Tag Archives: rainbow

Stash Building: Sun Prints

March 3, 2015 kittywilkin 9 Comments

Before heading to QuiltCon, I promised myself I wasn’t going to go crazy with buying tons of fabric and notions, etc. Truly, I stuck to my word–probably more because I simply didn’t have time to browse the vendors as much as I would have liked, but still! The one fabric line that was on my list of “definitely buy” was Alison Glass’s new Sun Prints. I am signed up for the Alison Glass Mini Quilt Swap, so really, I needed to buy some anyway. However, in my mad dash through the vendor booths on Saturday afternoon, I discovered that many booths were getting cleared out. When I arrived at Pile O’ Fabric‘s booth, they had only ONE bundle left of Sun Prints Mercury and Grove, the two that were on my must-buy list. I was planning on seeking out fat eight bundles, but these were, um…. half yard bundles. Close? I bought both, my only non-food purchases the entire trip.

alison glass sun prints fabric rainbow — Grove on top, Mercury on bottom: Half yard bundles of Alison Glass’s newest Sunprints from Pile O’ Fabric.

I love how this gorgeous pile of fabric has a Pile O’ Fabric tag on it. What a great name for a fabric store!

I’ve had my eye on the new Sun Prints since they were released for preorder. The saturated, bright colors and tone on tone nature of this fabric line falls right into the “Kitty ~~must have it~~ loves it” category. I admit I did hesitate before buying both half yard bundles, since it’s the largest one-time fabric purchase I’ve made to date (yes, I’m that frugal when it comes to buying fabric). I KNOW that these fabrics will be loved and used, though, so carpe diem, right?

With all these gorgeous colors, I had to arrange them in a rainbow for some serious photo shoot yumminess. Mercury, meet Grove. Feast your eyes on these beauties!

I had my usual helper during this photo shoot, and I will be astounded the day he doesn’t want to “help” by being right smack dab in the middle of the photos. As per usual during our sunny day playroom photo shoots, Max took turns taking photos and posing in the photos. In my opinion (and I’m sure in Grandma’s opinion, too), his cute mug just makes the photos that much more perfect.

I seriously love this kid!

And I love the rainbow gorgeousness of these fabrics. Here, I’ll take you for a little stroll down Rainbow Way:

Now that these lovelies are officially part of my stash, I just have to figure out the perfect pattern to make for my mini partner. And then decide what to make with the leftovers!

What pattern would you use to let these gorgeous colors shine?

I’m linking up with Molli Sparkles’ Sunday Stash, since if he can be a bit late, I can, too! Tuesday, Sunday… eh, it’s close enough!

Free Motion Quilting (FMQ), Quilting

February Finish {ALYoF}: Rainbow Jellyroll Quilt

February 27, 2015 kittywilkin 18 Comments

With one day to go, I did it! I finished my daughter’s first quilt–a Rainbow Jellyroll Quilt! I’m excited on many levels, since not only was this my first finished quilt for an immediate family member, it was also my goal for February in A Lovely Year of Finishes. A late night binding session last night and a specially requested free-motion quilted dedication session this morning were the final touches.

I’m happy with how this quilt turned out, but it was a definite lesson in dealing with and loving imperfection. Mental note: when choosing a backing for a VERY linearly directional quilt top, avoid extremely linearly directional fabrics. Before beginning this quilt, I bought some yardage of “The Dotted Line” by De Leon Design Group for Alexander Henry Fabrics as backing. It really is perfect; I just didn’t PERFECTLY line up the backing with the front before quilting, so it’s a little off kilter. I opted to quilt this before squaring it up, since the edges of the jellyroll strips weren’t perfect, but I think that due to the linear nature of both front and back fabrics, I should have squared up my top before quilting. We’re always learning, right?

I do like how the quilting from the front looks on the back, even though it’s not perfectly parallel to the dots. Maddie certainly doesn’t love it any less due to its off kilter elements.

I quilted this quilt with primarily Aurifil 40wt thread, which worked perfectly. It was enough extra weight to make the quilting visible (especially the free motion quilted dedication: “Made for Madeline Joyce with love from Mommy”).

The 40wt Aurifil really helps the stitches pop!

