Trip Around the World quilt

Not sure where last week went?! But I did manage to finish quilting and bind my Trip Around the World quilt!

 I used the gorgeous Notting Hill line by Joel Dewberry in the red, teal and yellow color way.

The plaid in this line is beautiful and made the perfect binding...

 And here's a better view of the modern take on a traditional pattern inspired by Rachel's quilt.

What else have  been up to?

Some major cleaning of the sewing room! On the floor playing with fabric - which always inspires new ideas! 

I've got a couple more UFO's to finish up and I'm readying some new projects to take on retreat in a few weeks. Here's one..

. . .  Cindy

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A free pattern and more!

Yeah! Free patterns! You can get my table runner pattern for free at Martingale's blog Stitch This! It's from the book  Gathered From the Garden and will put you in the mood for Spring (if you're not already there). And if you don't appliqué, try placing a large-scale print in the Snowball blocks. I've done it and it looks fantastic!

A little sneak peek at some progress I made this weekend...

My second Sunburst is now quilted and bound...

with some fancy quilting...

The pattern is available in this book:

                                                                  

And finally, I haven't done embroidery in years, so it was fun to start on Anna Maria Horner's pattern Love from A to Z. I'm stitching the word "Sew" although that's not what my husband thought of when he saw this much sitting on the table!

... I just have the "W" to go! . . . Cindy

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WIP Wednesday

I don't seem to have anything finished this week, so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to do another WIP Wednesday. My current list....

And a few of the highlights...

This is Block 3 of the Lucky Stars paper piecing BOM.

And my first 3 blocks together. I'm so enjoying this monthly commitment!

I started piecing a new quilt. Since the baby quilt is done, I thought Mama might want a quilt too. I'm doing a variation of "Candy Necklace" which just happens to be Lee's pattern in the new Martingale book, Modern Quilts From the Blogging Universe. I'm making it a lap size, adding a little negative space and changing the colors a bit. I'm excited to see it come together.

I'm really focused on finishing a backlog of quilt tops. My Notting Hill Trip Around the World is currently under the needle!

Quilting on this Sunburst was completed last week and I'm just stitching down the binding. Our guild is having a handwork get-together tomorrow and I hope to get this one finished!

And I had to share this with you. If you saw my last post, you know my granddaughters were here last week. The 5 year-old has quite a creative flair. During some quiet time in her room, she made this outfit for the Teddy Bear. She said it took a few tries to get the sleeves right, but I was pretty impressed by the results!!

She claims she's going to be a fabric designer when she grows up. Looking like a star already!

Linking up to Lee at Freshly Pieced  . . . Cindy

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Baby's quilt

It isn't often I have helpers around to show off a quilt. I took advantage of the girls' visit this week to capture the quilt for their new baby brother due to arrive this Spring.

They were kind of cooperative...

And kind of noisy...

So here are a few more shots of the finished quilt. I titled it "Big Hugs, Little Kisses", as I'm sure he may be a bit smothered in love!

The 6-minute circle technique was perfect for the 8 inch "hugs" and the 4 inch "kisses" were made from a simple drawing and then paper-pieced.

The quilting is done in straight diagonal lines radiating from the center, forming a giant "X" of quilting. It was tough to capture the way the light was hitting the quilt, but you get the idea!

We hope he likes it!!! . . . Cindy

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Thank you Redbird Bee!

 Thank you to Gina, Kelly, Rene, Toni, Carolyn, Hanna, Linda, Nancy, Miss Nancy, Kyndra and Tess. The girls of the Redbird Bee made my blocks and I couldn't be happier with them!

 White sashing between the blocks was all it took to make them a quilt...

The block is one I used in the cover quilt of my first book, Gathered From the Garden, called Garden of Eden. I love the design and always knew I had to make a quilt using it some day.

I found this cute owl fabric at our local store, Fabric Nosherie and thought it would make a perfect backing. Don't you think? The binding is a brown stripe I've had stashed for a while - and I'm glad I did. It sure works here!

This is my first Bee ~ what fun to have a quilt made by your special quilty friends! . . . Cindy

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Continuous Curve Quilting

I've been quilting my quilt with the blocks made by the girls in the Redbird Bee. I find deciding on a quilting design for pieced blocks quite difficult. Continuous Curved Quilting is really a great technique, especially when you can quilt the whole block without stopping and starting again.

It takes some study and thinking. A bit of venturing off from the direction you might presume at first. I thought I'd share with you the path that made the quilting one continuous line for this block. 

You can see here where I started, traveled to the center square and completed that...

 The pink lines represent where I continued around 3 sides of the squares and 2 sides of the triangles, ending up where I started...

Following a chalk line I drew from corner to corner on each outer square, I quilted continuous curves on either side of the lines. I wanted to end up back to the corner I entered. The dashed lines represent the last 2 quilting lines in the square...

I then quilted the 4th side of the inner square which brought me to the next outer square and continued around the block in the same manner...

I think it creates a nice design that really highlights the piecing. My thread choice is Aurifil 50, a nice fine thread that doesn't make a big impact on your fabric. I switched between using gray blue and soft orange for thread colors, depending on the color of the block.

I'm on to stitching the binding down and can't wait to show you the finished quilt. Those Redbird girls are awesome!   . . . Cindy

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Modern Courthouse Steps

I so love this idea of taking one traditional block and turning it into a quilt! That's exactly what Denyse Schmidt did in her book Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspiration. 

 The quilt in the book uses solid fabrics, but I chose to bust some of the stash by using prints in analogous colors of orange/yellow, orange, orange/red, red and fuchsia. For the light strips, I used leftover bits of solids in creams and tans.

It's quilted using the #4 serpentine stitch on my Bernina through the middle of each strip. I've played with this stitch for quilting before, but was never happy with the result. The key was increasing the length quite a bit - length of 4 and width of 5 - and I'm super happy with it.

The back is a combination of a solid cream and print with a 1" strip separating them to mimic the 1" strips in the quilt.

After quilting, I was stumped on a binding, but ended up using the leftover solid pieces for a solid scrappy binding.

I'm wondering what other traditional blocks would look nice blown up as a whole quilt?

. . . Cindy

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