Double Baby Quilts

My cousin recently had a baby and I loved her color scheme--red, black, white, and gray! I lucked onto a boxed set of Michael Miller First Sight fabric that came with Fat Quarters, a cute panel, ribbons, a board book, and patterns for a great price. Since it's slightly quirky fabric, I checked with my cousin first before I got it, but she loved it so I got it and got to working!

After a loooooot of work, I had this quilt top completed~

It's the Mod Mosaic Tutorial and I love the results! But, when I looked at the results I realized I hadn't really used up very much of the cute fabric I had bought.

So I started a second quilt top before I basted, quilt or bound the first. I had a fairly simple but striking half square triangle quilt pinned to Pinterest for awhile, so I started to make HSTs. And I made them, and made them, and revised my plan a few times to include some solid red squares in each block....and then I decided to include some solid gray large squares in the overall pattern.

I finished the half square triangle quilt on a trip up to Discovery Bay with some crafty friends, my fellow Craftster mod LimeRiot and my guild buddy Britney! Crafting is always more fun with other people...and alcohol :)

Machine-less

I've known for a couple months now that I needed to get my machine serviced, but like any good junky getting her fix on,  couldn't give it up! On Saturday I had a Portland Modern Quilt Guild sewing day at Fabric Depot, which happens to house a Montavilla Sewing Shop, my repair shop of choice. After struggling with my machine all day, and after loading everything up in my car in the pouring rain and getting ready to go home, I thought it might behoove me to go in and talk to the repair shop. Twenty minutes later I had learned about some new machines, dropped my sweet Janome off, and found out it would be a couple weeks before I would get it back! Considering how much I have to do right now, that is kind of bummer news.

Luckily, I have arranged to borrow a machine for awhile, so tomorrow I should be in possession of, if not my machine, at least a machine.

I did get quite a bit done on Saturday though. I finished 3 blocks for my Craftster swap and got 5 + more cut out. I also worked on a secret project for a friend that I am not sharing yet. I also got some opinions from various sewing buddies on a couple of baby quilts (not to mention all the chatting and shopping that goes along on a sew day!)

Here's two more Square in a Square blocks, this time for a different swapper than before, and in boy colors with fussy cut novelty fabric centers. The third one I have cut out is frog material, but I decided I didn't have enough of a variety of scraps with me to finish it.

This next one is Elizabeth Hartman's Mod Mosaic Tutorial, which I previously used to make a quilt for my cousin's baby (annnd just realized I never posted here. Nice). It's a time consuming block because of the narrow 1 inch "sashing" between blocks, but the results are totally worth it! I sashed mine in white, and the tutorial examples are also sashed in white, so it was pretty neat to work with a darker color!

Project-palooza!

I have soooo many quilty projects in the works! Besides my 12 projects for this year that I listed at the beginning of the year in my Craftster 12 Project Along Thread, 4 current or former mods are having babies, so I have to make more baby quilts! Also, 3 of those new babies have older brothers, only one of whom I've made a quilt for before, so I feel the need to make some older brother blankets or quilts. Plus a friend is having a baby.

In addition to these full quilts, I joined 3 groups in  Craftster's Quilt Block Swap 2. I organized Round 1, and to be honest, some people didn't follow the rules very well. I have high hopes for this round though, and am happy to have some fun projects to work on.

Each group is made up of 5 people, and we send (3) 12 1/2 inch blocks to each of them, so since I am doing 3 groups, I have 36 blocks total to send out! I already have 3 blocks finished for my friend Linda, who chose Scrappy Log Cabin in a non-specified, but colorful scrappy way. She wants to sash in white so no white in the outer ring...I realized some of mine has some white in it, so I hope that's ok, I was trying to avoid solid white/white on white and didn't think about the blue and white print.

I also need to finish up a little Matryoshka wall hanging I am making for a friend. I ran out of soap for personal use (ran out of soap to sell a long time ago!) so offered  soapy friend, Mandy, a swap. She sent me some awesome bars lickety split, but I haven't finished her wall hanging yet so need to get on it!

