Finished Nordika Tumbler Baby Quilt

After I finished my Nordika Scrappytrip quilt, I had a lot of leftover fabric strips, enough to make this baby quilt as well as a few Dresden wedges that I'll get around to showing one of these days.

One of my friends is having her third baby and this time, it's a girl so I thought this would be a great set of fabrics for her little one. I played around with cutting the pieces and settled on tumblers. Thus, the Nordika tumbler baby quilt:



I used a strip of the tumblers on the back along with some oval elements and one of my favorite Nordika prints.



Back in April, I did a little demo at the Salt Lake Modern Quilt Guild meeting on how I free-motion quilt. I then let anyone who wanted to try sit down with this quilt. So this one has a variety of quilting, including these cute little flowers.



I showed how I like to incorporate words into my quilting occasionally. This one has the words "love" and "family" FMQed into the edge of the quilt.



For the binding, I used the red floral print that dominates the quilt as well as the tartan plaid and a solid light gray.



My friend's baby is due in June so I'll be wrapping this one up and sending it her way soon.

#SLMQG May '14 Mini Quilt Swap

I missed out on our guild meeting last night, but I was able to virtually participate in our mini quilt swap via Instagram (thanks for posting, ladies!). Here's the mini I made (and that Barbie took to the meeting for me).

I had an orphan English paper pieced block (star blossom) sitting around that I just didn't know what to do with. I initially was planning on turning this into a pillow or bag,

but then I had this leftover block from a quilt I'm working on using my quick curve ruler that matched the color scheme and fabrics. I added a border from one-inch scraps and a section of patchwork below it.

Then I joined them together.

I've really been enjoying a fluid approach to quilting lately. I haven't been planning out quilting designs and instead have just been quilting a quilt however I want. If I change my mind during the process, I let my quilting change. This mini is no exception. I started hand quilting the black background half. I quilted a few Xs and just kind of went with it.

I quilted three rows around the star and then went willy nilly around other sections.

Since most of the fabrics on the front are from Denyse Schmidt, for the backing I used a piece from her Chicopee line, which I think goes really well with the fabrics on the front.

I used two blue/green solids for the binding, which I machine stitched to the front of the quilt and then hand-stitched to the back. I usually do my binding all by machine, but I wanted to sit in front of the TV instead of in front of my sewing machine to finish this one. And I'm happy to report that my hand-binding is getting better!

I don't know the exact measurements of this one. I think it's around 16"x22" or thereabouts.

Finished True Colors Chevron Quilt

I finished my fourth quilt for the year! And it's the fourth month. I didn't think I'd have four finished quilts at this point in the year with how busy I've been with school. But, I'm happy that I've finished my two main quilt goals for the year. In a couple weeks the semester will be over and I'll be able to spend more time quilting, hopefully.

Here she is in all her colorful glory. I'm really pleased with how everything came together for this quilt.

For the backing, I pieced half yard cuts of some of the True Colors prints with yard cuts of two of Anna Maria Horner's Dowry prints.

I did a variety of quilting on this quilt with no real rhyme or reason. I changed designs when I felt like it.

I also initially planned to bind this quilt by hand so I cut the binding at 2.5 inches, which is smaller than my typical 3-inch binding. After attaching the binding to the front of the quilt though, I just wasn't feeling the hand-binding thing and ended up finishing it by machine.

And just because he's cute, here's an photo outtake of the mister. Love his guts.

WIP Wednesday: AMH True Colors Chevron Quilt Top

I had a busy month of March. I finished this quilt top on March 9. I went to work on March 10 to find out that the company was doing a round of layoffs and my position was affected. So the last few weeks of the month were spent submitting my resume, interviewing for jobs, working on house projects, and not spending enough time sewing. I was blessed to get a new job just over two weeks later, and I started working again this week. So, the WIP I have going on right now is this quilt top.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I used Anna Maria Horner's True Colors line (two fat eighth bundles) that I picked up from Amanda's shop. I then pulled out my parallelogram die for my Accuquilt Go Baby fabric cutter, but you can easily cut this shape with your ruler and rotary cutter. I then pieced the parallelograms into this chevron design and used the leftover fabric to make half square triangles (HSTs) to use in the side borders.

I've since pieced the backing, basted the quilt, and started quilting it. I hope to finish it up soon so it can get some use at my house before mother nature turns up the heat.

Linking up with:

Accuquilt Pezzy Print Quilt

Disclaimer: I received the Accuquilt Go Baby Triangle in Square die as compensation for this post. However, all opinions are my own. 

Several months ago I started on this quilt using the Triangle in Square die from Accuquilt. I had a bunch of pezzy prints in multiple colors so I paired them with matching solids and set to work cutting.

Right away I could tell Accuquilt had made improvements to its dies. The other dies I have are an older generation and a few threads usually have to be clipped with each cut job. This die cut amazingly well; I didn't have to clip a single thread--and I cut through at least four layers each time.

Another great thing about cutting fabric this way is that the side pieces end in flat sections at the top and side rather than points. This really helps when aligning the fabric to sew each piece together.

I was really inspired by Barbie's quilt. So, after assembling all my sets, I started testing layouts. This was my first one.

I really liked that layout, but as I started sewing the pieces together, I came up with this pyramid layout that I wanted to use instead. 

I could have assembled the pieces more in a log cabin style, but since I had already pieced one of the sections, I had to add triangles to the ends of each row. To do that, I cut 5" charms.

Then I cut those charms in half diagonally.

After piecing the center square (which is comprised of a white triangle, black strip, and black and white print triangle), I pieced two sections of the pyramid, the other two sections of the pyramid, and then I pieced those two halves together. Here's the result.

The top at this point was more of a baby quilt size so I added a narrow border on both sides and a wider border on the ends.

I had intended to use this plush blanket for the backing, which is partly why I added the white border in the sizes that I did instead of making it bigger.

I quilted a large meandering stipple throughout the quilt and bound it in a multi-colored pezzy print.

I had a few pieces leftover so I pieced them like so.

And turned it into a little doll quilt, which I gave to my coworker for her daughter.

This die is pretty diverse. I can think of a few more quilts I'd like to make using this die. Now, I just need to find the time to make more.