Bohemian Baby Star Burst

Time to celebrate a long over due quilt finish!!  When a quilty friend of mine told me a few months ago she was expecting, I was so happy for her!!!  I know this baby will never grow up wanting for quilts, because it is being born into a family rich with quilters, but I had to make a quilt.  That's what we do!  After inquiring about how she intended to decorate the nursery, I knew these prints in Kate Spain's Voyage would be perfect; modern, fun and kind of bohemian.

Star Blossom is a beginner friendly, piece up quickly and an original design here in Wonderland.  If you'd like to learn more about it or pick up a copy you can find it here in my Craftsy Store.

UFO Busting #30

Happy Saturday to you!  I hope this post finds you happy and safe where ever you are.  It's been a crazy week watching as Hurricane Florence prepares to hit along the east coast near the Carolinas.  I did manage to sneak in some sewing earlier in the week before helping my aunt in law prepare for her weekend move.  My muscles definitely got a workout this week and the past few.

I want to give a huge shout out to my family and friends for all the help the provided with this move.  I feel very lucky to be surrounded by such wonderful people that are willing to jump in and help, when really they didn't have to.  It definitely made this move much quicker and easier.

Now on to the sewing.

UFO Busting #29

"A journey of a thousand quilts begins with a single stitch."  I was quite happy to see this piece of sage advice when chopping up this beautiful Kate Spain FQ last weekend.  Isn't that true of everything?  Do not discount the small steps we take, they lead to many great things!  Even when that one small stitch seems impossible to make happen.

My focus this week, when I could find the time has been finishing the piecing of this Star Blossom Baby quilt.  Slowly she moved in various stages.

UFO Busting #27 (A day early)

I'm back! It's back! And it feels great!  I can't wait to hear what everyone has been up to during my several weeks/months hiatus.  I have managed to sneak in some sewing time and create a few more UFO's (smacks palm to forehead).  That's okay, job security for this linky party.

This week, I focused on starting a Star Blossom Baby Quilt that will be a gift for a dear friend expecting in November.  She sent pictures of her decorated nursery and I knew immediately it needed a quilt with Kate Spain fabrics.

UFO Busting #20

It's time to celebrate today!  I'll be keeping things short and sweet though.  This week I celebrated the finish of a UFO from fall of last year and hosted for the first time yesterday TGIFF.  You can read more about this quilt here.

The quilt is an original design by myself and my husband, David.  Star Blossom is available in my Craftsy store.  Now that she has been quilted and bound, I'm happy to report she has went straight to work.  I gifted her last night to my friend for her adorable 9 month old daughter.  We were in line to handout pinwheels during the first night of parades for our local Strawberry Festival when the quilt officially went to work.  Star Blossom looked so happy when baby "Tish" (totally not her name, but I can call her what ever I want here) laid on her for the first time.  I think this quilt will be well loved and lead a very long life...if it's not replaced by 20 millions quilts I'll make for baby "Tish".

This week I am featuring Vicki at Vicki's Crafts and Quilting and her recently finished Plus quilt.  I LOVE plus quilts.  But Vicki tugged at my heart strings and stirred some nostalgia with the fabrics she used, Moda Fabric's Gooseberry by Vanessa Goertzen.

Every time I hear "gooseberry" I'm reminded of my best friend John from high school.  We spent hours on the phone watching TV (I think you have to be child of the 90's to get that).  Our favorite show/episode hands down was the "Rashomama" episode of Momma's Family.  It was a who done it episode, when momma was smacked in the head with a pot while making Gooseberry Jam.  Vicki, thanks for sharing your beautiful finish and giving me a reason to walk down memory lane.  Read more about this beautiful and fun quilt here. 

So now it's your turn?  What have you been up to this week, UFO busting or happily and shamelessly starting something new?  Link up below and tell us all about it.

An InLinkz Link-up

Time for me to sign off for this week and enjoy some fun in the sun....or rather strawberry short cake in the rain.

TGIFF--Star Blossom Baby Quilt

Well hello, everyone!  If you are new to my little neck of the woods, I welcome you and hope you will stay a little bit. 

This is my first time hosting TGIFF and thank goodness I had a finish to share with you.

I allowed this sweet little baby quilt to become a UFO.  She originally started out life to be used as a class sample for teaching a class on my and David's (my quilty husband) Star Blossom Quilt at a local quilt shop. 

After the class was over, her bits and pieces made their way with me to a weekend retreat at my friend Julie's (Pink Doxies)  and she became a cute little quilt top.

And then her story ends, November 17, 2017.  I neatly folded her up and stuffed her in the back room.  How sad.

Fast forward to now.  I'm trying to get a long arm my uncle purchased up and running correctly.  Feeling pretty certain I had the tension issues worked out to an expectable level, I decided to jump in with both feet and work on a real quilt.  So on the frames she went.

I decided on an over all edge to edge design of loops.  I'm a beginner, you know.  Every thing went pretty smoothly until the end.  There seems to be an issue with the machine but we are working on it.

I did have some weirdness in the borders.  I'm chalking it up to my first time doing this.

 

 

But for my first time trying, I'm pretty proud of it.  She's not a show quilt, but hopefully she will be a loved quilt. 