Of course I can't currently find the picture of my Matryoshka I paper pieced, but this is the pattern I bought from etsy--Matryoshka Paper Pieced Block. My friend Heather posted it on FB a while back and I had to buy it.

Fabric Noms!

So many delicious fabrics lately! I am stoked to get to stitching! I am doing a Mystery Quilt, so I visited Fabric Depot's Clearance Room to find light, medium, and dark coordinating fabrics for that. I think my picks are a bit different (and less traditional than what lots of people seem to be using!) but I'm pretty happy with it! I actually just found the medium and dark in the clearance room, and got the light from the main store (Kona Azure). With a coupon, of course ;)

Then, the week after that, I realized I had some money to shop at my fave online store, Fat Quarter Shop. I hit the clearance fabrics hard! I also found an awesome pattern on clearance that I had to have. I don't think I've ever bought a single pattern, usually go for books or get free ones online.

 Suzette Aqua Wandering Vines, Lush Creamsicle Tossed Leaves, Lush Turquoise Stargazer, Twirl Twisted Orange Twirled Swirls

Twirl & Shout Plaid in Whirling White,  Going Places Green, and Blowing Blue

My relatives were in town last week, and even though they'd all already sent me birthday cards/money in August, they were sweet enough to gift me with more cash! I actually had a paycheck that covered my bills, so was able to use the birthday money for fun money. And to me, fun money should be spent on fabric! In addition, one of my aunts paid for my purchase at Joann (4 yards of batting, 3 quilting magazines, and a mini donut tin to make goodies with the nephs!) Gotta love that!

I hit Fabric Depot and found a couple things in the Clearance Room

Large dots, flowers, and stripes in muted sherbets and browns! And a few Fat Quarters I couldn't pass up.

This

Laura Gunn is definitely one of my favorite designers...Poppy, Lantern Bloom, Magnolia Lane. Yum! I found these and loved them before I realized they were Laura Gunn!

These are Painter's Canvas in the Magnolia Lane line, Laura Gunn for Michael Miller

The colors did not come out very well, I think you can see them better here~

And in this last pic you can see I also treated myself to some Michael Miller Ta-dots (Turquoise, lime green, and pink). The yellow dots are from another line. The top fabric is the lovely Needle Pins  (gray) from Aneela Hooey's Sew Stitchy line. Then the bottom is an yellow print and another in orange that I had to have.

And, I haven't received this last one yet, but I found it on my Pinterest and found some on Etsy, so ordered two yards. Kitchy Kitchen Ric Rac Coral by Maude Asbury.

That last one reminded me of one of my all time faves that I am still holding onto a couple yards of~Erin Stripe from Michael Miller. It's an awesome blender and I imagine the RicRac will be too!

Really, the only other fabric I am super lusting after right now are the Momo Tiny Deer. And I blame Kim for that.  And maybe some other Momo in general ;)

My first Dresden

I made my first Dresden Plate for the latest round of the Invite Your Partner swap on Craftster. My partner had some on her Pinterest and one of her comments on it was that she thought a pillow would be nice for that design. Done and Done! She liked purple, green, and blue, and to start with I was pulling fabric in all of those colors, but then realized I could easily pull together 20 different green prints from my stash without expending too much effort. Not sure if I should be proud or ashamed of that

I used the Easy Dresden Ruler to make these, and it was definitely very easy! A nice neutral dark gray for the backing, and I was pretty pleased with how it all came together. I did a ton of quilting on it, more than I usually do. Initially I was going to do more quilting in the gray (outside the Dresden) but I stopped with just one line and decided I liked it that way.

ETA: Here's two close-ups of the quilting that my partner took. I couldn't find mine.

Since making this one I've made two more dresden plates with holiday fabric. I'm going to finish a third one and make a holiday table runner!