Tag Archives: quilt top

Eye Spy Picnic Plaid Flimsy Finish

May 5, 2017 kittywilkin 22 Comments

I’m excited to share that I’ve finally sewn the final seam in the Eye Spy Picnic Plaid quilt top I’ve been making for my son Max. I absolutely love this quilt, made using the Scrappy Picnic Plaid quilt pattern by Lee Heinrich from Freshly Pieced, which was part of the 2016 Quilter’s Planner. I used all fabrics from my stash, a large part of which were Alison Glass fabrics. It was sort of my safety net, as this was one of my first truly “scrappy” quilts and I wanted to be sure I would love it. The vibrant colors and heavy hand of Alison Glass fabric contributions worked; I love this quilt!

If you remember, I began this quilt as part of the 2016 Quilter’s Planner Sew Along back in October of 2016 and made fairly solid progress until around December. Then the holidays and life got in the way of things and with the culmination of the sew along, this project fell back into the endless WIPs list. I think my last update here was in November. Yikes.

Recently, as I finished my last few deadline projects, I decided that it was high time for me to actually finish some of the works in progress I’ve been making at a snail’s pace for my family. I completed the final piecing of these blocks as a leader-ender project with other deadline sewing projects, and just this week, I finally sewed that final seam! That feeling of finally finishing a quilt top never gets old, does it?!

Since this quilt is slated for my nearly 5 year old son Max, I asked him to show me his favorite block. He took a quick look and pointed out a sweet and subtle yellow rabbit block, which surprised me a bit since in the past he’s claimed the turquoise scientist dog, the purple pony, or the green robot as his favorite block.

I thought maybe he had chosen the rabbit block as his favorite since it was closest and he was pretty enthralled in picking daffodils when I asked him outside, so when we returned in and out of the sun, I laid the quilt top out on the floor and asked him again to show me his favorite. True to form, he replied with a good dose of sass, “I already told you. It’s this one!” But of course.

We played a quick game of eye spy with the quilt on his lap, and I got a brief glimpse into the fun that will ensue when this quilt is actually fully quilted and bound. I have a feeling that favorite blocks will change like the wind, and there will be hours of fun centered around seeking out the little details in each print.

Max’s exploration of the quilt top resulted in a climb up and over, a flop all around, and culminated in a dramatic roll right off the couch (of course). This will be a fun family quilt for sure.

I pieced this top using my go-to 50wt Aurifil 2600-Dove thread. I’m still trying to decide how to quilt this, and whether to use Dove to quilt with an all-over design, or to break it down into sections and use coordinating colors for more dense quilting. Max’s birthday is June 14th, so part of me wants to try to shoot for completing it in time to gift it to him then, which makes me lean toward a more simple, all over quilting design, or straight lines to stabilize without going too crazy with quilting. Then again, this quilt will definitely see a lot of use, so denser quilting might be a better choice, even if it means it’s not finished in time for birthday gifting. What would you do?

I used four main strategies in piecing this quilt to ensure I would love the outcome despite any fear of scrappy quilts:

Rainbow ordered block arrangement
Bright colors including as much Alison Glass fabric as I could (easy from my stash!)
The middle grey squares are all the same solid Robert Kaufman Kona fabric (medium grey)
The black and white diamonds are all made from the same black (an unknown black with silver stars) and white (Lizzy House Twinkle Twinkle in White Metallic from her Whisper Palette for Andover Fabrics) to provide some visual consistency.

Now that I’ve made one scrappy, rainbow-ordered quilt, I absolutely understand the draw, and I don’t think I would need as many safety nets in place to ensure I love the outcome for the next one! Sticking to planned color placement and using fabrics I love would be sufficient.

What are some of your favorite patterns for using scraps?

Special thanks to everyone who sent “eye spy” appropriate scraps a couple years ago during the Instagram Quilty Wishes event. I have more to use, but this quilt would not have been possible without your contributions!

I’m linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts Finish it up Friday and TGIFF which is over with Leanne at Devoted Quilter this week, and boy it feels good to have this flimsy finished! Perhaps I should get Amanda Jean’s new book No Scrap Left Behind, too!