I decided to machine bind the quilt using Cluck Cluck Sew‘s fabulous Machine binding tutorial, since I’m counting on this quilt getting loved to tatters by my little (big!?) five year old. After sewing the binding to the front, I pressed it out around the edges with a hot iron, and folded and pressed the corners how I wanted them to look. Using this little trick, when sewing the binding to the back, I didn’t sew onto the front binding at all! At least one part turnedy out perfectly!

maddie on her rainbow quilt — Maybe she will share with her little brother… one can hope!

Quilt Stats

Pattern: Inspired by a Rainbow Jellyroll Quilt seen on Creativebug; I simply sewed jellyroll strips together.

Size: 42″x 61″

Fabric:
Front: Andover Fabrics Color Collection jellyroll
Back: “The Dotted Line” by De Leon Design Group for Alexander Henry Fabrics 2012
Binding: Poppy Passion Bead Stripe by Springs Creative Products Group

Batting: 100% cotton Warm & Natural batting

Thread: Aurifil 40wt in coordinating colors (contrasting color used for free motion quilted dedication)

Quilting: Straight line echo quilting 1/4″ from each seam; Free motion quilted dedication: “Made for Madeline Joyce with love from Mommy” “2015”

I’m linking up my finish for A Lovely Year of Finishes February Goals Party, TGIFF & Sew Can She Show off Saturday.

Quilting

February Goals {ALYoF}

February 3, 2015 kittywilkin 11 Comments

January flew by, but somehow I managed to meet my sewing goal for the month. Now we’re on to February, an already short month. To top it off, QuiltCon is in the middle of the month and there is a TON to do before I head to Austin. I have been debating which project to choose for this month of A Lovely Year of Finishes (ALYoF) and I’ve decided NOT to choose any of my QuiltCon prep projects (just in case I have to abort mission and go to the conference without newly handmade accessories) and instead to choose Maddie’s Rainbow Jellyroll quilt as my goal. All I have left to do is square up the quilt and bind it. Sounds doable, even though I’ll most likely be working on it after I return from QuiltCon.

I quilted it with straight lines 1/4″ from each seam, in coordinating colors of Aurifil 40wt thread. I am LOVING it and clearly, so is my little helper. This quilt is for Maddie, but Max certainly had a grand old time rolling around with it during the photo shoot while Maddie was in preschool.

I like how the quilt lines look on the back WAY more than I thought I would. I was all worried they would look off kilter, but it looks fine to me (don’t mind the fluff balls!).

I’m linking up with the February goals for ALYoF.

Quilting, Stash Building

Rainbow Thread Eye Candy

January 21, 2015 kittywilkin 17 Comments

I have a confession to make: I’ve never made a quilt for an immediate family member. There, I said it. Yes, I have two kids and another on the way. Yet, I’ve never made a baby quilt for one of my own babes let alone myself or my husband. Well, that’s finally about to change! I’ve been working on a Rainbow Jelly Roll quilt for my daughter Maddie since early July of last year (as seen HERE and HERE), but it always seems to get shoved to the back burner behind projects for other babies, baby showers, and other family members. Finally, on Maddie’s birthday right before Christmas, we laid out the quilt and matched some threads to help psyche myself up for quilting and hopefully finishing her very first quilt.

I decided that I wanted to quilt this with simple seam-echoing straight lines in coordinating thread, but that would require a rainbow gradient of thread (awww, darn! I have to buy a spectrum of Aurifil!?). I had a couple of spools of organic cotton Scanfil and one 50wt spool of Aurifil that already matched, so I went onto the Hawthorne Threads site and ordered the supplementary colors. I opted for 40wt since I had never tried them before and the website said they were good for machine quilting. I figured a little bit thicker than 50wt wouldn’t hurt, so these 40wt beauties were added to my stash.

I’ve since then started and almost finished quilting this Rainbow Jellyroll Quilt, so I think my eye candy photo shoot worked! Here are some more gorgeous photos from my photo shoot with my adorable five year old, her rainbow jellyroll quilt, and the matching Aurifil thread.

matching rainbow thread — Most of the time, Maddie had fun giving me a smile for these photos.

I think she may have been a bit bored during some of it, though! LOL!