 

 

I just love this soft lavender background.  Lots of little flowers for those butterflies on the front.

 

 

Hopefully, we will have the long arm, buzzing again soon.  This quick and easy finish has me itching and begging for another one.

 

How about you?  What finishes are you celebrating today?  Link up below and tell us all about it.

 

An InLinkz Link-up

 

Before you leave I'd like to tell you a little more about me, every Saturday I host a linky party called UFO Busting to celebrate our works in progress and finished UFO's.  You'll find I'm very lenient in my definition of a unfinished object, so I hope you will come back sometime and party with us again.  I also have a mystery quilt along that has just started called Fireburst Mystery Quilt.

  You can find more information about it here.  Thanks again for stopping by for TGIFF.  I hope we will see you again soon.

 

Blue Sky Star Blossom

You guessed it, another Star Blossom Quilt.  I just love quilt this pattern.  This version of my and David's quilt was pieced using Laundry Basket Quilts's newest line Blue Sky.  I LOVE these blues.  They make me want to have a picnic, hug my grandma and eat apple pie while setting in a tree swing.  A longing nostalgia for my childhood and simpler times...but I digress.

For this 38" version of the quilt, I traded in my straight line dot to dot quilting for some fun continuous curves.  My thread choice this time around was a wonderful spool of blue and beige; Aurifil #2775 Steel Blue and #2310 Light Beige.  The Light Beige played wonderfully across the center of the quilt top.  It did a perfect job of highlighting my continuous curves in the light and medium blue fabrics, without distracting from those gorgeous prints.

When it came time to do those dark blue borders, I feared there would be too much contrast using the Light Beige.  The second question was how to quilt the borders.  I wanted to do feathers so badly.  There is a feather filler in the center star and I thought they would look fabulous in the borders as well.  Let's face it, feathers can take a bit of work and a whole lot of concentration.  My fear was that ultimately you wouldn't be able to see them very well and that's a lot of time to spend on something that is hidden.  So I went with a classic piano key border.  Quick and easy and didn't distract from those large clusters of flowers in the print.

For the binding I chose this lovely cornflower blue stripped print from the Blue Sky collection.  I love how those stripes frame the quilt and the blue gives a nice pop.

Nothing better than a finished quilt.

In honor of the long weekend for Labor Day (and celebrating three days off from work with quilting in the forecast) I've decided to run a sale on Star Blossom in my Craftsy Store from today until Monday at midnight EST.  Star Blossom pattern is available in four sizes (baby, throw, full and queen).  So if you are looking for a quick and easy project to tackle over the weekend, hop on over to my Craftsy Store and check out Star Blossom.

Today I'm linking up with Finished or Not Friday, TGIFF and Can I Get a Whoop! Whoop!



Sample Star Blossom

Man, I hope you aren't tired of seeing or hearing about the Star Blossom Quilt, because I just love it so much.  I know I might be a bit bias, but I can't help it.  With that being said, a local quilt shop in my home town, Helen's Hen House, expressed an interest in having print copies of Star Blossom to sell in their shop.  Saying I was over the moon happy to hear that is a complete understatement.  I even offered to piece and quilt a sample for her to hang in the shop.

So Helen and I worked together to pull fabrics to construct the baby quilt version of the quilt and these are the fabrics we landed on.

I love that center flower print.  I always drool over it when I'm in her shop.  The fabrics did not disappoint.  They came together to form a happy fun version of Star Blossom.

I'm becoming quite the pro at piecing this quilt.  I could probably do it with my eyes closed.  Though considering that would require running a rotary cutter and an up an down jabbing needle, I probably shouldn't, but you get my point.  I think I had this cut and pieced in just a few hours.

One phone call later, and I was in my mom's garage basting the small top together and 30ish minutes later the quilting could commence.

For this quilt I decided on four different colors of Aurifil 50wt thread; #1100 Red Plumb, #2610 Light Blue Grey, #2775 Steel Blue and #2024 White.  I just love how all the threads melt into the background fabrics.

Just like my love for Aurifil thread, my love for rulers is not a secret.  For this project I decided on the number 8 curved ruler from The Quilted Pineapple, the Handi Quilter 2"x 6" straight ruler and the new Handi Quilter Slice ruler only available to those that sign up for their Ruler Quilting Club.  I used the number 8 curve ruler to create the flower like design in the gray bars and the straight ruler for most of the dot to dot line quilting and piano key borders.

The HQ Slice Ruler came in very handy for quilting the continuous curves and radiating lines in the corner of the blocks.  Having a curve and a straight edge on the ruler makes it nice because you can use just one ruler and it fits nicely in your hand.

Since this is my 4th time quilting this pattern, I wanted to try a few new things.  I'm still rocking my hook swirls, so those made yet another appearance.  For the center pink and blue star shape I added some simple dot to dot angles, using my seams as aiming points for the lines.  For the white center star shape I was stuck.  Should I echo the side lines a 1/4", give it a filler or try something else??  After polling David, Julie (Pink Doxies), Beth (Cooking Up Quilts) and Sandra (mmm!quilts), I landed on a simple stipple but in a much smaller scale.

