June block finished

Here is my completed block for June for CQJP 2012.  I have to say I absolutely LOVE the gold and silver braid that is framing the photo. I used one strand of black embroidery thread to stitch his name and birthday. (Like before, I blurred out his birthday. Maybe I'm being overly protective, but hey...I'm his mom. It's my right!)

Here's the button cluster in the upper left corner.

I used waste canvas with embroidery floss to make this grid. I need to remember to use that more often. It sure helps keep stitches straight! The French knots are silk ribbon.

I decided to include a butterfly on each of my children's blocks for this anniversary crazy quilt. It symbolizes the changes these wonderful kids have gone through and will continue to undergo as they head to adulthood. For Jarrett's block, I made a 3-D butterfly. I traced a butterfly from Carole Samples' wonderful book, Treasury of Crazy Quilt Stitches, onto some fusible web. After adhering the web to a scrap of cream batik fabric, I cut out the butterfly. I adhered that to another scrap of the batik and cut again. Voila! I saw this idea on a McKenna Ryan quilt. I attached the butterfly to the quilt block only on the center of the butterfly, adding some beads for the body, head, and antennae.

This is a little swirl I beaded with gold seed beads and one larger Swarovski pearl.

First Friday UFOs

Earlier this week, I got the fall newsletter from a local quilt shop. They are starting an “Almost Free” Block of the Month club in September that intrigued me. You pay $8.00 for the first month’s fabric. If you bring that finished block the next month, you get block 2 for free, etc. One of the colorways being offered is patriotic, which I love.

I was seriously considering joining this, but then I thought of all the UnFinished Objects (UFOs) that I have sitting in the armoire in my studio. Almost all of them have all the fabric already purchased for at least the quilt tops. If I made just one block per month for a UFO, I’d be able to finish up a few in the next year.

One appealing thing about doing the BOM with the quilt shop is the accountability of getting a block done each month.  I’m going to use this blog to help with accountability. On the first Friday of each month, I’m planning on posting about the UFO that I’m working on. For my purposes, a UFO is a project that I started at least 5 years ago. If I started it more recently than that, I’ll consider it a WISP (Work In Slow Progress).

The first UFO I’m going to work on is my “All Star” quilt. I was inspired by the All Stars quilt shown in the book Quilts! Quilts!! Quilts!!! by Diana McClun and Laura Nownes. This was one of the first quilting references I bought when I started my first quilt back in about 1993. I’m not using most of the blocks that they did, but I loved the idea of using patriotic fabrics and a variety of different star blocks.

According to my documentation, I started piecing this in March of 2001. (I was pregnant at the time, so I have a good excuse for why I didn’t finish this quilt sooner – babies take up a lot of time, and it doesn’t stop as they get older!) Each block is a 12” square. My plan is to have twelve blocks total. So far I have made six:



 I saw the idea for this flag star in a magazine.

 Log Cabin star

 I took a class at a local quilt shop and made this. The little triangle-squares were made with "Thangles" paper. I'm still not sure if I'm going to use this in the All Star quilt, since it's not the same type of stars as the others and it's all one fabric. I may decide to make it into a pillow, instead.

 String-pieced star

 Star with 4-patch

Rising Star

That's what I have so far. On the first Friday of September, I'll show you the new block(s) I've made for this UFO.

Happy stitching!

AP&Q Mystery Block #5

I did a bit of stitching and made block 5 (August issue) for the American Patchwork & Quilting magazine "Mystery Quilt 2012". Since block 2 has the three primary colors, I made this block with the three secondary colors. I love all the fun prints you can find in 1930's reproduction fabrics!

Happy stitching!

AP&Q Mystery Quilt Block 4

This weekend I finished block 4 of American Patchwork and Quilting magazine's "Mystery Quilt 2012". The instructions for this block are only available online here. For this block, I used the warm colors of pink, orange, and yellow.

Good thing I finished this one, since today, I got my latest issue of AP&Q in the mail. Not only is block 6 in it, but they say that block 7 is online (although it's not there just yet). I've got some catching up to do and only 2 1/2 weeks until I go back to school/work.

Happy stitching!

June block pieced

Here is my CQJP June block after I pieced it. This is for my older son. On the fabric piece to the left of his photo, I wrote his name and birthday. (Maybe I'm being silly, but for privacy, I blocked out his birthdate in Photoshop.) I will be using black embroidery thread to stitch over his name and birthday.

That's all for now. Happy stitching!

AP&Q Mystery Quilt blocks 1 -3

I've never made a "mystery quilt" before, but when American Patchwork and Quilting magazine announced that it would be doing a mystery quilt throughout 2012, I decided to play along. I have lots of scraps of 1930's fabrics from the quilts I made for my two young nieces, so I'm using those for this quilt. I made the first block this winter, then I got busy with school, so this summer I just made blocks 2 and 3. I haven't shown any pictures yet, so here you go:

 The purple, pink, and green is block 1 (February issue).

 This one, with the primary colors, is block 2 (April issue).

Block 3 (June issue) is pink and blue.

Happy stitching!

Progress

For my next four CQ blocks, I want to include a photo on each block. On my "Crazy for Roses" quilt, I used iron-on transfer paper to get a photo of a rose onto one of the blocks. I didn't really like that method, because it left the fabric with a plastic feeling.

For my Anniversary quilt, I tried something else. I bought some "Sew-In Colorfast Fabric Sheets for Ink Jet Printers" by June Tailor, Inc. These are 100% cotton, supposed to be machine washable, not that I'm planning on washing my crazy quilt :)

First I scanned my favorite photo from our wedding, and a portrait of each of my children when they were 3 months old. Then I used Photoshop Elements to resize the photos and convert them to black and white. I put all four onto one document and printed onto a Fabric Sheet. I like the feel of this fabric sheet so much better than the iron-on transfer sheet I used last time.

Now I just need to cut the photos apart and put each into a block!

In other news, I just finished sewing the binding onto the quilt for my niece's second birthday. I used 1930's reproduction fabrics and modeled the quilt after Amish Bars quilts. The quilt is draped over the sofa, so it doesn't look straight.

Happy stitching!