Quilting

Alison Glass Prismatic Medallion Flimsy Finish

May 1, 2015 kittywilkin 16 Comments

Choosing fabrics for the Prismatic Medallion mini quilt pattern has been hands down the most difficult part of the entire process. As you read in my last progress post for this project, I have been humming and hawing over fabric choice and placement for the last few sections of the quilt for about a month. Finally, this past week, I bit the bullet, made the decision, and finished sewing together the quilt top. Verdict: I LOVE it!

I realized that I didn’t take a single photo of the flimsy without the matching Aurifil thread on top, so I apologize! Then again, I don’t really apologize, since how gorgeous is that thread circle paired with the quilt top!?

Ultimately, I opted to add some Carolyn Friedlander Architextures Crosshatch in Tangerine to balance out the yellow-orange section, and swapped out some of the more saturated magenta/red Alison Glass Sun Prints for her Feathers in Dahlia, and added in a pinky-orange Sketch section to finalize the magenta-red section. I’m really happy with the outcome.

While photographing this mini, I realized that when viewed from different perspectives, the entire look of the quilt changes. Here is the exact same photo from above, just taken upside-down (or right-side-up?):

Here they are side by side, with a wide white border so that you can view each individually.

Is it just me, or do they look completely different depending on what side you call the top? For this reason, I think I will hold off on attaching a hanging sleeve to this mini before mailing it off to my Alison Glass Mini Quilt Swap partner. That way, while it means they will need to handle hanging “hardware”, they can decide what aesthetic view they prefer.

AG Prismatic Medallion compare — Aurifil fairy circle

As you can see, I had a lot of fun going through my Aurifil thread stash to find matching thread. My penchant for rainbows paid off, since I had an exact match for most of the colors, and a reasonable match for the remaining one or two.

I decided on a prismatic-style quilting pattern, in lieu of the basic “echo quilting the seams” and I’m silly excited about it. I actually finished quilting this yesterday (shhh don’t tell), but haven’t buried any of the threads or tackled binding yet. The full finish will have to wait, but I’m getting close!

It feels good to have finally made the fabric choice decision and have this mini quilt on the fast track to “finished”. I’m also doubly excited now that I have enough fabric half-rectangle-triangles to make a duplicate of this mini. That’s a definite plus to the Prismatic Medallion pattern–two quilts with one cutting bout!

I’m linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts Finish it up Friday and TGIFF.

Quilting

Dr. Seuss Flimsy Finish

March 16, 2015 kittywilkin 18 Comments

On Friday, I sewed the final white border on the Dr. Seuss quilt I’m making as a donation for my daughter’s preschool fundraiser. I am actually growing to really like this quilt, and now that it’s together, I’m almost sad to see it go. I just keep hoping that whoever wins the quilt will cherish it and know how much love and work has gone into making it.

I was able to get the quilt to stay up on the shed just long enough to take one photo before it blew to the ground.

Have I mentioned how ready for spring I am!? I am SO looking forward to bright light and green things, not to mention flowers!

The diagonal sashing, while time consuming, was not nearly as tricky as I imagined it could be. This is definitely a versatile pattern that would be a great way to showcase your favorite fabrics. You could go monochromatic, rainbow gradient, or even a scrappy arrangement like I did with these diamonds.

For the sake of time, I opted to trim the edges and add wide sashing to give it a little extra size. I know that cutting white diamonds would have allowed for all of the diamonds to be whole, but I just didn’t have the time. This quilt must be finished by this Thursday at the latest, and my sewing time is scant. While nursing my sick kiddo over the weekend, I was doubly glad I opted for the short-cut.

I like the boundary that the trimmed edges provide, too. It certainly makes it look more traditional, but I think the quilting I have planned will work well with it. I plan to free motion quilt the entire quilt, using a simple orange-peel-esque quilting pattern in each diamond, a dense triangle-rich quilting in all of the narrow sashes, and a wide rounded loop in the outside borders. I toyed with the idea of free motion quilting random excerpts from Dr. Seuss books, intertwined with Truffula trees and Seussical characters for the outside border, but both because of my time constraints and the end goal, I’m going with simple. At least, as simple as I’m capable.

My daughter immediately spotted the one spot where the diamonds “match” across the sashing, and said how much she loves the quilt. My son pointed out characters and said, “We have that book!” again and again. I’m hoping that the recipient of this quilt loves it even half as much as my kids do.

