OMG March 2016

Posted on March 5, 2016 by Quilting is in my Blood

Last month I linked up to the February One Monthly Goal (OMG), and I even accomplished my goal of sewing four blocks for my Terra Australis Quilt but wasn’t able to write an OMG It’s Finished post for February. For March, my One Monthly Goal is to design a new 12 1/2″ unfinished quilt block for the 2016 Paintbrush Studio New Block Blog Hop. I’ll be sewing a practice block using my Terra Australis fabric and then will sew the block for the blog hop using Paintbrush Studio’s wonderful new line of solids called Painter’s Palette, and lastly I will write a tutorial on how to piece my block. I have some ideas scribbled on paper. Hopefully, they will translate well to a finished block!

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I’m sure there are going to be many awesome block tutorials posted for this new block blog hop, so be sure to look for them starting March 28th.

Linking up to Red Letter Quilts OMG.

 

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Bee Blocks and More-February ’16

Posted on March 1, 2016 by Quilting is in my Blood

For February, I needed to sew six blocks, one for each of the online bees that I belong to and four for my Terra Australis quilt (and for extra credit and pure fun, I sewed four Fancy Foxes blocks). I had the fabric cut for both my Stash Bee and Bee Hive blocks before I went to QuiltCon. I actually started sewing the Spin Wheel block for Tanyia in my Bee Hive swarm early in the month but ran into trouble with my points matching, so I put it aside. I finished all my blocks the last weekend of February.

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Spin Wheel Block for Tanyia

For the Stash Bee, Tisha was our queen bee (who I had the unexpected pleasure to meet at QuiltCon), and she requested a  Carpenter’s Star Block in yellow and white. There’s a crease in the white center square that I didn’t spend much time trying to get out because I figured Tisha will need to press our blocks well after being sent through the mail. And she was nice enough to tell us not to bother trimming this large 15 1/2″ block!

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Stash Bee Hive 7 Feb ’16 block

For my Terra Australis quilt, I made four blocks using the Eight-at-a-time Half-Square Triangle method taught be Jeni Baker at her Mastering the Half-Square Triangle workshop at QuiltCon. I love this technique! I was able to make the 64 HSTs much faster than the traditional two-at-a-time method. See my QuiltCon 2016-Lessons Learned post for a little more info about Jeni’s workshop and book.

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Block for Terra Australis Quilt ©Mary Ringer

 

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Block for Terra Australis quilt ©Mary Ringer

 

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Block for Terra Australis quilt ©Mary Ringer

 

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Block for Terra Australis quilt ©Mary Ringer

 

Linking up to Quilter in the Closet: Building Blocks Tuesday.

 

 

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QuiltCon 2016–Lessons Learned

Posted on February 29, 2016 by Quilting is in my Blood

I’ve been thinking about writing a Lessons Learned post ever since Afton launched this linky party. Still being fairly new to quilting (about 16 months), I learn lessons with every new project, but since I’m starting to digest my recent experience at QuiltCon, I thought this would be a great first Lessons Learned post.

My biggest lesson at QuiltCon is one I struggle with in my daily life, and that is that I often take on more than I can really effectively handle. I signed up for five workshops with three of them being evening workshops, and I am not a night person! I still learned and benefited from all of the workshops I took, but I didn’t get as much of a chance to meet and socialize with people as I might have, if I’d booked a slightly less busy schedule.

Kim Eichler-Messmer’s lecture on color theory was wonderful. I’ve been a little timid in my color experimentation, but Kim encouraged us several times to “Be bold. Be brave.” With Kim’s encouragement in mind, I found a vendor with a good selection of fabric and chose some fabrics out of my typical color palette to work together for Amy Smart’s fast strip-piecing workshop (because I’d brought fat quarters rather quarter-yard cuts of fabric). I really like how they look together except for the solid gold-yellow. I just noticed that you can only see a tiny spot of fuchsia pink on light grey fabric next to the solid fushcia fabric. It is Alison Glass’ Handcrafted Grove in Sidewalk that has splotches of fushcia and a corally-pink.

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I had fun experimenting with different sizes of strips in Amy’s workshop with some of these fabrics.

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My favorite talk was a free demo by Shea Henderson called Interfacing Intervention. Shea did such a great job of breaking down the best fusible interfacing for a variety of projects. It was cool when she brought out her book, School of Sewing, and I remembered it is on my book shelf at home. Now that I understand interfacing better, I really want to make Shea’s striped tote bag using an analogous color scheme (colors next to each other on the color wheel). See I’m already applying some of Kim’s color theory lecture to a future project!

