SMGQ First Giving Quilt for 2016

This year my friend Debbie and I are the co-Chairs for the Seattle Modern Quilt Guild’s Giving Committee! We have decided to shoot for 6 quilt designs this year. Some of those designs are lending themselves to more than one quilt, so we don’t know how many finished quilts we’ll end up with!

When we took over the committee, we were given a bag of fabric and a lot of information! When we looked through the fabric, we found a bunch of these star blocks… So what do quilters do with random blocks? They make a quilt!

It looks like the blocks were made by guild members a while back, but nothing was ever done with them. So we decided we might as well go ahead and make a little quilt out of them! There is assortment of stars, including these appliqued stars!

We were short by one star, so I decided to make one to match!

The backing fabric was also in the pile! We thought the little teal birds went well with the colors on the front.

This little guy will be heading off to the Nurse Family Partnership!

 

Quilt Name: First Star I See

Quilt Size: 36×48

Blocks by: Seattle Modern Quilt Guild Members

Pieced by: Louise Wackerman

Quilted by: Debbie Jeske

Binding by: Deborah Christensen

June Blocks for Nurture Circle- Quilts for Fort McMurray

I haven’t posted about any of our do.Good quilts this year, but I’m skipping ahead to the June blocks!

For the June blocks we decided to switch from our regular charity to do the maple blocks that were called for for the Quilts for Fort McMurray. I know with all the devastation in Orlando, the deadline for the Fort McMurray deadline may be getting overlooked! (Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be making blocks for Orlando as soon as I get home from vacation!) But I’m hoping my posting will be a last minute reminder for everyone that wanted to make these blocks but haven’t yet! The deadline to mail is June 30th!

It’s funny (not in a haha kinda way) how fast our news moves from one situation to the next. Once the drama is gone, the news stories move to the next drama. Fort McMurray in Alberta Canada, was devastated by fires earlier this year. Whole neighborhoods burned to the ground. Whole towns evacuated. I know here in Washington there are worries about the wildfires starting early. I can’t imagine what the people of these towns have gone through. But the news has moved on… As a quilter, I want to be able to make a little difference to these people and let them know that just becuase the news has moved on, there are many people who still have the fire victims in their hearts.

The call for blocks from SloStudio lists a couple of different tutorials to make these blocks. I choose to use the tutorial from All Patched Up. It’s such a simple block! I think it took me about an hour to do both blocks, including picking fabric! I did a bit chain piecing that I think helped move it along faster!

Have you made these blocks? There’s still time to make them and get them in the mail! All the info, including where to mail the blocks to, is right here!

Wild Kratts! Live in Seattle!

I’m interrupting my usual scheduled crafty and quilty posts for some local family fun!

The Wild Kratts are coming!

Live and In Person in Seattle! Yea!

The wildly popular PBS KIDS® television show, WILD KRATTS, is coming to the live stage. Wild Kratts LIVE! will be at McCaw Hall at Seattle Center for two shows on Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 1pm & 5pm. Tickets go on-sale June 17, 2016 at 10am and can be purchased at ticketmaster.com, 800-745-3000 and KeyArena Box Office.

Animated Kratt Brothers, Martin and Chris, “come to real life” in a classically Wild Kratts story.  Off “To the Creature Rescue!” the Emmy nominated Kratt Brothers activate some fan favorite Creature Power Suits to confront a comic villain. Through hilarious pratfalls and amazing animal ‘wow facts’ the Wild Kratts team rescues their favorite invention from Zach’s clutches so the animals of the creature world are safe once again.

I’ll never forget going on vacation with the kiddo to a zoo in Palm Springs and there was this wild cat there. My husband and I didn’t know what it was and was looking for the right sign, etc. Then the 5 year old kiddo walked up and said oh, that’s a ….. ‘ (I forget the actual name!) we finally found the sign and he was right. We were shocked! ‘ Then he told us, ‘I learned all about them on Wild Kratts!’ How cool!

