Another Little Baby Quilt Finished

I just finished another little baby quilt for a shop sample.  It’s from the Villa Rose pattern “Sunsprite.”  It only took a little over an hour to piece.  Like many quick and easy patterns you really need to pick fun fabrics to make them work.  This one would work particularly well with larger prints.  It turned out pretty cute.  Both this one and the Eureka quilt I finished a few days ago will be donated to Quilts for Kids after hanging in the shop for awhile.

Curious Nature Quilt Finished

Last May I picked up a fat quarter pack of fat quarters from a line called “Curious Nature” by David Butler (Amy Butler’s husband).  I loved the fabric and decided right away the pattern “Lemon Pepper” by Madison Quilt Cottage would be perfect. 

The pattern called for 18 fat quarters and that was the number I thought I had.  Well as I started cutting, and cutting and cutting I realized there were more than 18 fabrics in the pack.  Sure enough, there were 24.  So I went ahead and cut them all up and thought I’d make the quilt a little bigger.  For this particular pattern you sew strip sets, then cut the strip sets into segments and sew the segments back together to make the blocks.  After cutting the segments there was a pretty big chunk of fabric left over so I figured out how to use it ALL to make blocks.  So I ended up with even more blocks for this quilt.  I didn’t really want a huge quilt so I divided the blocks and made two quilts.  The pattern didn’t call for a border but I added one to my quilt.  I LOVE this quilt.  I love the pattern, the fabric, the quilting…really just everything about it.

This quilt used 8 yards of fabric so that’s 8 more on my goal of 1,760!  It’s currently listed in my Etsy shop here:  https://www.etsy.com/listing/114994235/curious-nature-lap-quilt

It's A Girl Thing

Recently an Etsy customer who purchased one of my quilts awhile back commissioned me to make a quilt for a friend of hers. She wanted it in the line of fabric called “It’s A Girl Thing” from Michael Miller. I ordered some of the fabric and fell in love when it arrived. It is SO cute. There are lots of dots, an animal print, a large floral and an Eiffel tower print all done in greys, pink, and blush.

The quilt she wants is pretty easy to piece. This is one of blocks—just squares and rectangles.

I finished all the blocks, pieced the top together and now have it loaded on the frame for quilting. I really like how it’s turning out. I’m quilting overall swirls so it shouldn’t take too long. I’m hoping to have the quilting finished and the binding on tomorrow so I can get it in the mail to her. 

A Little Saturday Sewing

I got up this morning a started piecing a new quilt called “Buffalo Ridge.”  This quilt is completely from stash so it will count toward my mile challenge.  Every month a group of friends meets at my house for sewing (and laughs).  This group started about 8 years ago as the International Mystery group at the Patchwork Sampler shop and we’ve just continued meeting.  For the past couple of years we’ve selected a book of stash busting quilts to try to use up some stash.  This year the book is All-Time Favorite Scrap Quilts.

It’s a compilation of quilts from various That Patchwork Place books.  It has a lot of great quilts in it.  I wish I’d been able to keep up with the monthly quilts but unfortunately I’ve fallen behind.  Anyway, this month I’m starting to piece Buffalo Ridge.  The first part of the quilt is pretty putzy but once I have these units finished, the rest should go pretty fast (except for the pieced border).  This quilt was initially in a Nickel Quilt book by Pat Speth.

This doesn’t look like it will use much stash when you consider this little box of “parts” will make a full-size quilt. Ha ha! 

The first units I need to piece requires sewing half square triangles onto squares.  It became evident very quickly that it would be much easier to piece these if I trimmed the “dog ears” off the triangles BEFORE sewing them to the squares.  It’s much easier to match and align the pieces and there’s no need to trim after piecing.  If you haven’t used a point trimmer before, here’s a couple of photos to demo the process.  I use the Judy Martin trimmer but I also have the set of Fons and Porter trimmers.  I just think it’s easier to see what I’m trimming using the clear tool.

To use this just line up the lines of the triangle on the tool with the fabric triangles (left) and cut with a rotary cutter.  You’re just trimming off the tip (center).  Then you can easily align the blunt top with the top of the square and sew (right)!  No dog ear to trim later!!

Here are the units I’m piecing.  I need 80 for the quilt I’m making and I’ve finished 24.  It’s kind of slow going but I’ll get there.

Quick Finish

The other day we noticed that we didn’t have any samples of baby quilts for girls.  I quickly pulled a few fat quarters and made a little quilt using the pattern “Eureka” by Villa Rosa Designs.  These little pattern cards are great when you need to make a quilt really fast.  It turned out pretty cute.  It only takes six fat quarters to make the 36” x 45” top.  It was fun to make and provided a little instant gratification.

This picture shows the fabrics a little better.  It’s a good way to use larger scale prints.  I quilted it in a simple vertical “water” design.  You can see the quilting up close if you click on the picture to enlarge it.  This quilting motif is about as easy as meandering but looks like it takes more work.  It’s a good choice for baby quilts because it’s not so dense the quilt is stiff.

I’m not counting this fabric toward my one mile challenge since it was never really in my stash and the quilt is for a shop sample.  I’ll probably list it on Etsy once the kits are gone.