Celebrate with Cake!

Our guild's quilt show was this past weekend, full of our members beautiful quilts, plus challenge quilts from those who desired to participate. Introducing 'Celebrate with Cake!', my creation for the guild's 
'How Do You Celebrate' challenge. 

Remember this fabric I wasn't too fond of?

Our little packages included not only these two challenging fabrics, but also the following rules: 
no larger than 24" x 24"
75% of the front is from the two fabrics
any additional fabrics ok, except white, black, or grey. 
Hmmm.

Celebrations - birthday's, weddings, baby showers, holidays, heck, even family BBQ's always involve cake. And having taken up cake decorating as a teenager, no occasion for a decorated cake passed me by. 

Thinking cake, then seeing the fabric, I was immediately struck by the tent roofs, and how one would make a perfect cake stand base. And lucky for me, one of those tent roofs was close enough to the center of the fabric along the bottom, making it the perfect spot to start building my cake.

With the addition of a few fused fabric scraps, ric rac, gold and silver lame, plus other trims, my tiered cake came together.

Now for the quilting, which plays a big part in making this cake look real. I wanted this cake to puff up from the background, which meant trapunto work plus all of the quilting details on just the cake.

With the details done, the extra batting got trimmed away,

and the whole top put on another piece of batting. Now to deal with that background!

Quilting in earnest, I went for a dense, echoed triangle fill, to mute that background. Notice the dark maroon areas are even more densely quilted. The viewer gets to still feel the celebration with the circus tent background, without it overwhelming the cake. 

Check out how the cake puffs up away from the background - one could almost cut into it! And what cake isn't complete without roses? I found the perfect rose buttons - they look just like I would make them out of icing!

Celebrate with Cake! looks like a delicious treat to me and another great challenge quilt to add to my collection!

I wish that I had pictures of the other entries to show - we have a lot of creative quilters in our guild. But, unfortunately, I could not attend due to an early birthday celebration for hubby - and yes, we had cake! And even if I did have pictures, I don't have permission from the creators to post them online. So, let's have cake instead!

Have a great day quilting!

April 2019 Book of the Month

I wish I could spend more time with the Modern Art Quilts book (affiliate link), but it's time for a new selection. This month, I'm featuring Sew Emoji (affiliate link) by Gailen Runge.

Aren't these Emoji's too cute?? 

Full of lots of patterns for faces, use them as they are, or recombine pieces to make your own Emoji. Projects include a twin size quilt, pillowcase, and different pillows. I'm thinking wall hanging of just a single Emoji for my project - I've got one picked out!

This book is also a great resource for quilters wanting a straight-forward explanation on how to do applique. I know from several comments recently, there are quilters out there who haven't attempted applique yet. Well, the Sew Emoji book is a great way to start!

Gailen goes through all the tools necessary, explaining each one, and then gives detailed instructions on stitching down appliques. In reading this book, I felt we could be fast friends!

Who can resist an Emoji? If there are teens around you, they would love this. Even creating one as a wall hanging would certainly brighten someone's day - project possibilities are endless. Do check out the Sew Emoji (affiliate link) book if you get a chance!

Happy Quilting!

Making a Strip Pieced Sailboat

Today I thought I'd share how I did some improv piecing to make the sailboat in Seafarer. The full Seafarer pattern can be found on Etsy, in a baby, lap, and twin size.

When making string blocks, a lot of quilters like to use a foundation upon which to stitch their strings to, mainly so they have a block outline to follow. I've done that before, using both paper, which I hated ripping out, and a lightweight fabric foundation, adding extra weight.

So this time, I decided to just wing it, and use a ruler as a guide. After each strip was sewn on, the seams were pressed to give me a better idea of how well I was filling the block space outlined by the ruler.

Some may think this is easy, rather mindless sewing, but not for me. Each strip in the block was planned out so that the appearance of large areas of either light or dark values wouldn't happen, causing a distraction. I find piecing string blocks to be just a challenging as any other block!

For the sailboat, I started with a darker ocean under the boat, as if it was casting a shadow.

After string piecing sails, the mast was placed with one side on the center line. From memories of my Dad's boat, I know that one sail is smaller than the other. With the help of a Tri-Recs ruler, the little sail is cut.

And a corresponding angle is cut from ocean strips, to fill in the remaining block area on that side.

Turns out, I didn't make the ocean strips long enough, so some of this set got replaced. But now I have two pieces with the correct angle to stitch together for the small sail side.

Before sewing it all together, it needs a quick check to see how it's coming together.

With a little bit of ocean to add in under the small sail, I can stitch it all together and trim, right? 

