Tuesday, February 7, 2023

Stay at Home Round Robin #3 - Hourglass

It's time for another round in the Stay at Home Round Robin!  This time, it is Chris's week to pick, and she chose hourglass blocks.  If you are sewing along, be sure to link up with her at Chrisknitssews.  Hour glass blocks are essentially quarter square triangles with the opposites sites the same, creating the look of an hourglass.  I used a trick I used once before to turn my hourglass blocks into butterflies.

 


These blocks are 4" finished; I used my accuquilt quarter square triangle die.  I also cut the butterfly bodies with my accuquilt.  Because I had to cut the blocks in even numbers, I ended up with an extra butterfly.  I added antenna to the spare to see how it looks. Husband thinks the butterfly looks better and more recognizable with the antenna; I am still undecided and so have not added anything to my row yet, but I still might.  What do you think: antenna or no antenna?


I forgot to get a shot of the rows I've completed so far while it was still light out, so you are stuck with this indoor shot.  I have a brand new design wall that Husband & I built together as my birthday present.  It's in the hallway, because that was the only place we could put it, and I can see it from the couch.  The rows are not yet sewn together because I haven't decided on an order yet; I'll probably wait until I've finished all my rows to finalize the order. I keep moving them around to see what I like.

 
Be sure to visit all the hosts to see all the hourglass blocks.  And here's the full Stay at Home Round Robin schedule if you are sewing along:


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Monday, February 6, 2023

Puff Quilt with Island Batik

Welcome to the first day of the All Puffed Up blog hop!  Island Batik sent each of their ambassadors one of the brand new collections hitting stores now and tasked us each with making a puff quilt.  I was lucky enough to be sent Bits and Pieces, a lovely and bright collection designed by Kathy Engle for Sherry Shish of Powered by Quilting.  I just love the colors in Bits & Pieces!

If you are looking for the next round in my Stay at Home Round Robin, it will be posted tomorrow, February 7th.

 

The products featured in this post were given to me by Island Batik, Schmetz, and Aurifil. 

 

I documented my three test attempts here.  In the end, I liked the this youtube tutorial best, and I did it as directed.  I particularly like two things about this method.  First, that you complete your top before stuffing, rather than stuffing individual squares and then piecing those together.  And two, her directions make it clear how to keep the already-stuffed puffs not in throat of your machine, so it's easier to complete.

sewing in the pleats

This was a really fun little quilt.  Once I determined my fabric layout and made sure I had all 20 fabrics from Bits & Pieces included, I whipped up the quilt top fairly quickly.  I did all my piecing with a Schmetz microtex needle and Aurifil thread 5004, Grey Smoke.  This quilt requires quite a bit of stitching that is visible in the finished quilt and the Grey Smoke was perfect for not calling too much attention to itself. It's also sewed together like a pillow case and flipped right-side out, eliminating the need for binding.  

With pleats all sewn in, before stuffing


 

And after stuffing

This finished at 36" by 44", but while that sounds small, it feels much more substantial than that, likely due to all the stuffing.  My son and I sit on the couch together and listen to Harry Potter audio books each night before bed and this has been the perfect size to cover both our legs while snuggling.  (We're currently on The Order of the Phoenix, for those who may be wondering.) He frequently comments on how big it is, and it's certainly very warm.  He has claimed it, as I knew he would.  Those puffs are irresistible!  He moves it around the house with him, and loves it while watching TV.

 


What's a blog hop without a giveaway?  I'm offering up what's left of 4 of the fabrics from Bits & Pieces.  There are at least 12" of each remaining, so that's a third of a yard each! To enter, leave me a comment during the month of February.  Any comment will do, but if you need a prompt, tell me if you've ever made a puff quilt, or if you are tempted to. I'll pick a random number as the winner on March 1st.  And be sure to check the Island Batik blog each Friday during the hop for a chance to win more beautiful Island Batik fabric--they set up a new giveaway each week! Many of the other Ambassadors will also have their own giveaways on their post days, so be sure to visit everyone!


You can find the full schedule of the hop here, and be sure to check out Sarah at Pitcher's Boutique to see what she made with Bits & Pieces!

Hiding?  Who's hiding?



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Saturday, February 4, 2023

All Puffed Up Blog Hop coming soon

Island Batik's first blog hop of the year starts on Monday.  Each ambassador was sent one of the newest Island Batik collections and tasked with making a puff quilt.  Also called biscuit quilts, a puff quilt is what it sounds like--a quilt stuffed with fiber fill to make little puffs.

