Black and White Plus One - Lonesome Beauty

Today was the reveal of the Swamp Fox Quilter's 2015 Guild Challenge and now I can show of my entry!  The theme this year was "Black and White Plus One." There is no gray in the quilt at all.  The illusion of gray is formed by picking out fabrics with tighter prints and varying amounts of black or white in each print.   

 The designed for this quilt came about by fusing three different quilts I saw on the internet:  The center Lonestar the outer ring of Lonestar blocks, and the stripped diagonal border.

I took several progress photos along the way with my cell phone.

 Since I worked on this quilt at various times each day, they all have different lighting.

Working full time and trying to get this quilt finished in time for the show meant random sewing times and several quick 15 minutes sessions during lunch breaks.

As I was putting the top together, I noticed the outer edge of the Lonestar got a little lost next to the black and white border fabric, so I decided to give the whole Lonestar section a skinny black outline.

Basting with the help of Sheen.
It never fails, when there is a quilt on the floor to be basted, Sheen is always here to make sure the pins are all in the right spot.

 I did continuous curves in all the diamond pieces, and some freehand in the New York Beauties.

 The borders got some fancy feathers, but they get lost somewhat in the busyness of the darker fabrics.

All those hours of shopping for the right fabrics, cutting, sewing, and quilting paid off and I am excited to say the quilt won Best of Show in our little quilt show!  It also won Best Piecing, Best Use of Theme, and second place for Machine Quilting!  I am super excited!

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Guild Challenge Quilt Progress

I snapped this photo on my phone when I was working on the borders for my guild challenge quilt.   I made another strip set just like it going in the opposite direction. Then I chopped them both up into smaller strips for the border.

I can't wait to show off the whole quilt!

Notice how I get assistance from my furry helper.

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End of April

Well, I didn't finish my goal for ALYOF.  All my spare sewing time in April was spent trying to finish my challenge quilt for my guild show.  The show is in June, but the quilts are due the first Thursday in May.  The challenge theme this year is "Black and White Plus One".  

Here is a sneak peak at one part of the quilt. I still have to finish the quilting. I may have to pull some late nights, but this will be done in time for the show!
I chose red as my "Plus One".  I contemplated picking another color because I feel there will be a lot of quilts with red, but seeing how red is my favorite color I ultimately couldn't stray from it.

I'll show the whole quilt at the beginning of June once all the quilts have been revealed at the show.

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ALYOF April Goal

I will be spending the first half of the month finishing up my guild challenge quilt, which has to stay secret till June so I am picking a smaller goal this month to make sure I have a good chance of finishing it. My Guild challenge quilt will be a finish in itself, but I want one I can show off at the end of the month.

I have been working on the hand embroidery on my "We Support You" quilt.  I got the rest of the hangers completed a couple weeks ago.  Now it is ready for a blanket stitch around the bras.  After that it will be ready for quilting.  For April's goal I am aiming for finishing only the blanket stitching.

If I finish my guild challenge early I may get to the quilting, but for now I am committing to completing the blanket stitching.  

Head over to the link party here to see all the other April Goals

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Polk A Dot Dresden In Progress

Some late night sewing tonight. Trying to get my dresden plates done in time to link up for the March ALYOF.

Bird Tree Blog Hop

I am excited to be a part of this blog hop. The birds in this fabric line are so pretty and I was lucky to be able to find the bird house panel and some coordinating fabric to go with it.

I cut each birdhouse and put them into a square in a square block on point...sort of.  The birdhouses aren't quite square, but I made them work all the same.  I used some of the all over bird fabric as the alternating blocks.  I figured the best way to show off this fabric was to cut it in a nice ten inch square.

The blue and the yellow sashing also come from this fabric line.  

They are soft colors and compliment the panel perfectly.

As I was contemplating what fabric I wanted for the back I thought about keeping it a nice pastel color to match the front, but I didn't have enough of anything in my stash that matched.  My stash is mostly jeweltones and bright rainbow colors, and a lot of halloween (which definitely wouldn't work). After letting the quilt sit for a while, I decided to go with this hydrangea print and matched some colors to go with it.  After all, birds live in bushes and trees.

