(Finally posting about) Madrona Road Challenge quilt!

I've had this quilt done for a while now but haven't had the time to post my pictures.  This was made for the Madrona Road Quilt Challenge hosted by the Modern Quilt Guild.  My Chicago chapter participated in this challenge.  Each participant received samples of the Madrona Rd. fabric line by Michael Miller.  We had to make something using only these fabrics but we could add in solid colors if we wanted.  I chose a pattern by Elizabeth Hartman of Oh, Fransson! called Octagonal Orbs.  I thought it showed the fabrics well and I had never tried the pattern, so it was something new to me!  I really liked how it turned out.  I chose to use the leftover fabrics to create a large medallion pattern on the back.

Wordless Wednesday

Recent Sewing - June

 I hadn't posted in a while - the end of the school year always gets a bit crazy.  I have been working on some sewing projects though...  The top block is my June Simply Solids block made for Liz of dancergrrlliz.  I had trouble lining up the points - I'm not so good at all that precision quilting stuff.  Erin at Sew at Home Mummy gave a review of a craftsy class on just that topic.  Maybe I should look into taking it?

This is a quilt-in-progress that I cut out and began LAST summer and just dug it up to continue working on.  It is the garlands quilt pattern from the book Modern Patchwork by Elizabeth Hartman.  I'm using commercial fabrics mixed with Kona solids and repurposed mens dress shirts.  Hopefully I can actually finish it this summer!

Forgotten Quilt 1

I have made many quilts over the years and given almost all of them away.  I have recently "rediscovered" some of these quilts that I had forgotten all about!  I rediscovered one this month when I went up to Minneapolis to visit my bff for the May Day parade.  How wonderful it is to see something that you made and had forgotten all about but is being used and loved by someone else (especially my friend's Maine Coon, Elvis!). 

Here is one of the very first full sized quilts I made, a "Puss in the Corner" quilt in purple, blue, and black for my bff.  I must have made this sometime in late 1999 or early 2000 since I remember Stinky as a kitten sleeping on it a few times while it was in process. 

This was pieced both by hand and with the aid of my roommate's antique green Singer sewing machine (thanks, Jessica!).  I remember picking the pattern because it was fairly simple.  I still have the sketches I made to decide which layout of colors to use.  I was very frugal, even then, and this blue square is from an old pair of my boyfriend-at-the-time's shorts. 

The rest of the fabrics are mostly basic prints and calicos in the colors my bff requested (I also cut up an old purple plaid flannel shirt of the boyfriend's).  I look at this quilt now and I think I would never pick these colors and fabrics to make something today, but I love how this quilt turned out and I'm glad I chose this arrangement.  According to the sketches, it looks like I was originally going to include some red fabrics.  In hindsight, I'm very glad I edited the red out.

I can't believe this now but I hand quilted the entire thing.  This is unfathomable to me now since I machine piece and quilt everything I make.  Hand work is just too time consuming to me.  I love how it looks, but it's not worth it to me now with so little time available for my sewing.

 Looking at my sketches again, I'm thinking that I should make another quilt using one of the other layouts I created.  Not necessarily with these colors, but I've started working with solid fabrics a lot more lately - due in part to my participation in the Simply Solids Bee - and I think some of these simple squares patterns might look good with solids, especially the diagonal stripe.  It would also be good practice for lining up corners evenly, which I still have trouble with since I'm not the best measurer and have very little patience for precision...  oh well... I'll have to make that solids quilt to practice this!

Simply Solids: April

This month, Jen from A Quilting Jewel wanted a liberated block (Yay!) of mostly neutrals with pops of blue, fuchsia, and green.  I LOVE liberated sewing, so I went a bit overboard with this challenge and made two over-sized blocks instead of just one 12.5"x12.5" block.  It was fun figuring out where I wanted the pops of color and how I wanted them to look.  Jen had also posted an inspiration quilt pic (of a quilt made by bloomingpoppies') and I used that to help guide my design.  I created large block areas of the neutral with skinny strips of the color here and there.  I liked the look of more neutral, less color so that's what I went with.  Here's what I came up with:

Wordless Wednesday

My favorite Storage of the Moment

It's my plastic scrap storage bins! 

When I first started sewing, I was shoving all my scraps into one bin which quickly overflowed since I inherited my Grandma Kelley's knack for saving every little thing (including tiny 1-inch square scraps of fabric).  I then split the bin into two bins - cool colors and warm colors.  This worked for a while, but it was difficult to find specific colors when I needed them.   I would end up dumping the entire bin out on the floor to find what I needed. 

I sew with scraps often enough that this system still wasn't working for me.  I finally found plastic drawer sets at Target that were perfect for this purpose.  The drawers can be removed which makes it easy to move them around the room as needed.  I was able to fit three sets of drawers in the space I had which made 9 drawers for scraps - Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Black/White, Brown/Tan, and Multi-colored. 

Hooray for organization!