Scrapper's Delight for Charity Quilt, part 1

I'm going to demo a quilt block at the next Chicago Modern Quilt Guild meeting this month.  We will be creating quilts for the Teen Living charity here in Chicago.  Teen Living's goal is to help homeless teens achieve permanent independence and self-sufficiently while addressing basic needs of food, shelter, and clothing.

I've selected the Scrapper's Delight quilt pattern from the book Sunday Morning Quilts to demo because it's super easy and fast, plus I love how the finished quilt looks!  It is basically a scrappy log cabin that you can slice & dice and re-piece.  I have a lot of greens and blues in my scrap stash right now, so I'll be sewing these up for a boy's quilt.  Here's what I have so far:

Just some scrappy log cabin blocks.  Next I will cut them into 4 equal sections and rearrange....    Hopefully they will end up looking something like these lovely quilts:

by Cheryl Arkison

by BlueElephantStitches

by s.o.t.a.k handmade

Wordless Wednesday

(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!