Catching Up + TNG

You know when you have so many things to catch up on you don't know where to start? Chronologically sounds like a reasonable place to start, but instead I'm just going with what I have pictures for.

Also maybe a brief recap of the last few months~guild quilt retreat, beach mini quilt retreat with friends, Holiday beach trip with the boyfriend's family, lots of baby-sitting the nephs, retiring from being President of the guild, taking on guild Workshop and Retreat Coordinator duties with a friend and successfully organizing our first workshop, and so many projects!

Project recap!~(aka, outline for blog posts to catch up on?) Made Christmas present pillows with the nephews, a Boxcar Tote Bag, charity quilt, Ocean quilt, in progress Fair Isle quilt, PMQG 2014 Medallion Quilt, and successful hand stitched binding!

Waaaay back in the summer I started a Star Trek TNG cross stitch for the boyfriend's August 1st birthday. Now, while I technically finished the cross stitch in time for his birthday, I didn't frame it or gift it until Christmas. I know. Total slacker. But he loved it, I enjoyed making it, and when I posted it to Craftster it was chosen as a Featured Project. Triple score!

And my favorite in progress shot:

And a couple more:

And what do I have planned for the upcoming year? Vacation-wise I've got another guild retreat next month and another in October, a family trip to Tucson, and a family trip to Maui for Thanksgiving! 

Project commitment-wise I have to finish the Ocean quilt for my aunt, a crochet hat for my cousin, I'm still part of the Faith Circle of do.Good stitches (2 blocks a month),  and I joined the Challenge Accepted Bee on IG for advanced paper piecing blocks (1 block a month), and I promised to run another round of the Mini Art Quilt Swap on Craftster. 

And organization-wise besides the 2 retreats we also have 3 more workshops in the works for this year, plus I need to get back to my sadly neglected moderator and blogging duties on Craftster.

Whew! Besides all of that I should probably also, you know, get a job.

My Medallion in Progress, Part 2

Here's an update on my Portland Modern Quilt Guild Medallion. This year our guild decided to do a Medallion Along, introducing a new round to the medallion each month, rather than a Block of the Month like we did last year. I wrote about the center and the first four rounds here.

This is what my medallion looked like at the end of Round 4/May:

June we did a simple border for some breathing space. I got slightly behind that month so don't have a pic of it on its own, but I used a fun orchid colored Kona cotton with some lime/turquoise MM Ta Dots for the conerstones.

For most of my background fabric I'm using Laura Gunn's Painter's Canvas in Platinum. I love her fabrics so much!  July's round consisted of 48 4.5 inch Square in a Square blocks. I actually made this round twice, since I was also working on the to-be-raffled guild medallion made out of Carolyn Friedlander's Botanics fabric! I'm really happy with this quilt, the colors are bright and happy, tempered with my favorite neutral--gray!

I'm typically a month ahead as we officers are making the quilt before we introduce it to our guild each month. I'll be adding August on soon! We only have August and September to go and then are giving people a few months to finish it up. Ultimately we want to have a really fun mini quilt show with these at our December meeting and then some of them will hang at Modern Domestic in the new year!

A do.Good Stitches Converging Corners Charity Quilt

I recently joined the Faith circle of do.Good stitches, which is a modern charity quilting bee organized on Flickr. December was my month to choose a pattern and color scheme and everyone in the group sent me two blocks.

 I picked Converging Corners from Film in the Fridge because I'd had it pinned for a long time and a fellow guild member had made one and it looked great! I asked everyone to make (2) 12 1/2 inch blocks in purples from lavender to dark purple to fuchsia, as well as periwinkle and aqua, and to mix it up, I asked that some of the white background pieces be replaced with light to medium solid gray fabric. The results were wonderful!

It took longer than expected for everyone to get me their blocks but all together it looked pretty sweet.

Even more exciting was that my friend Rachel at 2nd Avenue Studio volunteered to long arm quilt it for me! She also generously donated the batting and backing. She quilted some beautiful feather designs all over it.

