Fruit Loop Quilt

Many of you know that I have nine grandchildren that I adore. This is Jane who is a second grader and recently turned eight. Getting her ears pierced, finally getting to wear glasses like her sister, and getting a new quilt from her Lolly are three top things on her "This Makes Me Happy List"! Her little brother, Edmund, looks pretty happy too!

I try to always have a Leader/Ender project that I'm sewing on as I make another quilt.  The nine patch blocks for Jane's quilt were pieced as leader/enders way back in 2011. They waited patiently to become a finished quilt...so glad it works that way!

If you've never used leader/enders, but would like to try it with your scraps, there is a tutorial in my sidebar that explains the process. It's a great scrap buster and just takes a little planning and organization.  It's a habit that I don't want to break!

This was Jane's reaction to her new quilt....it makes my heart burst with pleasure! Right away she began looking for fabrics that she recognized from clothing I've made for her. I remember doing the same thing with scrap quilts that my grandmother made!

Fruit Loops is a twin size quilt and machine quilted with an edge-to-edge circle design.There's nothing better than a washed and dried quilt in all of it's crinkly goodness!

Jane agrees.

Spring Top

The last few days have been so, so, so springlike! Not unlike my newly finished quilt top! 

There are little bits of color popping up everywhere...

I love it!!

Happy National Quilting Day!

 What are you doing to celebrate National Quilting Day here in the USA?
I've been working on this....54 quilt entries from my guild into the Kansas City Regional Quilt Festival this summer. After hours of pouring over the quilts, begging for more and using our superior math skills, Vicki and I have finally drawn up the schematics for hanging all of the quilts. We have made lots of lists, measured twice and are ready to turn everything in. Whew! It's going to be an awesome display...hope you can make it!

 My sewing machine has been collecting dust for the last month it seems like, but I have been making plans....

 Spring is finally here...so why not start a new project!

 It's also time to begin a new leader/ender quilt so I've spent some time cutting squares and rectangles from my boxes of scraps and strips.

 I sewed up a few to get an idea of how it will look....glad I did because I've ended up deciding to tweak it a bit. I'll be gifting this scrappy quilt to one of my grand daughters when it's finished. It will be awhile!

 Another project on the horizon is turning these delightful confections into a quilt. The members of the Mid-Century Modern Bee baked up some yummy cakes for me in February. The last one arrived a week ago and I still need to add one made by me... I'm thinking maybe grape cake with lemon icing. We'll see. Ideas for some other fun additions to it are simmering in my brain too!

Happy National Quilting Day, America!

All Those Squares!

I really meant to begin quilting my Juicy Fruit quilt yesterday, but it was just too cold to be in the basement where my machine is, I decided. So, instead, I began putting together the rows to my latest Free Quilt-- such scrappy goodness!

 I began sewing 2.5 inch squares together as leader/enders in a light/dark pattern in January 2014. Assembling them into rows of 44 squares each, I finally have enough for a large bed quilt.

 Here's what a fourth of the 2112 squares looks like all sewn together into colorful fun!! I plan to sew twelve rows together at a time and then assemble the whole quilt from there.

 There's nothing boring about this type of simple quilt. For the postage stamp quilt, Ambrosia, that I did a few years ago, I used a white square for every other patch. It's still one of my favorite quilts and I love to just stare at it!

I think that I could stare at this one forever, too. But, I guess I better be making plans for my next leader/ender quilt instead! I've got an idea....

Practice Makes Perfect

This week I quilted and bound three small quilt tops that I've had in my sewing closet, two of them for quite awhile. Wondering why I was so inspired?

 I've been getting to know the Imperial Quilting Frame and Viking Mega Quilter that were gifted to me last month. Sadly, my quilting friend, Sharon, passed away last spring after a long battle with breast cancer. When I inquired about purchasing her frame and machine I was told that it was Sharon's wish that they not be sold, but given away. Of course, I was shocked as well as thrilled. When they came to live at my house, I, in turn, gifted my older wooden frame and Juki machine to my friend, Vicki, who has been wanting a way to quilt her own projects. Now we are both learning new skills!

 Besides being able to quilt larger quilts on a stable metal frame, the machine came with a Quilter's Cruise Control which is a stitch regulator allowing me to have consistent stitch size regardless of the speed. The control sort of dangles from the back of the Mega Quilter and there's been a little bit of a learning curve in using it. If any of you have experience with this control and can suggest a better way to mount it, please let me know.

  Quilting the three small tops was a great way to familiarize myself with the machine and frame. My mom used to say that "three's a charm" and, sure enough, by the third quilt, I was feeling pretty comfortable. I was really happy with the vine and leaf design that I tried out also.

 Both nine-patch quilts were pieced as leader/ender projects and, hopefully, will be given to wheel chair patients in Nepal. The lavender quilt was pieced by someone else and I finished it. It will be donated through my quilt guild to a child living at Safe Home.

Moose has been practicing new skills also! My husband is teaching him to retrieve the newspaper in the mornings. Somedays, it's quite a mouthful for the little guy!

 He's sure proud of himself!

Charming

Meet Charming, my end of summer quilt...

 Yesterday I shared that I was practicing my free-motion quilting on this quilt. Here's one of my favorite designs that I tried out...

 But, really, the top is so busy that you don't even notice the quilting design that much anyway. Who will ever realize that it was my sampler unless I tell them?

