WIP Wed 8/13/14: The one with all the quilt top beginnings

Now that I'm back into the swing of sewing again, I want to try harder to blog. I have a tendency to post things to Instagram because it's so quick and easy, but I forget that my blog serves as a sewing journal so I can document all the things I make. Needless to say, these pics are all from my IG feed (@pitterputterstitch). 

Let's get on with the WIP part of this post, eh?

Flower Box

I bought this V & Co pattern, which I really love, and then pulled together a group of navy, teal, and peach fabrics. For the background, I picked this Moda Bella teak, and I'm not sure I love it. In fact, I think I may not like it. I'm debating between recutting my background fabric using a lighter neutral or just pushing through and finishing the blocks as is.

Arkansas Florence Crossroads

This was such a fast top to put together. I used Denyse Schmidt's Florence with coordinating solids for the main blocks and Le Creme dots for the background. I plan to make another one of these soon.

New Star

This paper pieced star is called the New Star and I got the pattern from Quilter's Cache. The Salt Lake Modern Quilt Guild is making a charity quilt using paper pieced stars and this color scheme. When I made this block, I forgot to use the designated solid background, so lucky me, I get to keep this one. It'll turn into a pillow eventually.

Neon Plus

In an effort to make a quilt for everyone in my family, I started on this neon plus quilt for my niece, Chamy. She's 19 and loves neon. When my dad was sick, she spent a lot of time at my parents' house tackling projects that needed to be done. She even refinished my parents' 11x40 foot deck! She's awesomesauce so I wanted to make her a quilt right away.

Wee Wander Pink and Orange

When Sarah Jane's Wee Wander line came out, I bought a fat quarter bundle of the whole line. This is such a sweet collection and I wanted to make coordinating quilts for my two girls. I played around with layouts and really liked this one, but The Middle has a mind of her own and convinced me to change it up. I'll post the final layout when I can take real pictures with my camera.

Wee Wander Blue and Green

For The Baby's quilt, I made a variety of patchwork blocks. I've since sashed them all in a cream solid and then I'll add a border around each block with green and blue solids.

Strips

I haven't made a small-strip striped quilt before. I pulled a focal fabric and then grabbed blues, reds, oranges, and greens to go with it. I pressed and trimmed all these blocks last night and settled on the final layout. I'll piece the top tonight. That'll put me at five quilt tops to baste, quilt, and bind. Not bad for a month's worth of sewing.

Finished Scrap EPP Flower Pillow

There are times when I'd rather hand sew than sit in front of my sewing machine. The downside to the flexibility of that is that I sometimes just end up with these random blocks that I don't have any use for. This is one of those blocks.

Earlier in the year, my friend, Marci, put together a fundraiser for her coworker so she could get a cochlear implant. I offered a prize for donations. Not only was this a good cause, but I wanted to get motivated to finish something.

The lucky winner was really patient with me because when she won the drawing, I was in the midst of finals for grad school. She was sweet enough to let me know I could take my time. Unfortunately, right after finals is when my dad had his stroke and then passed away. I didn't have a lot of sewing mojo for a while after he passed, but I finally finished this pillow the other night and got it sent off in the mail.



I had sewn the flower using English paper piecing and then appliqued it onto some crosshatch fabric. I needed to enlarge things a bit so it'd fit a 20" pillow form so I added a border using the same colors I used in the block.

For the backing, I chose some flannel pieces that were leftover from a previous project and pieced an orange stripe through one of the sets. I opted for no binding and no quilting on this one as well as an envelope style closure instead of a zipper.

Finished Garden Fence Quilt

A few years back, I gave my mom a bundle of fabric for Christmas. I had finished my dad's quilt, but hadn't gotten far (or done anything really) on my mom's quilt. Several years have passed and I finally got around to finishing up and gifting her the quilt.

I used Lost and Found by My Mind's Eye for Riley Blake and the original Garden Fence tutorial from Hyacinth Quilt Designs. (I used the revised Garden Fence block for my dad's quilt.) This quilt uses 35 blocks that finish at 12 inches. I then added to narrow borders in a red Moda grunge fabric and then added an ivory border to make the quilt a bit bigger.



The backing is a gray flat sheet from Target. I used a gray bias plaid binding.

My friend, Kayli, did the quilting for me. She used various floral motifs from the prints on the front.

I especially like the double flowers she free-handed.

In the thin red border, she quilted these swirls.

And the outer border is made up of piano key quilting. You can also see a bit of the binding in this pic.

In addition to the quilt, I made a few pillowcases using this awesome tutorial, which is my go-to for pillowcase-making.

It felt so good to finally finish this project. And I think my mom was happy to have something new to go in her newly remodeled bedroom.