My assigned collection is Bits & Pieces, a signature collection for Sherry Shish of Powered by Quilting, designed by Island Batik's head designer Kathy Engle.  Bits & Pieces has such beautiful bright colors!  It's a really fun collection. And I'm on the first day of the hop!  Come back on Monday to see my puff quilt made with the bright fabrics.  (Full hop schedule below)


I had never made a puff quilt before, so I had to look up how to do it.  There are a lot of tutorials out there and a lot of different methods.  I am usually far too impatient to do a test block, but this time it felt important to test out the technique.  I ended up doing THREE small tests! I used Island Batik scraps and stash builder strips (5" x WOF), so I can show you my samples now.  See how much Buttercup the cat loves them all?


First, there was a recent blog post by Laura at Slice of Pi Quilts about doing a puff quilt on her longarm.  I don't have a longarm but I thought I could try it on my domestic machine.  Well, I liked the technique, but because I was doing it on a standard machine instead of a long arm, I had to turn the quilt a lot and there was no way to eliminate having the already stuffed puffs in the small throat of my machine.  I managed to finish my 5 x 5 sample, but the last two rows were tricky and I wouldn't want to do it with anything bigger. She bound hers like a standard quilt and I had every intention of doing that to mine as well, but before I could, my son claimed this sample for the cat and put it on her cat tree.  I figured that Buttercup probably doesn't care about raw edges and left it unbound.



Since I knew that technique wouldn't work for me, I moved on to one of the youtube tutorials I watched, that like Laura's method, uses a completed quilt top.  I went back and watched it again, and then made 2 simultaneous test.  One exactly as done in her tutorial, and another without the tucks.  I figured if I liked the look of my first test and there were no tucks, I'd see if they were really necessary.  Here is the test without tucks:

 


And here is the one with tucks, exactly as in the tutorial.  I do like the look of the test with the tucks a little better.  Not a whole lot better, but better.  One of these also went to the cat, and the third is now a stuffed animal quilt. 


So now that you've seen my test samples, come back on February 6th to see my finished puff quilt made with the Bits and Pieces collection!  And be sure to follow along all month for all the puffy goodness of the All Puffed Up blog hop!  Here is the complete schedule:

February 6

Emily Leachman, The Darling Dogwood
Sarah Pitcher, Pitcher’s Boutique

February 7

Claudia Porter, Create with Claudia
Brenda Alburl, Songbird Designs

February 8

Elita Sharpe, Busy Needle Quilting
Reed Johnson, Blue Bear Quilts

February 9

Suzy Webster, Websterquilt
Preeti Harris, Sew Preeti Quilts


February 11
Special St Valentine’s Day Post
Renee Atkinson, Pink Tulip Quilting

February 13

Denise Looney, For the Love of Geese
Gail Sheppard, Quilting Gail

February 14

Anorina Morris, Samelia’s Mum
Sandra Starley, Textile Time Travels

February 15

Susan Deshensky, Lady Blue Quilts
Randi Jones, Randi’s Roost

February 16

Special Island Batik Designers Feature

February 20

Brittany Fisher, Bobbin with Brittany
Lisa Pickering, Lisa’s Quilting Passion

February 21

Victoria Johnson, Forever Quilting for You
Mania Hatziioannidi, Mania for Quilts

February 22

Lana Russel, Lana Quilts
Pamela Boatright, Pamela Quilts

February 23

Jennifer Thomas, Curlicue Creations
Maryellen McAuliffe, Mary Mack Made Mine

February 27

Leah Malasky, Quilted Delights
Connie Kauffman, Kauffman Designs

 


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Monday, January 30, 2023

Round Robin #2 - Stars

Welcome back to the Stay at Home Round Robin!  This week it is Wendy's turn to tell us what to add, and she picked stars!  Be sure to link up with her this week at Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life.  

Stars are fun because there are sooooo many options!  I recently took advantage of the deep end-of-year sales at Accuquilt and bought some new dies.  One of the dies I bought is the Rising Star block-on-board, and this seemed like a great time to try it out! It's a 10" (finished) block, and I'm doing a row by row format with each row finishing at 40", so that meant making 4 blocks. They came together rather quickly.  I am using Island Batik scraps for this quilt, and intentionally did not choose one background fabric.  The background fabric from this row was also in last week's spool row, but not as background.  





So here are my three rows so far.  I haven't actually sewn my rows together yet, as I haven't decided on my layout.  That's one thing I like about doing this as a row by row, as opposed to the medallion style I've made the previous two years--I can wait longer to actually put it together, since they are all the same length.

Be sure to visit all the hosts today to see the different stars we made!  And here's the full Stay at Home Round Robin schedule if you are sewing along:

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Monday, January 23, 2023

Round Robin #1 - Spools

Welcome back to the Stay at Home Round Robin! This week it is Roseanne & Sue from Home Sewn By Us who tell us what to add, and they chose spools. I'm honestly not sure I had made a spool block before! 