 I really like the large floral backing fabric. It was purchased from Joanne's several years ago. The colors are perfect for my summer/fall project.

 This polka dot binding fabric is one of those fabrics that just never seems to get used up in my stash. Maybe it multiplies at night or something! (The quilting just looks like one big mess here, doesn't it! Yes, it does.)

 Though I'm not sure when the top was finished, I do remember that I made it as a leader/ender project using up 5 inch charm squares and 2.5 inch stash squares. It's a very simple design.

 The colors are so happy and cheerful. It's a nice reminder of the colorful flowers of summer. Soon we'll be seeing the beautiful fall foliage here in the Midwest.

 One last hurrah for summer!

Cut the Scraps

 What some quilters would refer to as scraps, I call Stash. You will find pieces as small as 10 inches square or even 6 inches wide folded neatly and sorted by color in my fabric drawers along with fat quarters and larger pieces up to a half yard. As I work on quilts, I cut the even smaller leftovers into squares and strips of various sizes and store them together in plastic containers.

 Most of you probably know by now that I'm always working on two quilts at once because I use my previously cut squares as leader/enders. Currently, I'm sewing together 2.5 inch squares in sort of a light/dark combination. Instead of creating square blocks, as I usually do, this time the little squares are being sewn together into long rows.

 My goal is to make 48 rows of 44 squares. Yesterday, i reached the half-way point so took some pictures of my progress. I started this in January. (Once in a while, when I want to do some mindless sewing, I admit to working on this project by just feeding the 'twosies' under the pressure foot one after the other!)

Once I get all of the rows made, it will be an easy job to press the seams to one side, after I lay out the rows, making the seams nest together as I sew the top.

 This morning I spent a little time going through my 2.5 inch strip containers and loose charms, cutting off more squares for this scrappy quilt. 

All those colors make me so happy!

Nifty Nine Patches

You just can't beat a good 9-Patch block in my world. Back in February, I began combining 2-inch squares as leader/enders to create 128 Nine Patches. Over the weekend the last one was stitched together!

 Once I get them all pressed and combined with the 128 five-patch leader/ender blocks that I sewed up earlier, I'll have all the makings for another Free Quilt. I can hardly wait to see all these scraps together in one quilt. Stay tuned for that in 2014.

 As i finished up the leader/ender 9 patches, I made up two more for Mary, whose the queen bee for December in the Mid-Century Modern Bee. Quite a size difference, huh!

 Mary's blocks finish up at 15 inches while mine are only 4.5 inches! She plans to combine hers with some basket blocks she is whipping up....(I'm sure looking forward to seeing those baskets!) For fabrics, she requested reproduction-like styles combined with text prints. I'm hoping that she approves of my choices,

 I enjoyed getting into my drawer full of reproduction scraps so much that I decided to make two blocks!

I think that I might try mixing a few repros into my quilts  a little more in the future. How do you feel about reproductions? 

Ambrosia Reveal and the First Quarter Finish A-long Report

 My postage stamp quilt is a finish and I'm so excited about it!  Doesn't it just shout "Spring"! 

I made the blocks as leader/enders over the course of a year using 2 inch bright pastel squares from my scrap stash coupled with 2 inch Kona white squares. Did I mention that the blocks had been finished for a year? Sad, but true!

 The backing is a fun Swedish print that I purchased from Ikea last summer. Since the fabric wasn't quite wide enough, I pieced in some leftover squares and Kona white.

The quilt measures 65" X 83" and for binding I settled on a black and white stripe from the Happy line by Me and My Sisters as a contrast to the colorful piecing.

 With the busy patchwork, an all over quilting design seemed the way to go. From a white section on the back, the daisies and loops show up really well.

 My quilting adds some great texture to the front of the quilt. It will look even better after a trip through the washer and dryer! This picture shows off the colors in the quilt really well.

After lots of thought, I named my latest finish, Ambrosia because It reminds me of a big  luscious fruit salad....which has nothing to do with the fabulous green train engine. Oh, well!

Just under the wire, I'm reporting on my progress at finishing up a bunch of UFOs in 2013. Leanne is hosting a Finish-Along all year long to help keep everyone motivated. Tonight is the deadline for finishes in the first quarter. (Maybe you would like to join for the second quarter.) You can see my original list and post here.

Of the nine UFO projects that I had listed, I was only able to complete three. Do you think that maybe I was a just a bit unrealistic? 
Besides Ambrosia, here are my other two finishes:

Dipped: The top was already pieced so this was a fairly easy UFO to complete. You can see more views and details here and the "before" view here. 

 Pow: Starting out as just a few completed blocks, this twin size quilt took a lot of effort and time to complete. Because I wanted to give it as a gift for my grandson's birthday, I was super motivated to finish it. See all the beauty shots here.

 Although I can't claim "Bam" in the Finish-Along because I hadn't actually done any more than purchase the fabric for it, I consider it a finished UFO in my own mind because these two quilts 'go together' and it was also a birthday gift that I'd been putting off making. 

Progress on the other 6 projects:

Fortunate Friends: Lots of progress made, with the top almost completed.

The other 5 projects get big fat zeroes as no progress was made on them at all!  

Thank you, Leanne for helping to motivate me to keep FINISH as a priority in 2013.