Since I was only able to find the bird houses panel online, I am keeping my fingers crossed that I win one of the bird only panels from some of the other hoppers this week.  I have some left over scraps from this fabric line that would go fabulous with more birds.  ;)

If you haven't already, make sure you hop on over to these sites to see all the other bird related creations.

Friday, March 20 

Freemotion By The River

Sew Incredibly Crazy

Tea Time Creations

Baa's Amazing Adventures!

Selina Quilts

Ramblings of a Quilter

Busy Bee Quilts

Quilted Delights - (Me)

Grandmama's Stories

Thanks to Mdm Samm and Lana for getting everything set up.

To see the whole list of hoppers, click HERE.

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PQ6 Week 5 - Your Favorite Fabric

This week's theme for Project Quilting was: Your Favorite Fabric.

We were suppose to take our favorite piece of fabric (or set of fabrics) that have been sitting on the shelf for too long. The challenge was to actually make something out of it instead of caressing and admiring it.

I have a shelf that I store all my favorite fabrics.

Only the best of the best get put on that shelf.  The rest get stored on my other shelf by colors.  On this particular shelf are are several charm packs, a couple layer cakes, several random fat quarters, and two full fat quarter bundles.

For this challenge I decided to go with these two charm packs from Moda.  

I am tackling two projects this week with one quilt.  I also needed to make a quilt for my new grand niece and I knew these charm packs were the perfect fabrics for a cute little girl quilt.

Next came the hard part of figuring out what pattern I wanted to use. I knew I would be short on sewing time this week since I had to go to Rock Hill, SC for All State Choir with my son, so I ended up picking out a pattern that I could sew together in just a couple days.  I used the Jelly Roll Turn Over pattern from the Moda Bake Shop.

Yes, I am one of those people who sew over pins.  Usually I don't have any trouble but this week I wasn't so lucky.  I hit the pin in just the right spot and yanked the whole needle out of the socket, bent the pin a perfect 90 degrees into the machine, and yanked the throat plate off.

Luckily the machine and the fabric were just fine, but I have decided it may be best not to sew over pins for awhile.

I had the whole top completed and basted by late Wednesday night. Sheen was more than willing to help out, but I had to shoo him away when he decided he wanted to chew on the basting pins.  Can't have him eating those.


Since I had to leave town right after work Thursday, I packed up the sewing machine and took it to the hotel and did the quilting during choir practice.

During my son's lunch break we went to Glencairn Gardens and had a quilty photo shoot.

With the help of Sharon, a fellow project quiltian, I have named this quilt "Blooming"

It measures approx. 50 x 70 inches.

I used cute little frogs on Lilly pads for the back.

They go perfect with the flowers and butterflies on the front.

 All over swirlyness for the quilting on this one.

Click here to see all the other entries.

Voting starts Sunday Afternoon and lasts till Friday!

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ALYOF - March Goal

I almost forgot to post my March Goal for ALYOF. Today is the last day for link ups.

I've decided to work on my pastel dresden quilt. I want to have the dresden blocks completed by the end of March. This weekend I have been collecting the last Patel Polk-a-dot fabrics I need. I found the the last purple, blue, and green but I still need one more pastel pink. I have one more shop I'll try next Wednesday.

Check out all the other goals for March Here.

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Project Quilting: Week 4 - Have a Heart

The theme for week four of Project Quilting is Have a Heart.  Our project had to have at least twelve hearts in it somewhere.  I started with a photo from this post over at the Quilting Board.  The pattern comes from a book called "The Bargello Heart" by Nancy Podolski.  I didn't have time to order the book though so I had to calculate my own dimensions.  Mine turned out double the size from the inspiration photo, so I doubt I got the dimensions right, but mine looks like the photo and I am good with that.

I started out cutting 2 1/2 inch strips from 12 different fabrics.  

Then I sewed them all together in a tube and cut them in what looked like the right size widths,

After that it was just a matter of opening the tubes at the right seams to get the heart design.

I finished the quilting and binding late last night with 12 hours to spare for today's deadline.

I named this one My Growing Heart.
The twelve hearts start in the center and grow in size with each new color.

The quilt measures approximately 72 x 53.
 

I did a lot of different quilting designs in my all over quilting - hearts, feathers, flowers and swirls.
Just what ever I felt like quilting when I got to that section.