My favorite workshop at QuiltCon was Jeni Baker’s Mastering the Half-Square Triangle. Jeni taught the traditional 2-at-a-time HST method, the 4-at-a-time technique for people who don’t like marking their squares, and my new favorite–the 8-at-a-time method. Jeni’s book, Patchwork Essentials: The Half-Square Triangle, reflects Jeni’s warm and approachable personality as well as her expertise. This past weekend, I chose four blocks from her book out of 60 sample blocks (with a slight variation or two) to make for my Terra Australis quilt, and I’ll be blogging about them this week, maybe even tomorrow for Building Blocks Tuesday.

Linking up to Quilting Mod: Lesson Learned.

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QuiltCon 2016–Quilts Made by Modern Quilt Guilds

Posted on February 21, 2016 by Quilting is in my Blood

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QuiltCon was everything that I hoped it would be and more, but my brain is still on overload. People, workshops, gorgeous fabric, and what felt like miles of amazing, modern quilts. The experience actually started on the Super Shuttle from the LAX airport. All six of us in the shuttle were on our way to QuiltCon. It was fun bumping into a couple of my shuttle-mates over at the venue.

Some of my favorite quilts that I saw at QuiltCon were done as part of the QuiltCon Charity Quilt Challenge. Below are just a few of the quilts made by various modern quilt guilds all over the world. The last two did not have labels on the quilts so I don’t know who made them. If any of you know who made either of these quilts, please let me know, and I will credit them in the photo caption.

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Styx by the Tasmanian Modern Quilt Guild

Styx by the Tasmanian Modern Quilt Guild

Milky Way the Modern Way by the Portland Modern Quilt Guild

Milky Way the Modern Way by the Portland Modern Quilt Guild

Bridges over Tennessee by the Chattanooga Modern Quilt Guild

Bridges over Tennessee by the Chattanooga Modern Quilt Guild

Unexpected Blooms by the Sacramento Modern Quilt Guild

Unexpected Blooms by the Sacramento Modern Quilt Guild

Tri by the Triangle Modern Quilt Guild

Tri by the Triangle Modern Quilt Guild

Out of Chaos, A Star is Born by the Jacksonville Modern Quilt Guild

Out of Chaos, A Star is Born by the Jacksonville Modern Quilt Guild

Every Which Way by the Montreal Modern Quilt Guild

Every Which Way by the Montreal Modern Quilt Guild

Untitled Quilt completed for the QuiltCon Charity Quilt Challenge

Untitled Quilt completed for the QuiltCon Charity Quilt Challenge by unknown person or quilt guild

Beautiful Unlabeled Quilt by unknown person or quilt guild

Beautiful Unlabeled Quilt by unknown person or quilt guild

Inspiration at QuiltCon was everywhere! I could truly line up wonderful quilt projects to do easily until 2020! Can you believe that year is less than four years away!?!

Linking up with Cooking up Quilts: Main Crush Monday.

 

 

 

 

 

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Fancy Foxes Fun

Posted on February 16, 2016 by Quilting is in my Blood

This past weekend I had so many things that needed to be done, but I took some time out to do some sewing for the fun of it. I decided to join a Block of the Month club hosted by my local quilt store, ThreadBear. Bridget is teaching us how to make Elizabeth Hartman’s Fancy Forest quilt, and on Saturday, we started with the Fancy Foxes. There is the option to make the large quilt or the small quilt, and I’ve opted to make the small Fancy Forest quilt since it is one fourth of the work but all of the cuteness! I made the first fox in class on Saturday and finished the other three up on Sunday.

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Next month we’ll be working on the bunnies!

Linking up to Building Blocks Tuesday and Sew Cute Tuesday.

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One Monthly Goal–February 2016

Posted on February 5, 2016 by Quilting is in my Blood

I decided that participating in the One Monthly Goal (OMG) linky party would be beneficial support/accountability to help me reach my goal of making four 12 1/2″ unfinished blocks each month for my Terra Australis quilt using fabric from Emma Jean Jansen’s Terra Australis and Terra Australis 2 collections. Below is a pic of this fabric before I cut into it.
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In January I completed the first four blocks of the 25 I will need, and if I get four more blocks done each month, I should have 24 completed by the end of June. And if I am THAT close to meeting my goal, I will be so excited and may even have all 25 sewn by then, rather like the horse picking up speed returning to the stable!

I’m taking Jeni Baker’s Mastering the Half-Square Triangle workshop at Quilt-Con, and we will be making (or at least starting) four HST blocks that just so happen to be the size I am using for my Terra Australis quilt. Yay! It is so cool when something you did not plan on actually makes your life a little easier. So making and finishing the four HST blocks from Jeni’s workshop is my goal this month for OMG.

I’m already starting to think about what blocks I will sew in March for my quilt. I found quite a few I like that I saved on a 12-Inch Blocks board on Pinterest. There are at least two I want to make this year from an out-of-print Block of the Month pattern called Paris in the Fall that I ordered directly from the pattern designer, Sheri Falls. And I love the blocks featured in AnneMarie Cheny’s Sister Sampler Quilts book. Other possibilities include blocks from the Modern HST Sampler QAL, The Bee Hive (I already made the beautiful Quatrefoil block for one of my January blocks), and the Sugar Block Club 2016 (in January I made the lovely modern Churn Dash block). So in addition to sewing my four blocks for February, I plan to figure out this month what blocks I will making in March.

