What Shade Are You? Giveaway!

Like I mentioned the other day, there’s a tutorial and a giveaway coming up! I haven’t been able to get the tutorial together yet, so how about a giveaway? Yes?

 

In case you missed my last post, I used all these fabrics in my latest quilt, Raindrops on Wildflowers! And you can win a fat quarter bundle of all the different fabrics I used!

But this giveaway is a bit different! It’s on Instagram. I hope everyone has an Instagram account and can play along! You can head over to my Instagram account to sign up! My Instagram name is imfeelincrafty. If you don’t follow me, please do! I love making friends over on IG!

The rules are:

1. You have to like my picture of the giveaway on IG.
2. You must be a follower of both myself, @imfeelincrafty, and @rjrfabrics
3. You must tag a friend that loves colorful fabric! Ok, they just need to love fabric!

The giveaway on my page will be open until Thursday at 5PM PST.  Good Luck!

 

 

#What Shade Are You with RJR Fabrics

It’s my turn on the RJR What Shade Are You blog hop!! Have you been following along with the #whatshadeareyou series with RJR Fabrics? I started following RJR fabrics when I found the series or blog hop or whatever you want to call it!

What is this # I keep talking about? Each week or so, they feature a quilter with a quilt made from a bundle of RJR Fabric and then have a giveaway of that fabric bundle! The fabric bundle was what originally hooked me, but the quilters are amazing! I’ve found some new quilters to add to my IG feed, for sure. One day they had a call for bloggers interested in participating, so of course I volunteered and they accepted me.

I used the following colors:

Eggnog 228
Canvas 150

Carrot 131
Oriole 314
Bandana 367
tangerine Dream 276
Orange Crush 372

Cove 294
Riviera 274
Luau 376
Turks and Caicos 292
horizon 354

Pistachio 404
Spring 405
Lucky Green 406
Sour Apple 346
Grass is Always Greener 347

2961-001
2960-004
2960-001

Super excited, right?? Yes, I was. Then panic struck! Me being in the lineup with all these other quilters that use tons of different fabric. I typically only use a few different colors in one quilt, but all these others use tons of colors. I remember walking around Quiltcon looking at the quilts with more than just a few colors for inspiration…

Then I decided on a design I had made in one of my office meeting sketches. It was a design I could incorporate a bunch of colors into. The kiddo and I got to work and picked the fabrics, finally… Then they came. And stage fright set in again. And I decided I didn’t want to make the design I was starting to make…

So in came design idea number 2. A Quilt Design A Day design! The ‘spark’ above from Design Seeds inspired my purple design. And that purple design became my #whatshadeareyou quilt! I thought it would be cool, but I still wasn’t sure it would stand up against all the other quilts in the series. Once I started going, it kept growing on me and I liked it more and more! And now I love it! I hope you do too!

I’m calling it Raindrops on Wildflowers! As I was quilting it, I debated, one big spiral or three spirals? The whole family agreed on three circles. The kiddo said it was like raindrops in water!

The quilt block is obviously something I just made up, but then I realize it was full of inset corners! Ergh… But I remembered they aren’t so bad and I pretty much mastered it! Well, for this block at least! I’ll post a tutorial soon.

The front had to be the solids collection, which I love. My go to solid fabric is typically another brand that I won’t mention here… But I might have just been swayed! This fabric is much softer than my usual. And there’s still tons of colors to choose from. No reason this fabric can’t be my new go to!

And the back is actually a really fun polka dot fabric. The front had to be solids, but you could choose anything for the back. Obviously I had different intentions since it was a different quilt design I ordered the fabric for, but I like the polka dots and stripes together!

And stayed tuned… A tutorial and giveaway will be popping up here shortly!

 

Left and Right Quilt Tutorial

Remember my do Good Stitches Left and Right quilt that I wrote about last month?

