I'm BAAAACK!

Hello! It's been awhile since I posted! Over two years in fact. Long story short: two years ago, I was working part-time in an elementary school. My principal called me at the end of July, 2013 and offered me a job as a first grade teacher. I was thrilled to accept, but going back to full-time teaching kept me really busy! Everything in education has changed dramatically since I taught 2nd grade before my kids were born...20 years ago! So for the past two years, I have been too consumed with my teaching responsibilities (plus my family) to have much time to quilt, and if I'm not working on quilts, there's not much to blog about!

I've missed the quilt-blogging community, so here I am again. Although I can't promise to be very consistent once school starts up again next month. ;)

I have managed to do a bit of quilt-related things over the past two years. In January, 2014, my guild started a block of the month program. Different guild members designed or suggested blocks for the BOM. I decided to challenge myself to make each block improvisationally. Although I finished all the blocks last year, I didn't finish the quilting and binding until this month.

For the prints, I used some of the 2014 Downton Abbey fabrics. I supplemented with a few Kona solids. I offset the grid to add to the modern feel of the quilt. Here are a few closer shots of the various blocks:

For the back, I used some yardage of the Downton Abbey castle fabric, with a strip of the blue DA fabric on the side. The small square is my label.

Here's a close-up of my FMQ in the background. I did swirls and flowers. In each block, I FMQed different designs to go along with the block design.

My quilt guild is part of the Modern Quilt Guild, so last summer, I participated in their Michael Miller fabric challenge by making this wall hanging.

I received fat eighths of these fabrics, and I was able to add Kona snow for the negative space and (I think Kona azure?) for the binding. I enjoyed playing with asymmetry and deconstructing the square-in-square block. I FMQed the negative space in my favorite concentric circles design.

This summer, I've been enjoying some time off school to work in my studio. I'll catch you up to some of what I've been making soon!

Have a fabulous day!

Happy stitching!

FMQ progress

I've been spending all my free time free-motion quilting my J'aime Paris quilt, in hopes that I will finish it by our guild meeting this weekend. We'll see if I make the deadline!

In each of the blocks, I did a stipple.

To square up the blocks, I had framed each one with either white or light gray solid. I stitched pebbles in those frames. I like the look of the pebbles, but boy do they take a lot of time to quilt!

Now I'm working on quilting the background "negative space." I'll show you pictures of what I'm doing there soon.

Happy stitching!

Design Wall Monday ~ July 1st

Back in February, I mentioned that I joined a local chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild. I've been enjoying the meetings, and it's helping to push me out of my comfort level :) In May, we had a workshop that taught us how to make an improvisational log cabin block. Most people brought various scraps, but I fell in love with this wonderful Mon Amie fabric line by Robert Kaufman Fabrics, so I decided to use them along with some other fabrics in my stash.

At the workshop, I made three of these blocks, then I made a fourth one at home:

I really enjoyed this process; it was quite liberating to not have to be exact with everything. It reminded me of  when I piece crazy quilt blocks, although we did not use foundation fabric like I do when crazy-quilting.

I have sewn these blocks into a top, using solid charcoal Kona fabric as a background. This will be my first quilt with a lot of "negative space" ~ big in the modern quilting movement. I would show a photo of the finished top, but I forgot to take a picture of it and right now, it is in my machine being quilted. I'm hoping to have it done by our July meeting, because all the workshop participants were challenged to make their improv log cabin blocks into some sort of finished project by then.

Did I mention that I'm calling this quilt "J'aime Paris"? I truly do love Paris. I've been there twice when my husband and I have chaperoned groups of high school students from his school on trips to Europe, and I'd love to go back sometime with just my husband to explore the city.

Be sure and see some of the other projects that are on quilters' design walls over at Judy's.

Happy stitching!

Guild Sew-in

I don't think I mentioned it, but I recently joined a quilt guild...a MODERN quilt guild. Now I know you're thinking, "Ummmm - Jill - your quilts don't exactly fit the modern label." But since I want to try some modern looks, I figure the best way to learn is to join a guild that focuses on modern quilts.

So the guild had a sew-in yesterday. I decided to just bring work I could do by hand. I didn't know what the set-up would be for sewing machines and I don't have any super-long extension cords. Plus, I didn't want to lug my heavy, old, heavy, mechanical, heavy machine there. (Did I mention that my sewing machine is old and heavy due to all the metal inside? No computers in that baby. Maybe one of these years, like after my 11-year-old is graduated from college, I'll get a new machine. LOL)

I had a great time. Of course, I probably did more chatting than sewing, but that's okay. Isn't that one of the points of this type of thing?

The first thing I worked on was my name tag to wear at the guild. I had done some prep work at home: used my light box to trace my name onto solid white fabric, then sewed the four logs of the asymmetrical log cabin onto the center. At the sew-in, I used red embroidery floss to stitch my name. Then I hand sewed the front to the back, with a layer of batting inside to give it some substance. Finally, I stitched a safety pin onto the back.

After I finished the name tag, I started working on my 3rd McKenna Ryan 12" mini quilt from her Out and About series. This one is called Room with a View. After our trip to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons this past summer, I bought two other kits from this series. I realized that the space I want to hang them in is big enough for a third mini-quilt, so I went back to the shop and got this one. The bonus is that each kit was 30% off! I don't think most people would consider this a "modern" quilt, it's more of an art quilt, but it was something I could work on without my machine. I figured if the quilt police kick me out of the guild for not working on something modern enough, then it's probably not a guild I really want to be a member of! As it turned out, there were several people working on projects that might not necessarily fit in the "modern quilt" label.

I traced most of the pieces onto Lite Steam-A-Seam 2, and that's as far as I got. I think this little quilt has a lot more little pieces than the other two did (or maybe my memory is going bad!).

Lots of other quilters are linked up to Judy's to show what they've been working on. Have fun looking at all the eye candy.

Happy stitching!