I seriously love Aurifil thread. It shines, has never broken once, and doesn’t fuzz up my machine NEARLY as much as other hand-me-down threads I use upon occasion. I’m excited to be slowly growing my supply of Aurifil.

It’s a bit of a motley crew, but I think the resulting quilting is going to be gorgeous!!

Here’s an Instagram selfie I posted while quilting. It’s my first-ever quilting selfie! See!? I’m making progress!

I’m linking up with Molli’s Sunday Stash and Lee’s WiP Wednesday. Building my stash to move a work in progress forward a bit more is always fun!

Quilting

Guild Envy & Modern Block of the Month Progress

October 6, 2014 kittywilkin 8 Comments

I’ve never been to a quilt guild meeting. There, I’ve said it. The nearest Modern Quilt Guild is the Maine Modern Quilt Guild (MMQG), and they meet over 2 hours away. With two little kids, it’s not really possible for me to meet with them with any kind of regularity. There’s another local, traditional quilt guild about 30 minutes away, and I hope to attend some of their meetings, but I just haven’t been able to make it work yet.

I read and hear so much about the fun projects people do at Modern Quilt Guild meetings: the new skills learned, the opportunities to be a part of a charity quilt or MQG contest, the tricks and tips shared, and I very much want to be a part of that! So far, though, I’ve only been participating from afar, via email as much as I can. That will have to do for now. You, my blogospheric quilter buddies, are my quilt guild–so thank you!

One MMQG activity I have joined is their Block of the Month.

BOM progress modern quilt block — My MMQG BOM progress so far.

Because I’m not able to attend meetings, I think I’m already behind simply because I don’t know what the September blocks are yet. I think most of the blocks are coming from Tula Pink’s City Sampler: 100 Modern Quilt Blocks, and sadly I do not yet own the book. I was sent the patterns for these blocks over the summer and I’m eager to make some more. (Amazon affiliate link above, fyi)

This MMQG BOM quilt will consist of 36 blocks, and the layout is slowly taking shape in my mind. Nothing is set by any stretch, but I’m combining my love of grey as a background color with my infatuation with rainbow gradient. Each block will consist of one main color and a shade of grey. After seeing these blocks, I think I may switch it up a bit and have some of my future blocks have the rainbow color on the outer portion with the grey in the center. Here’s what I’ve completed so far:

tula pink block 83 modern quilt — Tula block No. 83

tula pink block 57 modern quilt — Tula block No. 57

tula pink block 97 modern quilt — Tula block No. 97

tula pink block 33 modern quilt — Tula block No. 33

tula pink block 65 modern quilt — Tula block No. 65

I definitely have come to love creating these blocks. I was hesitant at taking on a new project, especially one that I would be joining from afar when everyone else in the guild would be quilting along and sharing progress. After making these first five adorable (they finish at 6″x6″) blocks, I’m hooked. And I’m excited to see how my color choices grow and build as I get more experienced with these little modern blocks. The final one I made is definitely my favorite.

I think my next step is to buy the 100 Modern Quilt Blocks book so that I can find out what number blocks are next! I’m glad I decided to take on *just one more* project, since these 6″ blocks are a great little break from other larger projects, and I don’t have to think too hard about design just yet. The blocks look so tiny on the side of our shed now, but I’m eager to see them grow!

tula pink modern quilt block — Tiny little blocks

Have you made any Tula Pink’s City Sampler quilt blocks? I’d love to see them, and the color design and layout you chose! Please link to your projects in the comments.

Design, Paper piecing, Patterns, Quilting

Friday Finish: Leaf and Fishies Rainbow Row Patterns

October 3, 2014 kittywilkin 10 Comments

The hustle and bustle of the autumn harvest season has overflowed into my sewing habits. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been finalizing some new foundation paper piecing patterns with the help of some awesome pattern testers. I’m relatively new to the solicit-pattern-testers game, but I managed to find some great and enthusiastic testers through the Late Night Quilters Club facebook group. Here are my new patterns, and a sampling of the fabulous testing:

Leaf

This pattern literally came to me as my family was driving home from church one Sunday. I have been really trying to simplify my patterns and focus on geometric symmetry. Perhaps the turning leaves speckling our drive home inspired me, but either way I quickly sketched out this pattern on a scrap of paper while my husband drove (don’t worry–I didn’t sketch it out while driving!). Here we are a few weeks later and it’s ready to go!