Honestly, It’s pretty easy…. I’ll show you how we did it. You’ll need 3 colors of fabric for the flying geese, white and a pile of grey scraps. Unfortunately, I don’t have a quantity of how much of each fabric you’ll need. You’ll need to do the math on that based on how large of a quilt your looking for.

image via A Quilters Table

First, we’re making a big batch HST. Have you tried my friend Debbie’s tutorial for big batch HST’s? It’s awesome! You can find it here.

To make your big batch HST’s you’ll need (1) 9×9 square of white for every color 9×9 square. (1) set of 9×9 squares will give you 18 HSTs.

You’ll also need to cut:

(9) 2.5×3.5 white rectangles- (1) for each set of HST (which will make 1 flying geese).
And grey scraps

Once you’ve got your HST’s, we need to add the grey bits! Then line up the ruler so that you are cutting off the tip of the colored edge of the HST, 1.25″ away from the center.

Add small scraps of grey to each corner. I suggest chain piecing at this point. I also didn’t trim the grey scraps. I just made sure they were big enough that once they are folded over, they cover the corner.

Trim each HST block to 2.5 inch squares.

Next, let’s make some flying geese! Sew together 2 HST’s to make your flying geese blocks. Chain piece again.

Sew the 2.5×3.5 rectangles on to the left side of each HST block. Make sure they are all pointing in the right direction.

Then do it again and again and again for each of the three colors.

OK, from here on out, I don’t have very good pictures!

Sew the blocks together along line 1, shown above, first. Do this with all the flying geese blocks.

Next take the double flying geese blocks and sew them together along line 2, shown above. Be sure to backstitch at the top and bottom of each!

And do that until you get length you want of the each of the rows of each color. Add strips of white between and you’re done!

There are a lot of little blocks, but they go pretty fast, especially if you chain piece them!

What do you think? Will you make it? If you do, please let me know! Can’t wait to see it!

Left and Right- Do Good Quilt Finish!

It’s long overdue, but I did finish another quilt! Another Nurture Circle do. Good Stitches Quilt!

Remember how I do those Quilt Design a Day projects? I haven’t posted any of those on the blog recently, either… Well, this quilt started as one of those designs! (you can see the group here)

This was the prompt we had! This silly picture of heart shaped sunglasses by design seeds was the inspiration. I took this and came up with this…

I got some great feedback on this design, so I knew I wanted to make it into a quilt. I thought the variation of fabric from a quilt bee would make this quilt fantastic!

And, if I do say so myself, I think it turned out pretty fantastic!

I think it was a pretty easy block for the group to make. Each person made 18 half square triangle blocks, 6 of each color. You can find all the directions here. I’ll post the directions to the blog shortly!

I’m so in love with the colors! And the variations on each color that came from all the members.

For the back I made a play on scale and made the one of each flying geese, but BIG! I always try to avoid these pictures with the wind, but I love how this one shows the little ones on the front juxtaposed next to big ones!

This picture shows the quilting the best. I did my usual straight line quilting, but at an angle with the flying geese. Then did a little stitch in the ditch along the flying geese to get the zigzags.

And of course, my label picture! I had fun photographing this one at the boathouse where we recently had our SMQG retreat with the help of Allison Sews and Snippets of Sweetness!

And I can mark this one off of my 2017 Finish A Long Quarter 1 List! Linking up here.

 

 

QuiltCon 2017 Favorites

OK, you might be bored with QuiltCon pictures by now, but I’m going to post more anyway. Sorry! I’m headed off for a quilting retreat this weekend and I thought to look back at the inspiring quilts from QuiltCon would be a good way to start off the weekend!

Hyperbolic Hexagon Tessellation by Jennifer Kloke

I was about to write, This is one of my favorite…. But they are all my favorites! So I’ll just get that out right now so I don’t start each paragraph with that same sentence! I took a million pictures of my ‘favorites’, but the ones I’m showing today are the ones that I keep coming back to in my head, the ones that really left an impression on me!