Linking up to Red Letter Quilts’ OMG.

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2016–Change in Direction Already!!!

Posted on February 1, 2016 by Quilting is in my Blood

It all started when I unwrapped my Christmas present from my friend and saw this beautiful fabric I’d been eyeing at ThreadBear, my local quilt store. I’m lucky enough to live in a small town where the owners of ThreadBear not only know me, but they know my taste in fabric. When my friend stopped by the store looking for a gift for me, she walked out with two one-yard cuts from Emma Jean Jansen’s Terra Australis collection AND a $50 gift certificate which I used to buy the coordinating fabrics from the collection. Check out my Sunday Stash #9 post if you’d like to see this beautiful collection before I cut into it.

I decided that I wanted to make a sampler quilt of 12-inch finished blocks using this collection with Kona Shadow as my background fabric. The first block I made was The Bee Hive’s Quatrefoil block. I made the block below as a practice block before I made my hive mate’s block in Blueberry Park fabrics blogged about in my Bee Blocks January 2016 post.

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Terra Australis Quatrefoil Block

In late December/early January there was an onslaught of Block of the Month clubs that tempted me, and I definitely signed up for more than is possible for someone who works full-time. The upside is that I have numerous resources that I can draw on now and in the future. It was very freeing to figure out that I can pick and choose what will work best for me. With that perspective in mind, when I was scanning Bloglovin’ one morning in early January, I came across Amy Gibson’s free Sugar Block Club on her Stitchery Dickery Dock blog (which of course I immediately signed up for!) and fell in love with her January Modern Churn Dash block. Below is the second block I completed for my Terra Australis quilt.

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Terra Australis Modern Churn Dash Block

By this time, I was starting to get a clearer picture of what I wanted for this quilt. I’m going to make 25 different blocks for my full-size bed and will try to make four blocks per month. Each block will have some kind of triangle in it, but I don’t think I will paper piece any of the blocks. I remembered that I really liked several of the blocks created for last summer’s 2015 Fabri-Quilt New Block Blog Hop and thought that  AnjaQuilt’s Floored block would be a perfect fit for my quilt. Here is my version of Anja’s lovely block:

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Terra Australis Floored Block

On Pinterest I found several 12-inch blocks that I may make this year, and one particularly struck my fancy. It is from Quilter’s Cache and is called No Name #2 (such a lame name for such a beautiful block!!!) But here’s where I made a choice that I’m pretty sure I’m going to redo. Without really even thinking about it, I made the block below with a low-volume Terra Australis grey feather fabric I found on Etsy rather than the Kona Shadow background fabric. I really like how this block looks, but I think I need to remake it with Kona Shadow and perhaps make a pillow out of this block.

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Terra Australis No Name #2 Block

I think I could use the low-volume feathers fabric as background for other blocks, so my Terra Australis quilt could have two background fabrics, but my gut feeling is that I will be happier with the clean aesthetic of Kona Shadow as background for all the blocks.

Feel free to weigh in. Do you think I should remake No Name #2 with Kona Shadow background and save the original block to use for a coordinating pillow for my Terra Australis quilt?
Linking up to Cooking Up Quilts’ Main Crush Monday, Blossom Heart Quilts’ Sew Cute Tuesday and Freshly Pieced: WIP Wednesday.

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Bee Blocks–January ’16

Posted on January 29, 2016 by Quilting is in my Blood

I am participating in two online quilting bees for the first time this year. I’ve been assigned to Stash Bee’s Hive 7, and I’m in one of The Bee Hive’s USA swarms. In fact I am the swarm leader of The Bee Hive Mary USA. I’m new to quilting and even newer to blogging, but our swarm leader went MIA, so I stepped in with fear and trepidation!

The January queen bee for our swarm in The Bee Hive is Patti, and I am so grateful for Patti stepping up and being willing to be first. We choose from 25 different block tutorials posted on The Bee Hive, and even if a previous month’s queen bee has chosen a certain block, it is perfectly fine to choose that block again when it is our turn to be queen bee. I will be queen bee in August, and I still don’t know what block I’m going to choose, but I have decided on a color scheme (to be revealed in late July!). Patti chose the Quatrefoil block in blue, purple, lime, and white. I decided to use Karen Lewis’ Blueberry Park fabrics for Patti’s block. Be sure to check out other Quatrefoil blocks made with Patti’s color scheme on Instagram at #BEEHIVESWARMMARYUSA. They all look awesome!