One of the most exciting things about sending your pattern to testers is the anticipation of what color scheme and design each tester will choose. My testers for this leaf didn’t disappoint! Check out these lovely tester versions; they are so incredibly varied and gorgeous!

Pattern tested by Shayna Shipley-001 — Pattern tested by Shayna Shipley from http://wifemomcreator.com

Leaf Pattern Tested — Left: Pattern tested by Sarah Pitcher at http://pitcherfamilyadventures.blogspot.com Right: Pattern tested by Cheryl Schenck at http://myfeeddogsaredown.blogspot.com

Each of these three lovely ladies will be giving away a copy of my new pattern on her blog, so head on over to check them out and try your hand at winning this seasonal leaf pattern. The pattern is also listed for sale in my Craftsy store, and will be on sale for $3.50 for one week before it goes back to its usual price.

Fishies Rainbow Row

Just about immediately after sketching out my original Fishies panel, the idea for this alternate layout and color scheme came to mind. I sketched it out and wrote out rough piecing instructions and then put it on the back burner. When asking for pattern testers, Julie Schloemer from That’s Sew Julie offered to test my fishies panel pattern. After looking through her blog and seeing her style, I thought she might be interested in making my rough idea into a reality. Little did I know that she would literally make my exact vision into a reality! Here is the Fishies Rainbow Row pattern, exactly as I envisioned it, pieced and quilted by Julie.

I loved watching Julie’s progress with this on Instagram, from the first pieced fish, to the matching of thread in preparation of quilting, all the way to finishing as a lovely pillow. Check out these great photos by Julie:

Julie will also be hosting a giveaway on her blog, where you can enter for a chance to win a free copy of this pattern. The pattern is also listed for sale in my Craftsy store and will be on sale for $3.50 for one week until it returns to its usual price. Get it now!

I also recently created a Flickr group called Night Quilter Creations, where you can post photos of projects you’ve made using my patterns. If you’re on Flickr, go check it out, join in, and post your photos! I’d love to see what you create!

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

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.

Design, Life

Color Inspiration Thursday {13}

August 7, 2014 kittywilkin 7 Comments

Sometimes you see a burst of color so amazing, you just can’t let it go. That happened to me yesterday, when my cousin Kayley posted these amazing photos of glass sculptures created by Dale Chihuly, seen at Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle, Washington. Kayley is visiting our aunt in Seattle, and her photos are just amazing! They are taken with her camera phone, but the back-lit glass sculptures look so vibrant that I feel like I could reach out and touch them. Most of the photos are detail shots taken of a suspended 1,400-piece, 100-foot-long sculpture.

Part of Dale Chihuly's suspended 1,400-piece, 100-foot-long sculpture in the Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle, Washington. — Part of Dale Chihuly’s suspended 1,400-piece, 100-foot-long sculpture in the Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle, Washington.

I think you will agree that these photos just begged to be turned into quilt-inspiration color palettes!

These beautiful palettes are created with Play Crafts’ Palette Builder 2.1 and photographs taken by my talented cousin Kayley Gallagher.

Corresponding Kona cottons from left to right:
Tangerine, Lipstick, Ocean, Royal, Cedar, Citrus

I absolutely love this color palette! Consisting almost entirely of primary colors, it is bright and cheerful. I think it would make a great kids’ quilt.

Corresponding Kona cottons from left to right:
Mahogany, Poppy, Lipstick, Plum, Surf, Hibiscus

This palette makes me think of the purple hat ladies. Purple hat ladies make me think of fun-loving, bold and beautiful women who do what they want without concerning themselves with what others may think. Can you tell that I hope to join their ranks someday? What fun! Passionate reds and purples, with a bit of rich mahogany make this another vibrant palette.

Corresponding Kona cottons from left to right:
Black, Sable, Cappuccino, Shadow, Parsley, Honey

This palette isn’t colorful, but sometimes we need to focus on neutrals. This earthy palette has a good balance of neutrals and achromatic colors and would make a lovely subtle quilt or foundation for a quilt with a splash of additional color (maybe a bright Leprechaun green to pull from that subtle kona Parsley?) Plus, what an amazing glass squid sculpture!