As you probably know, this was my first year to go to QC and the first year to have a quilt (or two) in the show! So imagine my surprise as I rounded the corner, looked up and saw my quilt at the end of the line of AMAZING quilts! It felt awesome!

And I got closer and closer and super close!

And technically, I didn’t make this quilt all on my own! This was one of the do.Good Stitches quilts that I designed and made with blocks from my group!

This is my friend Matt! He’s amazing! He’s the only guy in our guild and did I say amazing? It was great to spend a lot of the day with him wandering around looking at quilts. Maybe a couple of critiques… This is the quilt he designed for our guild’s charity quilt. He also talked me into spending way too much at the BlocLoc booth! And yes, I’m glad he did!

left: The Kiss by Kay-Anna McCalla and right: Lilianna Kehnle

These two were both from the youth category. Love seeing the youth quilts. I didn’t realize that there was a youth category. I came home and told my son about the category and he got excited. Just the other day he told me we needed to get started on his quilt for the show! We’ll see if it happens!

Serenity by Stephanie Skardal

Ok, this totally grabbed my attention for a couple of reasons. One, it totally reminded me of seersucker, which I love. And two, after doing my striped quilt using striped fabric, I was in awe of the time it took her to make this one of tiny pieced strips!

Big Island Blossoms by Sheri Cifaldi-Morrill

oh, yes, please! I’m learning applique now through our guild’s BOM so this is what I am aspiring to!

Go North by Maritza Soto

When you walked in the show, the Best in Show was right there, but it was surrounded by people so this is technically the first quilt I saw when I walked in and, boom, I was drawn right to it! Love the colors, the solids and the quilting!

left: Lincoln by Kim Soper and right: Still With Her by Liz Harvatine

Now the juxtaposition of these two was thoughtful, in my opinion. I had been warned about overhearing people’s conversations around quilts. Let’s just say I loved it and I overheard someone else who didn’t…. I won’t go in the politics of it, but I could go on….

Fireworks by Jeannie Jenkins

Made in GDR 26 by Emily Doane

 

Double Irish Divergence by Debra Jalbert

Another few where the bright color placement is now seared into my brain!

I Know The Stars Are There Beyond The Clouds 2 by Heidi Parkes

I have no idea how to hand stitch a quilt. None. But this lady does! Amazing! This quilt was huge! And complete with yards of hand stitching. Maybe once I get this applique thing down, maybe I’ll learn to hand quilt. It’s a such a beautiful technique.

Square Count Game by Debra Jalbert

This might just be my most favorite… Love the white. Love the bright. the quilting is awesome. Love the little pops of color. I want this quilt! Very inspiring to me…. And I just realized that two of my favorites are by Debra! I think we could be quilty friends!

Yay or Nay by Debbie Jeske

I also loved seeing my friend’s quilts at the show too. That’s just awesome in it’s own right. But I also love this one by Debbie! I really love the story of the name. Check it out here.

Half Circle Mirror by Cheryl Brickey

I was drawn to this one because it reminds me of the quilt design a day project that I like to do! I don’t think it is inspired by that, but that’s what drew me in. A lot of my designs and QDAD designs can be pretty minimal and I start to doubt the design, but seeing this one hanging there reminded how beautiful minimal can be.

Autumn is Wistful by Chawne Kimber

Loved this for reminding me of home and growing up. But the technique is awesome too. I’ve seen the technique used with knits in clothing, but hadn’t thought about it for quilting. Why not???

Bling by Kat Jones

And last but least, Best In Show! No words. Awesomeness is all I have to say about this one!

 

More Tree Pillows!

Looking for a pretty quick holiday project to fill your next few days? I mean who has anything to really do between now and Christmas, right? Ha!