I'm glad that's where it landed.  I just love how it make the pink and blue star pop a bit.

Because the border fabric is a bit busy, I wanted to go with a much simpler quilting design in that space.  Sometimes, it's best to save the quilting bling (and your time) when you know it can't compete with the beautiful pattern of a fabric.  Why spend all that time doing feathers if you really won't be able to see them?  So I decided on a simple quick 2" piano key design.

How about another picture of the back of the quilt, to see all the quilting goodness on it's own?

I can't wait to deliver this quilt to Helen.  I hope she likes loves how this little quilt came together.  I still have two more baby quilt versions and another lap version of this pattern to quilt...just a warning to all you :)  If you would like your own copy of Star Blossom, it can be found in my Craftsy Store here.

So what's coming up this weekend and next week?  This weekend will be filled with catching up on the QAL's I've been participating in (well hopefully) and working on a tutorial post for next week.  You may have noticed I used (yet again) a flanged binding on this quilt.  Addicted.  I use this method all the time, but I've never officially written about it.  I guess I've never had anything new to add to the process.  I do now.  I documented the process of connecting those tricky little binding tails and hope to write a more detailed post about that process for next week.  That is probably the hardest part of this method and if you can conquer that fear, you may never machine bind a quilt the same again.  So until next week, I'll see you on Instagram.  Go quilt something!!!

Today I'm linking up with Finished or Not Friday, and Can I Get a Whoop! Whoop!

What's Up Wednesday

Wednesday just always seems like a nice day to reflect.  Look back at what you've accomplished over the weekend and a look forward to what you need to do.  So I thought I would take a few minutes to reflect on what's been going on in my sewing room house space.

I have had a few local quilt shops express interest in selling Star Blossom in their stores.  One store is right in my home town.  Helen, owner of Helen's Hen House, gave me the above fabrics this past weekend to create a shop sample of the quilt for her store.  Win, Win!  I get to play with pretty fabric, she gets a quilted shop sample, and I might sale some patterns.  So this weekend, I spent a few hours in between a line of thunder storms stitching up a baby quilt version of Star Blossom.

I cannot wait to get this one basted up and quilted this week  I'm starting to think I can make this quilt with my eyes closed, it's so fast and easy.   If you would like to pick up a copy of Star Blossom you can find it in my Craftsy Store.

Next on my list was to finish the sashing blocks called Charlotte's Web for the Pat Sloan The Children's Library Quilt.  After all of them were complete, I started stitching together the first and second row of blocks (there are still 3 blocks to be released).  Since there is a giant poodle living on the shared design wall (not my poodle), I took my rows outside and pinned them to the out building wall for a closer look.

I'll be honest I'm not sure how I'm feeling about this one.  I love the sashing fabric with the little date stamps, but not sure how it's working in this quilt.  To be fair, there are three more blocks to go and borders to be added, so I'm not going to be too quick to judge it yet.  Just keep sewing, you don't know what you've got till it's done.

Since the previous weekend I made time to make to blocks for the dog quilt, I decided to sneak in two blocks for the Sugar Skull quilt.  One in red and one in white(ish).

After all this piecing, I realized it was time to quilt, even for just a teeny tiny bit.  I need to start exercising the quilting machines more.  I need to quilt up my recent small quilt finishes and I have a customer quilt to quilt...and by customer I mean David...oh I'll make him pay, wink wink.

I posted this picture to Instagram with the caption, "So many possibilities from just this squiggly line.  What will it become?"  So what did it become?

David and I have briefly discussed how he would like his quilt quilted and it looks like he's leaning toward a woodgrain look and swirls in different sections of the quilt.  So what better way to kick start my quilty fingers than by practicing both of these designs.  So the above squiggle became a maze of wood grain.

I do love swirls and I think I've improved over the years stitching them.  Still room to grow, but I'm happy with how these turned out.  I know they will look even better on the quilt because I will be using thread that matches the fabric so they will be a bit more camouflaged.  As for the woodgrain, this was my first time stitching it and the verdict?  Super easy.  Although, it does require a bit of thinking about where to travel next and should I add an "knot hole" yet?  But a quick pause at each point allows me to think about it before I travel to the next spot.

Since I didn't fill the whole fat quarter up with these designs, I moved on to trying Angela Walter's Paisley Feather and a swirl flower design.

Paisley Feather turned out much better than I thought it would.  Still have some filling up the middle of the curve issues to work out, but I'm turning cartwheels that it turned out that great.  You can watch Angela's video for this motif here.  The swirl feather is a design I want to quilt on something so badly.  These were not the best ones I've done in practice.  I started getting frustrated and you can see my little scribble of frustration in the middle of the three flowers.  That's when I knew, it was time to walk away and do something else.  Always know when to say when.

So moving on with my week, I know I have a few QAL blocks I should work on, and small quilts to start quilting.  Hopefully, I will be able to answer an age old question on Friday...

Did Momma Duck, indeed get her ducks in a row???

Tune in later this week to find out if Momma Duck is sitting pretty with her babies or has she pulled all her feathers tail feathers out.  

Today I'm linking up with Let's Bee Social and Midweek Makers.