Thursday, May 30, 2013

WIP Whenever

I decided to use up some well-aged fabric for this guild-pieced version of "Modern Snowball". When it's finished, it will become a fundraiser quilt for a non-profit organization.

This is another quilt top for Quilt Bank, the committee of my guild (New Mexico Quilters' Association) responsible to raffle/silent auction quilts. The applique heart blocks were donated. I purchased coordinating fabrics to create the top shown. My hope was to add more character than doing a basic patchwork design would provide.

 I'm well pleased with how my brother's graduation quilt is coming along, regardless of the fact that he just completed his sophomore year of college. I plan to add a few borders before prepping it for quilting. The C's are letter jacket letters. The logo is raw edge applique. As this quilt is unlikely to go through the wash, I opted not to stitch down the logo. When I attempted this, it gave the poor Indian numerous puncture wounds. Besides, it's no small task navigating around those jagged, small pieces.

Today's Tutorial - Modern Snowball




Wednesday, May 29, 2013

The Project of Doom

Fandom in Stitches is an impressive blog containing free patterns for fans of Harry Potter, Dr. Who, The Hobbit, and the like. They have an entire pdf of the quilt pictured below on Craftsy. Isn't it great?

Today's Trend - Text Prints

Lynette at Sew.Knit.Grow has a lovely collection of text fabrics. These are very on-trend right now. They also make for incredible low-volume background fabrics.

Polaroid Quilt Block

Capitol Quilter has a fabulous idea for novelty prints that takes me back. Her tutorial for a Polaroid Quilt is retro at its best. Now my excess novelty prints have a plan! This would be great for a swap too. I'm thinking I'd like to make them a little larger, perhaps, so each polaroid fits on a 6" finished square.


Jamie at Busy Bee Quilts explains how to set them in a wonky block.


OccassionalPiece-Quilt! pars the instructions down to a single photographic image.



Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Vicarious Quilt Market

Checking out pics from those who attended Quilt Market in Portland has been a feast for the eyes and a source of temptation for the future (when all those upcoming fabrics are released). Here's a collection of blog posts to check out if you were stuck at home like me:
Sew, Mama, Sew!
Diary of a Quilter
Ric-Rac
One Lucky Day
Cluck Cluck Sew
In Color Order

Flickr also has some eye candy.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Albuquerque Modern Quilt Guild May Challenge

Each member of the Albuquerque Modern Quilt Guild chose a color from a bag. I chose aqua. This was to be combined with green in honor of emerald being chosen as the pantone color of the year. In addition, we were to use white, black, or gray as the background color to create a modern block that would finish at 12".  Our blocks will be combined into a raffle quilt to support our charitable efforts.

I used the quilt below from Elizabeth Hartman at Oh, Fransson! as inspiration.

I created the block featured below using Kona solids. I took a rectangle of the green and a rectangle of the aqua, and sewed a 1" strip of white between them. I continued cutting parallel lines and inserting 1" white strips. When I was satisfied with the spacing, I made several cuts going perpendicular to my original cuts. I flipped some of the strips 180 degrees. I sewed them all back together with 1" white strips. To get the block 12 1/2", I made a white border. After all, cutting and adding a 1" strip doesn't actually make the block any larger, as it takes up 1" in the seam allowance.

These are the blocks the group collectively generated. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Well, that depends. Are you thinking, "How in the world are those widely varied blocks going to go together and make anything remotely cohesive?" or, as the non-editorialized version probably went, " How the heck is that ever going to look good?" I have no idea! If it were up to me, my control-freaky tendencies would probably get the best of me and I'd nix the idea of putting these together in favor of completely starting over. However, I have faith in our construction committee. I eagerly await whatever they decide. If you have any ideas about how to make this work, leave a comment on this post.