I’m so excited to have my own tree pillows! Do you remember the ones I made last year? You can see them here…

I made these from the scraps from last years pillows. Yes, it did take me all year…. Moving on… So last year I used the tutorial from the Quick Curve Ruler ladies over at Sew Kind of Wonderful. I used it pretty right on. With a long piece down the middle to make the trunk of the tree. This year I did a little bit of experimenting. For one thing, I wanted a pointy top!

For each tree, I started with by following the tutorial. Then I sewed the left and right sides of the tree together. For the little pillow, I cut off the top of the bottom two blocks. And the bottom off the top block. I wanted more thickness to the tree, but with a pointy top!

And for the bigger pillow, I cut the bottom off of each block. For the top one, I think I took off 1.5″ and down at the bottom blocks, I only cut off about .5″ of the block. And then varied the dimension between the others. This way I got a more skinny tree and a still had my pointy top!

I really need to start adding zippers… I know it’s not hard. I more or less have a problem with planning ahead and getting the right size and color! So I stuck with the envelope back. I’m also usually not a fabric line kinda person… But you can probably tell that I have a little obsession with Cotton and Steel going on right about now!

I’m building up my holiday pillow collection! I had a little collection of CB2 knock off pillows, but I wasn’t feeling it this year and gave them away… I’m going more with the quilted look for the next few years….

And even if I should have been sewing for others, I needed to finish these! And I’m glad I did…. Have you made any quick curve ruler projects?

Sunset Dreamin’- April do.Good Stitches Quilt

I’m so excited to show off this one! I’m totally in love with it! And it’s going to Quiltcon!!!

This one is a bit long overdue… I designed the blocks back in April for the do.Good Stitches Nurture Circle to make. You can see the tutorial here. And honestly, I didn’t know what I was going to do with the blocks when I got them back! I knew I wanted a stripey quilt, but not necessarily a striped quilt…. Does that make sense?

I was so impressed how well the blocks went together! It’s hard to make each block match up when you’ve got 10 people making blocks. But I couldn’t have asked for better blocks.

But what was I thinking? And why did I photograph this one at the beach?

Well, did you wear those stripey OP shirts back in the 80’s? Like these? I did… And I had the shorts, too. I remember going to Target as a kid in Houston and being so excited for OP. I can still see the intersection of where Target was. Anyway… The beach was on my mind back in April!

But I got the blocks and was stumped. I really did not know what to do with them! So I thought about it for months. (sorry group! I’m not supposed to take that long to put the quilts together.) Then one day it came to me. Striped angles hitting into each other…

So that’s what I got! The stripes went together perfectly! Then I added the big blocks of white. And when you cut triangles out of fabric, they can distort a bit… I learned that on another quilt I made. So I had to work that center a bit. But it came together quite nicely!

And that’s also why I photographed it at the beach. Ideally it would have been a nice summery day with blue skies and surf boards… But alas, I live in Seattle and we don’t get that weather all that often in the winter…

I did have one block that didn’t quit fit, so it’s on the back and break up the sunset and the water colors.

And a huge thanks to all the lovely ladies that made this quilt come together! And this is the second Nurture Circle do.Good Stitches quilt to be shown at Quiltcon! Yea! I can’t wait to see it hanging with all the others! I don’t know if I’m going yet or not, but I know someone will snap a pic, if I don’t…

I’m in love with this one….

And it’s the one and only on my 4th Quarter Finish Along that I actually finished!

 

 

 

Zeus on the Loose with Me!

It’s my turn!! Yeah!! Have you ever played Zeus on the Loose?? We love it! It’s basically a counting strategy game. That description doesn’t do much for it, but take my word for it. It’s fun!

Originally I wanted to make a notebook cover for my son, but my Improv Lightening Bolts kept being too big, so it turned into a pillow! It was really hard to get it as small as I wanted it to be!

I went through a few plans of projects to make this year. Usually I know exactly what I want to make. Not this year. Then I remembered our new favorite game. But what to make?? At first I got my Greek Gods confused and for a minute I was designing something with a trident… Um, hello, my to ‘I minored in Ancient History’ self…. Zeus and tridents do not go together. Lightening Bolt my friend!!!  Then I was all over it!