Have you ever donated a quilt to be raffled off in a fundraiser? I’d love to hear some insight, since I’m feeling torn about donating such a time-consuming creation of love to be raffled off with $2 raffle tickets. Initially, I thought that by adding a quilt to the preschool basket, it would warrant auctioning, like the other classroom fundraiser baskets. Ultimately, the PTO decided to still raffle off the preschool basket even with a quilt added, saying that they wanted the “wonderful contributions” to be accessible to all families in the school. I can’t argue with that. My husband even mentioned it over the weekend, though, asking why I said yes to this endeavor and hoping that I felt my time and efforts would be appropriately valued. Honestly, I am trying to look at it as a pure donation and an old work in progress out of the house, since when I think about the likelihood of the quilt being valued as little as a $20 blanket from Target, I feel a bit icky. If nothing more, this is a learning experience. Like I said, all I can do is hope that by being part of a raffle basket, a child who may not have any other special quilts or opportunities to be given one will win this love-filled quilt and will cherish it.

I’m linking up with Monday Makers, Design Wall, and Making Monday. Next up is to finish the quilting, which I started over the weekend before my daughter fell ill, and finally binding!

Quilting

Friday Finish: Rainbow Jellyroll Quilt Top

August 29, 2014 kittywilkin 13 Comments

Maddie’s rainbow jellyroll quilt top is finally complete! It only took me a bit over three hours to sew together, but with a fairly large summer sewing hiatus in the middle. I decided to focus on completing this quilt over a month ago, and sewed the first jellyroll strips into pairs. This past weekend I was graced with a rare chunk of uninterrupted sewing time, during which I finished sewing all of the strips together. This quilt is made entirely of strips from an Andover Fabrics Color Collection Jellyroll. Easy peasy! Go ahead and get a cup of tea or coffee (and a snack) because here comes a deluge of rainbow photographs!

I was so excited to finally finish something, I immediately dragged my husband outside for a photo shoot upon completing this top. It was a bright sunny day with a decently brisk breeze, but I just couldn’t wait. Here’s Maddie’s gorgeous rainbow on a sunny, bright blue sky day:

My husband Garrett was quite patient as I dragged him around the yard, trying to find a spot where the lighting was decent and the photos were not too washed out from the bright sun. The wind didn’t always agree with our plan, but it made for some fun outtakes:

rainbow quilt top windy outtake — You would jump up and pretend you’re a bull fighter, too, right?

As evening began to set, I decided to go out and try a shady photo shoot, since in the past I’ve captured better color richness in shaded photos. With my kiddos back at home after an adventurous day with Grammy & Great Aunt Ellen, they of course wanted to help:

The colors definitely are richer in the shady photos, although I miss the crispness of the sunny photos. With this photo shoot, I think I prefer the sun for the full-quilt photos, and the shade for the close-ups. What do you think?

helpful kids and a rainbow jellyroll quilt — I love the look of the back of a freshly pieced quilt, even with kids flopped on it.

rainbow jellyroll quilt top front — Rainbow jellyroll quilt top front.

rainbow jellyroll quilt top back — Rainbow jellyroll quilt top back.

So pretty! I am quite pleased with how this came out, even if it’s a bit off-kilter on the edges. I plan to quilt it and then square it up after it’s all quilted. For those of you who have quilted rainbow quilts before, do you have any tips? I think I am going to try to match general colors of thread, and do simple straight line quilting along each strip. I guess that means I will need to buy some more Aurifil since I don’t have a full rainbow spectrum of thread (darn. wink wink).

I need your help!
My biggest question is with the bobbin: I only have two bobbins for my machine, and thus far I have quilted only in grey. When switching colors often in your quilting, do you just wind a bobbin a small amount, and hope to get lucky with how much you will need? I don’t want to waste a bunch of thread, but once I am finished quilting in a certain color, I will need to unwind the rest of the thread from the bobbin to make room for the next color. Any tips are greatly appreciated!

I’ll leave you with one last cute picture of my helpful kids, posted on Instagram last weekend (follow me @nightquilter).

I’m linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts’ Finish it up Friday and TGIFF.