Seriously Summer Quilt

I've had this quilt pictured in my mind for a while now. A long while. The fabric has been sitting on my Anna Maria Horner shelf for what seems like forever and the whole project was on hold until I found the perfect quilt pattern to compliment the fabrics. The fabric here is cotton voile from Anna Maria Horner's Little Folks like from like 7 years ago (I said I've had it for a while).





This quilt is entitled Seriously Summer because these colors perfectly reflect my summer mood. This summer has been filled with brightness and sheer joy so far. A close girlfriend from high school is getting married and her wedding has spurred a reconnection between our group of girlfriends from high school. We were such a tight-knit group and I can't think of another word to describe our relationship other than that were were simply obsessed with one another. While these colors don't exactly mimic the colors that were ubiquitous in our high school wardrobes (think hot pink, cheetah print, puff paint, and glitter), they emulate the excitement felt when we are reunited.







The pattern I finally chose was Anna Maria Horner's Mother Goose pattern. I've always wanted to try my hand at Flying Geese blocks (see my Bucket List), and I am pumped to knock another quilt off the list.

The pattern uses a combination of solids and prints to form the flying geese blocks.

Here is the construction of one of the blocks, following all of the instructions Anna Maria provided with just a few adjustments, which actually makes (4) finished flying geese blocks:

 (After testing out a block, I determined that it was necessary for me to scoot the small squares in a bit so that I had a little extra seam allowance in the point of the block)

After some sewing, pressing, and rotary cutting you magically end up with (4) of the same flying geese blocks.

Some more piecing pictures for your pleasure:

 

The pattern uses 105 of the finished flying geese blocks made from 26 main blocks, which means you actually don't use (3) of the blocks which is no big deal. 
 




Overall I though that the pattern was great. I think that it produced a great looking quilt. A couple of notes that I have are as follows:

1) It makes the quilt look better overall if you arrange the blocks so that there are some "Full V's". I'm not sure how else to describe what I mean, but if you look above and see a combination of the Goose and the Sky blocks in the same fabric, they make a much better looking quilt. 

2) I would HIGHLY recommend using either plain or non-geometric prints for the "sky" blocks because it was a PITA for me to match up the correct way for the sky part of the blocks to go. I also didn't pay that much attention until about 1/2 way through the construction of the blocks, which is totally my fault obviously.

3) I would highly recommend scooting the small sky blocks in a little bit when sewing them to the goose block, just like I showed in the picture above. It really helped with my seam allowance so I had nice and perfect points about 95% of the time. 

4) I also kinda like the look of alternating the direction of the geometric prints for goose blocks, but that could just be me.

I have actually decided to try hand quilting this baby. I figured that for my first try at hand quilting cotton voile would  be a dream because it is so light, soft, and airy. I thought that if I couldn't hack it with the voile, then I knew hand quilting is totally out of the question for me. I am going to use Anna Maria Horner's hand quilting tutorial using perle cotton, and I am so excited!

Check back soon to see results, maybe within the next 2 week (hopefully). 

HOLLER! 

 

(Hint: I'm the dark haired one in the middle)

 

Summery Patchwork Quilt

I've had a fat quarter bundle of Lotta Jansdotter's fabric collection called "Echo" in my stash for quite a while now and these last few sunny summer days left really got me in the mood to use them up. I'm not sure why, but these fabrics just scream summer to me. 

I separated the fat quarter bundle into 3 different fabric groupings. The first bundle of fabrics for the quilt were navy, gold/yellow, gray, and a little brown. 




I was looking for a solid fabric to compliment the prints, and nothing screams summer like a natural linen fabric. Rumor has it that linen shrinks considerably compared to the quilting cotton, so I washed my linen yardage first.
 

I cut the fabric into 5 inch squares and mapped out a patchwork quilt pattern. I randomly selected print fabrics and alternated them with the natural linen fabric. Well, it was mostly random, my only rule was that the printed fabrics have to be more than 2 blocks away from the same print. The semi-randomly placement of the fabrics worked out pretty well, with only a few re-arrangements to get the final quilt layout set.

 

Now I have the quilt top fully pieced and I am trying to decide on backing and a quilt pattern. Part of me wants to buy some yardage of one of the Echo prints to complete the back, but maybe I can fish some yardage out of the stash. Not sure yet, but hopefully I will get the quilt finished soon. My quilting time is definitely dwindling now that knitting season is in full swing, so we shall see.

HOLLER!

FWQAL Block No. 13 - Buckwheat

I did some more farming this week. It didn't take too long to whip up this block because already had all of the pieces cut out.

The fabric is from Anna Maria Horner, naturally, as I am using all of her prints and her solids for this quilt. 

 

 All 40-something pieces cut out!  Yeesshhhh that was a lot of cutting.

You'll notice that there is something so fantastic about the LouLouthi line. Look at the two different purple prints above. Well, look below. Both prints came from the same fabric piece. Anna's fabric lines really are so versatile! It just took a little fussy-cutting, and It's like I've got 2 different fabrics!

 

All of those tiny pieces became this block below. I was just beginning to think that my piecing was getting a bit better and more accurate, then, I worked on this block and that all went out the window. It was a wicked struggle for me. As seen below.... relatively sub par piecing! That's OK though, I tried reallllyyy hard. That counts for something, right?

These are all of the blocks I have completed so far. Check them out on my flickr page.

 

Thanks for stopping by.

HOLLER!

Some Farming

I am happy to report that I did some farming this week. By farming, of course, I am referring to working on the Farmer's Wife quilt as party of the Farmer's Wife Quilt-a-long that is being hosted by fellow blogger Angela @ Fussy Cut and one of her friends. I am so far behind it is almost overwhelming to think about, so I am not going to think about that anymore. I am just going to chug along at my own little slug pace over here. 

For those of you who are new to the blog, I am participating the the Farmer's Wife Quilt-a-long. You can check out my initial blog posts on the whole QAL here and here.

This weekend I worked on block no.12 - Broken Sugar Bowl!

 

As noted in my previous posts, I am working up these Farmer's Wife blocks exclusively in Anna Maria Horner's Innocent Crush, Loulouthi and solids. 

I swear, the most TEDIOUS part if this whole process is cutting out all of that fabric. Does anyone else find it almost unbearable??? I actually cut these out like months ago, when I had some free time, and then whipped up the block in less than an hour. If only the entire project came pre-cut, that would be a DREAM. But then again, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey bla bla bla.

I was proud of myself, because when making this block I did some string piecing for the first time. It was sooo easy and just totally made sense. Can we say that's one knocked off the bucket list? I am trying to learn as many useful and time-saving techniques as possible and this was definitely one of them!

Too see all of my completed projects, food, etc. check out my flicker account as well as the "Finished Projects" page here on my blog. 

Here is a shot of all the Farmer's Wife QAL blocks that I have finished so far! I like some of them better than others, but I think that's just how it goes. Anyone out there have a favorite???

HOLLER!