We’re super excited about it! And can’t wait to go! Woulds you like to come with us?

Tickets go on sale to the general public TODAY! Friday June 17 @ 10AM!

The show is at

McCaw Hall at Seattle Center

Sunday, September 25, 2016 • 1pm & 5PM (1PM is basically sold out so all links will be for the 5PM show going forward)

 

Would you like to go with us? I have 2 free tickets for one lucky winner! Just comment below and let me know your favorite WILD animal!

 

SMQG BOM May Blocks

For this month I’ve been working on quilting my Seattle Modern Quilt Guild BOM a bit more, but I also added a new ‘row’

Excuse my photo editing… Something doesn’t look right, but oh well…

You can see the bottom row is this months project. The prompt was sewing with scraps. When I make a quilt, especially a BOM that lasts for a while, I keep a bag of all the scraps from that quilt. I don’t integrate my scraps with the scrap bins until the quilt is all done! So this was easy to do! I had the bag right there and ready to go!

These are my ‘two’ scrap blocks. I started with a long piece of batting that was close to the height I was looking for. But slightly larger. Then I just started a bit in the middle and kept using my scraps until I ran into where the pieces kinda quilt building on themselves. Then I started over. It’s very log cabin like….

You can see my ‘eyes’ are the center, where I started. Then I’d kinda log cabin around the center, then go off in one direction and come back and go somewhere else! I used only scraps for these, except I did have to cut a little extra white.

I do want to add another thinner strip of this block up the right side, but I ran out of scraps! So I need to do some other blocks and come back to add another row.

And I really started making some ‘rules’ for my quilting. Most of the quilting is in the white. Sometimes I’ll quilt in the yellow, but not often. And I am NOT quilting on the grey!

I’ve also found that I don’t want to quilt to the edge until I another block to sew on. I’m using my quilting to sew down my seam allowances, so therefore I need a seam allowance to quilt over!

And I’m stitching in the ditch to get from one stop to the other…. I’m loving this one! I just learned about June’s BOM, so I’m excited to get started on it!

My New Thread Catcher

Honestly, I usually just throw my threads on the floor and then sweep it up when I’m done….

But the other day the kiddo and I went to the local paint your own pottery place, Emerald City Fired Arts, and I needed a project since he was making two….

So I decided to paint this bowl. At first I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. Then, as I was painting, I realized the shape was perfect for throwing in threads!

We’ve been going to this place for years! The kiddo LOVES it! We do have a growing collection… I used to help the kiddo here and there. But now, he doesn’t need any help. So I get to paint my own.

I tried to do a gradation by making the paint into a wash. It didn’t come out exactly like I planned, but it looks pretty cool. The inside is a really deep teal color. Unfortunately, the inside doesn’t show up well in the pictures….

Does it seem odd that I don’t have a sewn thread catcher? Does it seem risky to have a ceramic thread catcher? Mine sits just behind my machine, so I think I’m safe! Hope so!

Technicolor Galaxy Quilt Update

I took a LONG break from this one and finally got it back out!

I finally finished the outer circle. It’s 3 blocks, 4 times… 12 blocks. I did take some liberties on these blocks!

The first one I did was supposed to be orange peels… But I hated them… I tired to do them per the directions. Didn’t work out. Then I tried them my own way… Still didn’t like them. Ok, the truth is I couldn’t make them. They looked horrible! So I branched off and did cathedral windows. They kinda resemble the orange peels. Maybe? Anyway, I like them!

Next up was the hexie flowers…. Well, I didn’t want to do flowers. The idea is that this quilt might go on my son’s bed, and I didn’t want flowers. So I did a little random hexie thing!

And lastly, the moons. Easy peasy. This is the same circle technique I used for my sports quilt. Love it!

And here it is all put together! Well, not exactly PUT together, but laid out together. I just have one border to go! I can do this!