I'll be shipping this off tomorrow to our group leader so that she can give it to our charity, which is for girls who have been rescued from human trafficking.

Catching Up!

Just when I started to get into the rhythm of blogging a little more regularly, boom, nothing for two months! Oh well, you do what you can, right? :) The last couple months have been so busy! I'm now the Vice President of the Portland Modern Quilt Guild, and my duties include keeping up on all of our social media, including the blog, flickr, facebook--along with monthly guild and officer's meeting, helping to plan the following month's meetings, Sew Days and other events!

Besides my guild duties I've been busy sewing up a storm (why is everyone having babies at the same time? Spread 'em out, people!), planning vacations for the year, doing lots of yummy low-carb cooking, and you know, working my two part-time jobs. Also, a friend and I started a Sewing Circle a few months back, so there is usually one night a month we get together to sew. We've been having a lot of fun hosting those, sometimes we get a lot of work done, and sometimes it's more about good conversation and laughter!

Here are a few of the projects I've been working on lately~

I started making a quilt for my mom for Christmas a few months ago...well I didn't finish it in time for Christmas, but I was able to give her a quilt top for Christmas...just like I did with my boyfriend last year! Maybe that's going to be my thing, a Christmas quilt top :)  I did manage to finish this before January was over though! I switched up a few blocks here and there from the original pattern. The pattern, by the way, was in a book that I was generously given by Angela from Cut to Pieces when she was clearing out some of her craft books and offered them up for grabs on her blog. Thanks so much, Angela!

I made this giant block baby quilt for my friend Eva. The quilt I made for her first baby was only my second quilt ever! It was fun making this one, thinking about how far I've come in a few years with my quilting and what I do differently now!

  This project was a mini quilt I made for a personal swap with a friend. I love the paper pieced block!

I'm currently working on some more fun projects, baby quilts plus a few other things, so I will post those as soon as I am able (ie, after the recipients have them in their hot little hands!).

Pink and Yellow Chevron Table Runner

My quilt guild does a swap every year in December where we put some fabric into a baggie and exchange them. We make something and give it back to the owner. This year I got a lot of polka dot fabrics, one that kind of reads as a solid, and a floral. I ended out sketching out a little chevron pattern and turning it into a table runner. Some of the fabric pieces were small so I had to keep changing the size of my starting blocks, but I think it turned out cute, and the gal who received it liked it! We were "allowed" to add one more fabric to what we received, and I chose to interpret that as adding one to the front, and then using another piece from my stash for the backing

I just quilted along the lines created by the pattern, and I lightly drew the lines out into the border so I could follow them and not have crooked quilting in my border.

Also, I've been trying to figure out what my "thing" is in quilting, or what makes my quilts unique to me, my personal signature. I know someone that puts a red square in all of her quilts, and someone else who puts a tiny piece of contrasting fabric in her bindings. The last few projects I've worked on I've switched a few fabrics out for other ones somewhere in the pattern, you can clearly see in this project I put in five triangles of the red dot in place of the fabric that should be there. Anyhow, I think this might be something I continue to do, as long as I can keep doing it in a thoughtful manner (for this one I carefully thought about where to place these and tried to do it in a way that causes the eye to move across the quilt) instead of just because. It's not "super unique" or never been done before, but it feels genuine for me :)

More finished blocks and a new Charity project

I'm still working away on the 36 (+) blocks I am making for my Craftster Swap! I say 36+ because while it's supposed to be 3- 12 1/2 inch blocks per person, in some cases I made more or they asked for a slightly different number of smaller blocks that added up to 12 1/2 inch blocks.

A few of them mix mastered to show some combos

I mailed out to 4 partners today for a total of 18+ blocks I believe, since two of those partners I was in two groups with so they received 6 blocks each. This swap isn't due until mid-December, so I feel like I am staying on top of it and won't have to rush at the end!

In other news, I've joined a Charity Quilting circle on Flickr that I'm pretty excited about. It's part of the do.Good Stitches group which my friend Kim told me about. I am hosting December so I will be sure to post more about it! For now, I need to figure out what pattern and color scheme to ask the others to make!