But the boat spanning the entire strip, from block edge to block edge, looks odd. The boat in this picture is close to what my Dad had,

                                     

                                           
and the front of the boat does not go beyond the small sail. My boat needs some trimming! That's pretty easy - it's just like joining pieces together to make binding, double checking that the angle is right!

Ah, much better. Now to sew it all together, and trim, keeping the strips horizontal.

Ta-da! Not bad for an improv sailboat, huh? Now it's ready to sail into the full Seafarer quilt pattern!



Happy Quilting Everyone!

Saxon Quilt and Block tutorial

Yeah! A fabulous scrap finish!

Check out Saxon, a total improv quilt made from scrap circles as part of RSC17.

And these four were all I made, as I gave up on RSC17 after 3 months, and they have been tucked away ever since.

But then the book Stash Statement came along, featuring beautiful quilts made from scraps, and I was inspired again after making the Regatta quilt.

Deciding to inset these 8 1/2" unfinished circles into 13" squares (see the Inset Circle tutorial to see how that's done), 

I really wasn't sure where to go from there. I wasn't about to just sew the blocks together, cause that would be bor-ing.

So, using the block centering marks I had made when insetting the circle, I cut them into quarters on those lines. And for fun, switched the colors around so now each new block would have a part from the original circles. With the addition of a 1 1/4" sashing strip and a black center,

I had the start of something interesting. 

Up on the design wall, there was still a bit too much background (sorry, no fore-thought to take a picture!), but little 4" scraps blocks that were made along with the circles came to the rescue. Making them into triangles, and placing them in opposite corners added what I was looking for.

Put those blocks all together, and it makes for a great design!

I love the lighter value purple inside the square, the combo of the teal and purple circles on the outside, and the teal triangles in the corners. Fantastic finish, if I do say so myself!!

Here's a few more closeups:

the circles,

the quilting of a star pantograph,

and the ever-so-lucky matching star backing.

I may make this again, maybe using solids, and possibly a bigger layout - we'll see, as I have a ton of other projects knocking at the door.

Happy Quilting!

Raspberry Cheesecake

Who doesn't like cheesecake??? How about a piece with raspberry ribbons running through it?

Yes, Raspberry Cheesecake - this quilt was sooo easy to name!!

These older fuchsia prints just sing next to the Kona Banana - such a beautiful color combo! A special thanks goes out to the 3 in 1 Color Tool (affiliate link) for helping out in that department. (See, I'm exploring color relationships!)

How about some closeups? There just had to be straight line quilting in this one,

which I had originally meant to be 1/4" all the way through. 

But, I started with a 1/2" mistake, then quilted 10" worth of 1/4" spaced lines, and thought, ugh, I have to do this all the way? Oh-so-time consuming, and possibly with a stiff result, so maybe not such a great idea.

That one 1/2" mistake then turned into a design element! I quilted a few inches of 1/2" lines, then a  few of 1/4", and so on. In the end, it was a great choice, because it certainly adds a ton of quilting interest to this quilt.

Simple loops are in the raspberry ribbons, because I wanted something curvy, and not dense. The curves and low density contrast nicely with all those close lines.

This quilt will be going to it's forever home next month, as a coworker is decorating their baby's room in pink and yellow, and this is perfect, especially with a flannel backing.

Hubby is sad to see it go. For me, I'm ok with it, cause I know I have enough fabric to make another!

For more on how this quilt was made, check out these posts:
Improv Project #4
Improv Freehand Cut Striped Fabric

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Quilting!

Improv #4 Update

Here's a work in progress picture of the fourth Improv Patchwork (affiliate link) quilt -

you can kind of tell that my free-form cutting got a bit free-er as the quilt progressed from left to right, cause the left side of that first strip sure is straight! I think I'll unsew that and give it a few deeper curves, and maybe add another strip over there. Have to see how much of the strip set I have left.

So, how was this quilt made? Pretty much like the first set of wavy improv stripes, but cutting curves from a strip set and solid fabric. Check out this super long strip set, 

approximately 54" long, 18" wide. Notice all the stored fabric underneath - all that yardage I sold off hardly made a dent!

And just like before, I cut matching curves from the strip set and the solid fabric,

using the 40" width of the solid, and moving the strip set up and down for each stripe so that the same fabrics didn't land at the same spot every time. After I fix that first section, this will probably be wide enough to call it finished.

By the way, I found this cutting technique especially useful for piecing batting scraps together. See how one edge is ragged and the other a smooth curve?

Placing the smooth curve on top of the ragged, then cutting following that smooth edge, 

makes for a well-fitting seam, easily zigzagged together.

Ta-da! Batting ready to go, though not for this project. 
So, even if you don't want to try free-hand cut stripes or curves with fabric, just know you can do it with batting!

Happy Quilting!