Finished! Super-Sized 9 Patch

For quite a while, my go-to baby quilt was this free pattern from Quiltmaker called Super-Sized 9-Patch.  It's a great pattern because with 1 yard each of 3 fabrics, you end up with 3 baby quilts.  I'm now expanding my horizons, but I still had one of of my last "set" that was unfinished. 

It is now finished and ready to go to Project Linus!  I'm determined to get better at free motion quilting, so I've been taking Leah Day's Class Free Motion Fillers (Volume 1) on Craftsy.  I read on her website that the best way to get to know a design is to use it on an entire quilt.  So I picked loopy lines as a design I want to conquer, and that is what is used for most of this quilt.  I did something a little different for the corners with the animal print because I didn't want to loop over all those cute animals!

This is a Quarter 2 finish with the Finish-Along hosted by Adrianne at On the Windy Side. You can see my Q2 project list here.  Please note that this listed as "Last Big 9-Patch" on that list.

This was my June goal for A Lovely Year of Finishes hosted by Shanna and Melissa; I was link #59.

Mystery Quilt Step 4

I'm loving this mystery quilt!  I just finished step #4 (I think there are 7 steps total) and I have NO IDEA what the finished pattern will be.  So much fun!  There were twice as many units for this steps as in the previous steps, but that tells me very little.

I went for completely scrappy, meaning I didn't sort my scraps at all, although I did eliminate any batiks.  But beyond that, anything medium or dark was included.  I'm excited to see how it turns out!

The Mystery Quilt is hosted by Carole at From My Carolina Home.

Mystery Quilt Step 3

I'm caught up on the mystery quilt!  I have been having a really great time with the mystery quilt hosted by Carole at From My Carolina Home.  It's such a fun treat! I got a late start, but am now caught up!

This isn't rotated properly, but you get the idea.

A Lovely Year of Finishes: June Goal

When people I know first started having babies, I was using this free pattern from Quiltmaker called Super-Sized Nine Patch.  You start with one yard of each of three (coordinating) fabrics, and you ended up with 3 baby quilts.  I have done several rounds of this quilt.  It's quick and it's cute. 

I have since really fallen in love with baby quilts and want to make each one more special and/or unique.  But I still have one finished top left from my last round of the nine patch.  So tonight I layered that last one with some fleece, and getting it quilted and bound is my June goal for A Lovely Year of Finishes, hosted by Melissa & Shanna.  It will go to Project Linus when I am done.

(Yellow around the edges is the fleece from the backing, not a border.)

I want to get better at machine quilting, so my plan is to start Leah Day's class on Craftsy and pick a fairly simple free motion design, and get good at it by doing it across this whole quilt. 

No Sew Project

I've been wanting a small ironing surface that I can put next to my machine when I am doing projects that require frequent pressing in between steps.  When I went looking for tutorials, I found this one from The Craft Gemini.

And here is my finished ironing surface!  I'm excited to use it this Friday at Crafternoon! 

Mystery Quilt Steps 1 & 2

I have long wanted to do a mystery quilt.  When I sat down and made a Quilting Bucket List about 2 years ago, that was on it. A few shops around here have done classes that are mystery quilts, but they were almost always on Saturdays and I worked Saturdays on rotation for most of the past 9 years, and of course these days it is very difficult to do a whole day class, because Munchkin.

So when I stumbled on to a mystery quilt along hosted by Carole From My Carolina Home, I threw my plan to not start any new projects out the window.  First of all, I discovered the quilt along in mid-April, and she started in late March, so I wasn't that behind yet.  And it was scrappy, plus I had enough of a light-colored fabric that would work for the background, so I didn't need to buy anything.  And many of my scraps were already cut to the right size, thanks to when I was cutting scraps into usable sizes pretty regularly. I couldn't start right away, because I was on a strict timeline for Geoff & Laura's quilt, but I knew I wanted to do it and could get caught up when my work went to Fridays off for 2 months of the summer.

I finally finished Step 1 yesterday, which included all of the cutting and making, then squaring up, about a billion half square triangles.  I am doing the lap size.  I chose to do truly scrappy, and didn't really weed out any scraps other than decide to not use batiks.  So there isn't a theme or a color scheme or really anything making it cohesive, other than the background fabric and the fact that I think that including everything tends to make everything go.  It's been fun to see so many of my scraps; many of them are from long ago projects and seem almost like old friends.

Step 2 was not nearly as labor intensive and I was able to complete it in 2 decent evening sewing sessions, last night and tonight.  Here is a sample of the strips from my Step 2:

Since the project is only up to Step 3, I'm very nearly caught up.  Step 4 is scheduled to be posted on June 10th, so as long as I can do Step 3 by then, I'll be on track.  I'm having a blast not knowing what is coming up and wondering what the final product will look like!

Finished! Goeff & Laura's Quilt

This one is a bit of an epic finish, because it was a UFO for so long.  As a wedding quilt, it is over 5 years late.  And I started it before they got engaged.  So to say I am thrilled to finish this is an understatement.

I'm not sure the picture does it justice, as I especially like the main print.  It ended up looking almost rail-fence-like, but that was not my intention.

Geoff and I have been friends since our freshman year in college.  Several years after we graduated, I met his then-girlfriend Laura one weekend that a group of us from college were hanging out in the booming metropolis of Westfield, Massachusetts.  I started making their quilt the week after that visit.  (Yup, I was that sure!)  I already had the main print and an idea of how to use it, and I decided that it would work for the two of them.  The colors in the main print were similar to the color combination on Geoff's website at the time, and it has a very Asian feel and Laura had just spent a year in Japan. The pattern inspiration is a bit hard to explain.  In Quilt Sampler magazine, each feature shop has an original pattern.  The quilt tester for this and several other quilting magazines did a variation of a pattern that I really liked, so I created my own variation of that variation.  How's that for complicated?!

I did the big push to finish this because I knew I would see the recipients over Memorial Day weekend at my college reunion.  Here are Geoff & Laura with the quilt, oddly enough in front of the dorm that both Geoff & I lived in as sophomores.  (Tallest building in the county!)

And just to demonstrate how late this was as a gift, here is their daughter Zoe, almost 3.  She's clearly so excited about the quilt, she's celebrating with jazz hands!

This is a Quarter 2 finish for the Finish Along, hosted by Adrianne at On the Windy Side.  Click here for my original project list for Q2.

This was also my May goal for A Lovely Year of Finishes.  I was goal-setter #62 at Sew BitterSweet Designs.