I used an orange flower print for the back.
Since it was only 44 inches wide, I split it down the middle with a blue strip.
Fastest way to do backings for me without having so much fabric leftover.

One last picture of it, because I love it so much!

Make sure you check out all the other entries for this week
here at the Persimon Dreams blog.

Voting starts at 1pm eastern time today.

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We Support You - Blog Hop

Welcome to another day of Support!
Thanks to Pat  from Scrapatches and to Mdm Samm of Sew We Quilt for hosting another fantastic hop.  This hop is to show support for those we know who are dealing with Breast Cancer.  I personally know a special someone who has fought the battle and thankfully she is on the winning side.  All women who suffer are in need of support no matter what stage they are in,  from the first diagnosis to being counted as a Survivor.

When I think of support, I think of love. So I decided to add lots of love to this quilt.  I saw a tutorial for these hearts a couple week ago and knew they were the perfect addition to my support quilt.

Right now my project is currently still in progress.  I wanted it to be perfect for my friend and ended up changing it several times along the way. One of the most time consuming changes I made had me ripping out several stitches in order to get the quilt to look the way I wanted. I originally had green sashing, the same green as the bra straps, but it just wasn't the right.  After several days of staring at it I knew I had to take it all apart and change out the sashing.  After several new fabric auditions I finally found the perfect border.  That put me a little behind schedule, but it was worth it.

I am in love with this quilt!  

I am in the process of hand embroidering the hangers.
I timed it and they take me about half an hour for each hanger. I was on a roll and was more than halfway done when I ran out of black floss.  It is taking way more floss than I thought to back stitch all these, but I should be able to go into town next week and pick up more #310 DMC Black.

If you are interested in making the hearts, Cluck Cluck Sew gives dimensions and instructions to make several sizes.  Check out her tutorial here.

If you would like the "We Support You" Friendship Quilt Pattern, you can purchase it for $12.00 by emailing Madame Samm directly at madamesamm@me.com

Thanks for stopping by and 

be sure to check out all the other Supporters today

Feb 6^th  

I Piece 2 - Mary

Baa's Amazing Adventure

Quilted Delights  (ME)

The Blended Blog

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February ALYOF Goal

Next on my list to finish is my Strip tube quilt.
I am posting this one as my February goal for ALYOF.

It is already basted so I just need to get it under the machine.

Click here to see all the other goals this month.

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January Finish for ALYOF

Top is done! Yay! Just in time to link up for January's ALYOF goal party.

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Sashing and Cornerstones

I am diligently working on getting my Christmas Dresden quilt top done by the end of January.
Not quite sure how this month got away from me so fast, but there are only two days of January left.
Getting the top done by the end of January is my ALYOF goal so I will be spending the rest of tonight in the sewing room.

The sashing is already sewn together and  I sewed a little bit during my lunch break today and got most of the 9 patches finished.

Tonight I will make the red red centers to cover the holes in the dresdens.

After that all I need to do is sew the rows together.

Lets hope all goes well in the sewing room tonight!

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Project Quilting Week 2 - Missed it by a few hours

The Theme for Week 2 of Project Quilting was Sunrise/Sunset.  

I had grand visions of creating a nice size quilt this week.
I had the pattern I wanted,
picked out my fabrics without any trouble,
and got everything cut out in record time.  

Piecing was going great and everything was on schedule to finish by Saturday night, and then my previously empty week was fill with appointments, family events, and my son's broken collarbone (Bone is mending fine thank goodness).  

At 11:45pm last night I seriously contemplating staying up to finish the quilting and binding, but when I started adding up the hours I knew I would be up till at least 5am and if I did that I wouldn't make it to church in the morning.  So I resigned myself to sleep and missed the deadline by 5 hours.

I still feel like a winner though having this new top finished.

And I am excited to vote for all the other fabulous entries for week 2!

Go Check them out Here!

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Actual First Finish for 2015

I started this quilt at the end of 2014 and put the last quilting stitches and the binding on during the first week of 2015, making this quilt my first finish for the year.  It was made for my new friend Marie.  These are her church T-shirts and she wanted them bordered her church's color, a light green, I dropped it off to her this past Saturday and she loved it.

Now its time to tackle some of my own UFO's.

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