Quatrefoil Block

Quatrefoil Block

For Stash Bee, the queen bee can choose any block tutorial that is freely available on the Internet or one that she has written herself. The blocks can be up to 16 1/2 inch unfinished. For January, our queen bee, Cyndi, (who is also our Hive Mama) asked us to make a scrappy diamond 15 1/2 inch unfinished block choosing the following colors: pink, mustard, navy, aqua, purple, kelly green, and grey along with low-volume fabrics. Cyndi wanted the block to be bright. The purples I had on hand were batiks which a lot of people don’t like, and I don’t have any kelly green, so I used the other five colors which gives it a more subdued look (which I like) but definitely is not as bright as many of other blocks posted on Hive 7 this month. I’ve never sewn this large of a block before. It is huge!!!

Scrappy Diamond Block

Scrappy Diamond Block

I can’t wait to see what blocks we’ll be making for February!

Linking up with Building Blocks Tuesday.

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2016 Finish-Along Q1

Posted on January 10, 2016 by Quilting is in my Blood

I have two projects that I am carrying over from Finish-Along 2015 Q4. The first is my Gratitude Lanterns Mini Quilt.

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I have changed my mind a few times about how I want to finish this project. I was considering embellishing the lanterns with a running stitch, but I don’t think I have the time, energy, or focus for any kind of hand-work right now. I sewed one row together last fall and did not like how the lanterns looked sewn together. So now I am planning to use the chalkboard text fabric as sashing between the lanterns and between the rows.

The second carry-over from 2015 Q4 is my Birthday Gifts Quilt WIP which is now actually a quilt top. It is about 30″x37″, and I plan to quilt it myself. I will be using two Cotton+Steel fabrics from their Spring 2016 collection for the backing and binding.

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Five New Projects for 2016 1st Quarter

I started the Midnight Mystery Quilt-a-long hosted by Meadow Mist Designs in June 2015 and kept up with the monthly assignments through September. We were supposed to sew gigantic courthouse step units in October which I still have not yet done and then we found out in December that these courthouse step units were to cut into fourths horizontally and vertically. I really like the flying geese I made in August (see pic below). I hope to get back to this project during this the first quarter of the year, but realistically, I won’t have this done in time for the Big Reveal  on March 10th, especially since I’m going to QuiltCon this year. I’m so excited!!!!!

Midnight Mystery Quilt-a-long Flying Geese

Midnight Mystery Quilt-a-long Flying Geese

I participated in my first Instagram swap this past Spring/Summer. I swapped #logcabinparty blocks with 16 other quilters (and one lady made me two lovely blocks). Unfortunately, I never received one of the blocks that was promised me, but 17 out of 18 is a dang high percentage. I made two of my own blocks and now will need to make one more to have 20 squares to sew together for a baby-size quilt. Now here’s the exciting part. After I take Christina Cameli’s Free Motion Quilting Workshop at QuiltCon, I plan to free motion quilt the squared-off stipple I like so much on this quilt.

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I may also free motion quilt the mini mini quilts I will be making this quarter for Yvonne and Sarah. For Yvonne, I’m going to try improv piecing for the first time using the scraps in the pic below:

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For Sarah, I will be making one of the blocks half-size in Elizabeth Hartman’s wonderful Patchwork City book. I will be using my current favorite fabric collection, Terra Australis, by Emma Jean Jansen.

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My final workshop at QuiltCon will be Alison Glass’ Wool Appliqué Workshop. I was very glad to find the Sew Mama Sew Wool Appliqué kit for this workshop on Alison’s website. Sometimes it’s SO nice to have somebody else put together necessary supplies especially in an area where I have no expertise. I plan to make this appliqué project into a pillow.

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So that’s it for Quarter 1. My list is actually on the small side compared to some of my fellow quilters. But it will keep me busy, and I will be happy if I get half of these projects finished.

Linking up to 2016 Finish-A-Long.

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Birthday Gifts Quilt Top

Posted on January 6, 2016 by Quilting is in my Blood

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I finally got back to my Birthday Gifts Quilt project over the New Year’s long weekend. I trimmed up my 20 blocks to 6″ squares because my unfinished blocks were all over the place from seriously under at 6″ to the right size of 6.5″. I didn’t know how to sew a scant 1/4 inch seam this past spring which would’ve helped the blocks with little tiny pieces end up the right size. But I am happy with how they turned out, and they are the perfect size  for a quilt wall-hanging.

And the sashing went fairly smoothly. I like the clean look of it, but if you want to see how blocks like these can look with a two-color sashing and setting triangles, you should take a look at Color Girl Quilts 2015 Summer Blockbuster Quilt. It is awesome!

I’m not sure how I’m going to quilt this. I’d appreciate any suggestions, but keep in my mind that my quilting skills are lagging behind my piecing skills!

Linking up to Freshly Pieced: WIP Wednesday.

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