Finished Color Beads Quilt

I finished this quilt last week. I used my Accuquilt GO! baby fabric cutter and thought I'd show you how I did it. The good news is that you can make this quilt even if you don't have a GO! baby because I used my 5-inch square die.



This necklace served as the inspiration for the quilt.



I've been wanting to play around with the color wheel for a while, so I took out one of my fabric drawers and my scrap bin and tried to find fabric that would work for every color. (I was low on purple, but I think I found a fabric that worked well enough as it had red and blue dots.)



Here are some of the fabrics I pulled.



I wanted the quilt to be simple so the color would be the focus. I pulled out my GO! baby and my 5-inch square die and went to work.



With the help of my two oldest kiddos, we had 28 charms cut in no time.



I arranged the squares and then pieced them into two rows of six and two rows of seven.



I then measured the rows of six charms and cut a piece of Kona white that was that dimension squared. In this case, it was about 27 inches. After piecing the charms to the white center square, I added 15-inch borders to all sides of the quilt, making it about 65 inches square.



For the binding, I used a black and white striped fabric from the Dr. Seuss line that I had on hand. I was about a strip short so I added a couple strips from a fat quarter with the primary colors on it.



I went with a solid Kona yellow for the backing. Note to self: make sure to position the label far enough into the backing so you don't cut it off when you square up your quilt. At least only one line of the label got chopped when I removed the excess backing and batting, and it wasn't really important for the quilt anyway.

I quilted it with wavy straight lines, like on this quilt, but about 2-3 inches apart.



I was happy that all this fabric came from my stash, except the Kona yellow. It feels good to use what I have. I think I'll do it more often.

Figgy Pudding Swoon and October Bee Block

The other day I saw this on Flickr. I'm not a fan of the Habitat fabrics, but I love the Swoon blocks I've been seeing online lately. I was on the fence about actually buying the pattern, but after seeing what Erin is doing with it (and if a pattern has the ability to make fabric look good that I don't particularly care for), I decided I had to have it.

I can't wait to see Erin's finished Habitat challenge quilt at our next guild meeting.



I think it will be the perfect pattern to use for all my Figgy Pudding fabric. I may need to add a few tone-on-tone or solid fabrics to create more contrast within each block, but I'm really excited to get started on this one.



I'm still trying to finish up quilts that I've already started so I'm not putting any sort of deadline on this one. If I get it done before Christmas this year, great. If not, I'll work on it throughout the year and have it ready for next Christmas.



I spent a little bit of time yesterday working on Katie's block for the Sew Beautiful Bee. She asked for Christmas blocks. I kept having this image in my head every time I tried to come up with ideas. I'm not totally in love with it though, so if I get some time this week, I may make another block for her.



I didn't forget to show you the new project I worked on last week. I'm just waiting for a helper to take pictures of the full quilt.

Kona Solids Challenge - Baby Playmat

Remember this stack of fabric...



that I cut into 2.5 inch squares and paired with Kona Charcoal?



Well, it turned into this baby playmat for my newest little one to use during tummy time. I wanted it to sort of have a plus quilt look to it, but since the charms only made four 2.5 inch squares, I used the charcoal square for the centers of the pluses.



I thought the bright colors would be great for visual stimulation while my baby is spending not-so-fun-for-her time on her tummy. The quilt also ended up being the perfect size to cover her while she's in the carseat; it's small enough that it doesn't drag on the floor when I set her down.



I quilted it using an increased straight stitch. I wiggled the quilt back and forth to give it a waviness. I really love how the quilting turned out. In fact, it may be my favorite part of the whole quilt.



For the backing and binding, I used Kona Bahama Blue. I like how the gray thread of the quilting stands out on the back.



I've been able to spend quite a bit of time working on some more projects that I hope to show you soon. I'm on my way to meeting my goal of finishing my quilt tops that have laying around for a while (I LOVE spray basting!) as well as starting something new (coming up next) and finishing my advent calendar that I started last year. So stay tuned!

Hello? Hello?

Is anyone out there?

My little girl is four weeks old today (isn't she cute?!). Crazy how fast time flies.


I've been able to have two sewing sessions since she was born. For some reason, I thought having time off work for maternity leave would allow me to have all this time to sew in between feedings. Yeah, right - what was I thinking?

Last week I made a quilt back, which is not my favorite sewing project to work on. I'd much rather just use a flat sheet or something. For some reason it makes me a little crazy trying to figure out how to cut yards of fabric and sew the pieces back together to make a quilt back the right size. But, I've made a goal to finish all the quilt tops I have in progress before starting anything new. I've got one down and have at least four more to go. Since it's getting to be a little cooler around these parts, having more finished quilts for the winter sounds like a good idea.

Today's sewing time was spent making a Dutch pinwheel block for AnneMarie for the Sew Beautiful Bee. September was AnneMarie's month and although I had good intentions to finish it during that month, I just didn't get my act together.



My mom-in-law is taking my older two kids tomorrow so I can have some solo mom and baby time. I hope to work on Katie's Christmas block for October so I can cross it off my list. She put together such a great gallery of Christmas blocks that I'm excited to come up with something for her.