I’ll give you a super quick idea of how I made it! Since it’s improv, there are no dimensions or anything to go with! To make the Improv Lightening bolt is simple!

First, cut out a ‘leaning’ triangle, then sew on a thin layer of the ‘bright light’ fabric and then a thicker layer of the background fabric. So that you end up with two ‘leaning’ triangles. And you want them to both be leaning in the same direction!

Next, I folded over the top of the triangle to get an overlap. Once I liked where the overlap was, I ironed it flat. This ironed line is where I sew-ed it together.

And then I trimmed a quarter inch seam. Repeat these last two steps over and over until you have each side of the lightening bolt how you like them. then sew the two halves together!

Add in the rest of the background fabric for the shape you need for either a notebook cover, a pillow top or quilt blocks…. And quilt away!

I thought it turned out pretty cool. And once I got my husbands seal of approval, I knew it was pretty cool! (yes, he’s very honest and has no qualms telling the truth about his feelings on my work! Usually he likes it, but not all the time!) I think it’s going to be loved, along with it’s inspiring game!

 

 

Sept 9th- Liz and LiZ  from Simple Simon and Co

Sept 14th- Stacey from Boy, Oh Boy, Oh Boy Crafts

Sept 16th- Narelle from Threadistry

Sept 19th- Debbie from A Quilter’s Table

Sept 21st- Louise from I’m Feelin’ Crafty

Sept 23rd- Al from Shaffer Sisters

Sept 26th- Michelle from Factotum of Arts

Sept 28th- Ashley and Emily from Frances Suzanne

Sept 30th- The Recap!

 

 

 

Ultimate Frisbee with A Quilters Table

Let’s kick off another week of Sew Ready to Play with my quilty friend, Debbie, from A Quilter’s Table!

Debbie and I have become great friends over the years participating in Seattle Modern Quilt Guild activities. And just recently we were roommates again at our retreat. I can’t wait to show you more about that weekend. Debbie came to retreat with a bunch of triangles and left with a finished quilt top! She’s speedy! And I’m so glad she decided to play along again this year!

Be sure to go to her blog to learn more about it!

 

Sept 9th- Liz and LiZ  from Simple Simon and Co

Sept 14th- Stacey from Boy, Oh Boy, Oh Boy Crafts

Sept 16th- Narelle from Threadistry

Sept 19th- Debbie from A Quilter’s Table

Sept 21st- Louise from I’m Feelin’ Crafty

Sept 23rd- Al from Shaffer Sisters

Sept 26th- Michelle from Factotum of Arts

Sept 28th- Ashley and Emily from Frances Suzanne

Sept 30th- The Recap!

Snakes and Ladders with Threadistry

Yeah! Another Day of Sew Ready to Play!

Today we have a long term Sew Ready to Play player! She’s played along every year! Yea! Today is my blogger friend Narelle. She was originally from Cook, Clean Craft, but now blogs over at Threadistry.

She has a tutorial today for making a Snakes and Ladders game board. I’m used to Chutes and Ladders, so I had to google Snakes and Ladders! All sorts of interesting articles! What did we do before Google?? Sounds like it’s what Milton Bradley based Chutes and Ladders on! Head on over to her blog, Threadistry, to learn more!!!

 

Sept 9th- Liz and LiZ  from Simple Simon and Co

Sept 14th- Stacey from Boy, Oh Boy, Oh Boy Crafts

Sept 16th- Narelle from Threadistry

Sept 19th- Debbie from A Quilter’s Table

Sept 21st- Louise from I’m Feelin’ Crafty

Sept 23rd- Al from Shaffer Sisters

Sept 26th- Michelle from Factotum of Arts

Sept 28th- Ashley and Emily from Frances Suzanne

Sept 30th- The Recap!