Corresponding Kona cottons from left to right:
Slate, Lime, Wheat, Lipstick, Rose, Corn Yellow

I’ll leave you with one more rainbow color palette to cap off this week. This photo features all the colors of the rainbow, which is well represented in the resulting palette. I don’t know about you, but I’m on a definite rainbow gradient quilting kick lately. You can’t go wrong with rainbow!

Special thanks to Kayley this week for letting me use her photographs to help inspire more colorful creative works of art. Enjoy!

Quilting

Work in Progress: Rainbow Jellyroll Quilt

July 9, 2014 kittywilkin 12 Comments

Lately I’ve been trying to multitask during my sewing time, since this summer is so full of outdoor adventuring that my time spent sewing is little. The last time I had a good chunk of sewing time, I worked on piecing three projects at once. It made for little bits of progress for each, but no big noticeable progress on any one quilt. Today I decided to focus on one quilt so that I can hopefully get a finish under my belt to renew my quilting fury. Since I have yet to complete quilts for my kids, I decided it was high time I remedied that, and I decided to focus on sewing together my daughter’s rainbow quilt.

My design wall is one huge fail, so I had to lay out the strips while the “wall” was laying flat on the ground, and then slide it up to take photographs as quickly as possible before the pieces all fell to the ground. The bumps bug me, but such is life. Nothing’s perfect, especially not a partially pieced quilt top! A new design wall is creeping its way up my to-do list.

My four-year-old daughter wanted a rainbow quilt, and while searching for ideas, I came across this gorgeous quilt on Creativebug.

I had never created a quilt using jellyrolls before, but only a couple of days after seeing this quilt, the deal of the day on Missouri Star Quilt Company’s site was the Andover Fabrics Color Collection Jellyroll. Sweet! Needless to say, I bought the jellyroll and added another work in progress to my list.

Today during my two-year-old’s nap, I finished sewing the strips into pairs. I’m hoping I’ll be able to finish sewing all of the paired strips together soon and will have a completed quilt top within a week or two. Next I will have to decide whether to keep it simple and finish it, or to add a border or edging to the quilt. Because it’s for my four-year-old, I’m leaning toward finishing it simply and letting it be small enough for her to drag around with her. What would you do?

I’ll leave you with some fun photographs from my playroom photo shoot today.

I love playing with depth of field!

Since I’m sneaking this in before midnight, I’ll link up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

Quilting

Wonky Rainbow

March 3, 2014 kittywilkin Leave a comment

I’m attempting my first wonky anything in quilting. “Wonky” is a word I rarely heard before getting into the modern quilting world. The first quilting blog I ever followed is Bijou Lovely, and it’s still one of my favorite blogs! The photography is always stellar with lots of bokeh (narrow focal length resulting in that gorgeous blur around the point of focus), the projects are gorgeous, her tutorials are the best I’ve found, and I’m always on top of the newest fabric lines by following. Holly, the creator of Bijou Lovely, creates a lot of “wonky” quilts.

bijou lovely wonky-mini gift — The “wonky star” in this awesome wall hanging was the first wonky that really caught my eye. It’s actually a gift quilt made by Holly’s friend Jen at http://mjandco-quilting.blogspot.com/. Click the picture to go to the Bijou Lovely blog post to see more of the little details. Trust me, it’s worth the side trip!

Quilting is traditionally very exact and symmetrical. With “wonky” quilting, elements of the quilt are all a kilter, asymmetrical, or otherwise skewed. There’s a lot of wonky in the modern quilting world. Come to think of it, the project I’m working on may not even be categorized as wonky; it might be more scrappy. I’m still learning this quilting lingo! Whether scrappy or wonky, it’s a bit uncomfortable for me. I like exact. I like precise. I really like symmetrical.

So far, despite this new-to-me wonk (something with wonk is wonky, right? :)), I like the way this is turning out. I can’t show you more, since I’m testing a pattern for a fellow designer, and the pattern isn’t out yet! Once the pattern is published and I’m cleared to show you, I’ll be sure to show you the finished work. Maybe you’ll be able to tell me whether it’s wonky or scrappy!