bottom (see below):

Here's a close up of the sky section:

And here's one of the grass section:

I have a bright red polka dot fabric to go on the back but I will likely add a border of either yellow squares or a mixture of blue and green squares around it. I'm still trying to decide exactly how I want to quilt it. It would be nice to do an airplane pattern that would be visible on the back of the quilt, but that might be a bit too challenging. Maybe I'll just end up using ribbons. 

It's so fun to be using my sewing machine again! 

~ElizabethRose