I hadn't decided how I wanted to make my spools when I noticed that a quilt magazine I had out on my table had a spool block, though not in the quilt pattern I had been looking at!  So I planned on that block without actually looking at the instructions.  Turns out it was for an 8" block, and I didn't want one that big.  No problem, I could figure out the components from the picture and size them down, and was even able to cut the pieces with my Accuquilt. The picture I followed was from the Norfolk sampler by Wendy Sheppard in the Spring 2022 issue of Quilter's World.


I made my blocks 4" finished.  Since I'm doing a row by row format this year and I started with a 40" row, that meant ten spool blocks.  I made them all with the same fabrics.  I decided to orient them all the same way, rather than alternate the tilt of the spool.  Here are my spool blocks with my "center" row.  I haven't actually stitched the rows together yet, as I haven't decided what order I want my rows.  


If you are playing along, be sure to link up each week because there are prizes this year!  Every week that you link up, you will get an entry into our drawing, which will take place after the March 13th parade. Here are some of the sponsors and prizes:

Here is the schedule for this year's Stay at Home Round Robin.  And be sure to visit all the hosts today to see how we each added spools to our quilts.

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Monday, January 16, 2023

Stay at Home Round Robin 2023 - The Beginning

Welcome to the 2023 edition of the Stay at Home Round Robin! What is a Stay at Home Round Robin, you ask?  It is the brilliant idea of Gail of Quilting Gail.  In the Before Times, guilds or other quilting groups might sponsor a round robin, where a quilter would make a center of a quilt and then pass it on to another participant, who would add a round then pass it on, etc, until the quilt was returned to the original center-maker.  When everything was in lockdown during Covid, Gail had the idea to do a round robin solo.  She invited some blogger friends, including me, and we each pick a quilting element that is the prompt for that round. 

 

Everyone is invited to sew along.  We'll pick a new thing to add to the quilt each Monday. The full schedule is below.  If you decide to sew along, there are sponsors and prizes this year!  Each week's post will have a linky party, and you'll get an entry to the prize drawing for each time you link up.  Link up for each week, get 7 entries.  Decide to only do 4 rounds?  That's still 4 entries!

This week, you choose your center.  The last two years, I've done my Stay at Home Round Robin (SAHRR) as a medallion-style quilt.  This year, I decided to do a row by row format.  The beauty of SAHRR is that it's your quilt!  Don't like a round?  Skip it!  There are no quilt police here, we promise! I was dreaming of a vacation and beaches, so I decided to channel that into my opening round. 


I bought the flamingo die for my Accuquilt last year (2021) during holiday sales and hadn't used it. This seamed like the perfect time.  I added some palm trees to reinforce the tropical, beachy look.

 


I am super pleased with my row and the flamingos.  Doesn't looking at it make you want to be on a beach in the sun?

All my fabrics are Island Batik scraps; I'm not using a particular collection this time.  I'm starting with a row that is 40" across (finished).  I did decide that I would add 1" sashing in between each row and I chose Island Batik's solid cobalt.


Be sure to check out each of the SAHRR hosts to see what they chose for their centers!  Then join us each Monday as we reveal the next round and show you how each of us interpret and incorporate it into our quilts. 

            Gail @ Quilting Gail
            Roseanne & Sue @ Home Sewn by Us
            Wendy @ Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life
            Chris @ Chrisknitssews
            Anja @ Anja Quilts

Have additional questions?  Gail may have covered them in her introductory post, or leave a comment here.  In closing, here are my completed SAHRR quilts from the past two years.

2022, Unnamed


2021, Ursa Major



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Saturday, January 14, 2023

A Start to 2023

Happy New Year!  I know I am a bit late with that, but the last two months of 2022 were pretty terrible for me and I'm still dealing with a lot of things, and haven't been able to write blog posts in a while.  I've been sewing as much as I can, though, and should have things to show soon. 


In the meantime, I'm excited to be starting 2023 as an Island Batik Ambassador, my fifth year with the program.  I am honored to have another year with this great company working with their beautiful fabrics!  There are some fun challenges in store for this year! There are quite a few new faces for 2023; you can see the full list of Island Batik Ambassadors here.  And we're each getting an introductory post this year!  Mine hasn't been posted yet, but if you keep an eye on the Island Batik blog, you can read them all as they go up.


I never did announce a winner for my giveaway that went with the Crayola Explosion quilt from the Lone Star blog hop in December.  Cindy L. is the winner of a set of strips from the Chickadee collection; I've emailed to let her know and will hopefully get to the post office this week.

I have some fun quilts planned for 2023!  I hope your year has been off to a great start, and I look forward to seeing what we all can make this year.



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