Handmade Teacher Gifts

Halloween is over, and as much as I want to keep sewing for Halloween, I’m going to take a break and move on to handmade gifts! Not quite Christmas posts, but a few gift idea posts are coming up before I move into full on Christmas!

What do you do for Teacher gifts at the Holidays? I’ve always made handmade somethings! One year I made a two in one pouch for a teacher and one year I made a personalized pouch with the teachers initial pieced on it. I forget what else! ha! And then for the last two years, I’ve made these adorable little quilted ‘folios’ from the book Pretty in Patchwork: Holidays.

I’m a little obsessed with buying quilting and cross stitch magazines, but I rarely buy books. One year, I found this book is  super sale bin at the bookstore and I bought it. I have to say it’s one of my favorite project books I have! The projects are focused on Christmas primarily, but most of hte projects also have suggestions for turning the projects into other holiday sewing projects. Stay tunned for some more projects from this book this holiday season!

I made this one just like the directions say. I laid out my blocks how I wanted them, then turned them over, but forgot to flip their location… The little girl flying the kite was supposed to be on the front, not hte back! Oh, well!

My family gave me all the lovely Cotton and Steel fabric for Christmas. I think it was a perfect choice for this little gift!

I loved placing the little apple on the side pocket! Aren’t you supposed to give teachers apples?? I’m not exactly sure what apples have to do with teachers, but it’s a thing! ha!

And then I made another one last year for his teacher. This teacher is a University of Washington grad, so I went with a UW themed version! Purple and gold with touches of black and white!

Photo via Amazon

And for this one I combined the folio project with the Ho Ho Ho pillow project! The book has directiosn for each letter, so I made the W. I pieced this as quilt as you go and didn’t go back with any additional quilting. Looking back at this picture, i’m kinda inpreseed with how striaght my lines are! 

And the inside of this one!

I’d love to know your favorite teacher gift go to! I have a new idea for this year….. More to come on that!

 

My Halloween Quilt! with a paper pieced pattern download

I know, most everyone has moved onto Christmas, but I’m still posting about Halloween!

I started this about this time last year. I had a plan. I was going to do one block each month… I was also going to make one Halloween and one Christmas placemat each month. Let’s just say NONE of those things happened! Oops!

I didn’t quite finish in time for Halloween, but I finished 3 days later. So I’m calling that a win!

I did intend for the stripe to go from top to bottom, not side to side… But I realized I didn’t have enough of the green fabric, so I switched gears mid stream. I actually really like having the stripe of pieced blocks along the bottom.

Our Halloween guests seem to like it as well! They can still scare, but show off the stripe! ha! Who doesn’t love seeing monsters and skeletons cuddling under a quilt on the porch bench??? So sweet!

For this quilt I did paper piece the stripe. That’s how I got such sharp points! Look at those points! I love it! You can download the quilt block here. It is a 12×18 page, so most home printers won’t print it, but your neighborhood office supply store will be able to. The block makes a 10″ square.

How do you do binding? I sew mine onto the top and then iron it over to the back and hand stitch it to the back. I have not mastered the machine binding! Nope! And I love the time away from the machine to do a little hand stitching anyway!

And the back. I made a few extra blocks with the scraps to put on the back. Then I just pieced all my scraps for as much of the back as I could. Then I just started adding larger pieces to make up the difference.

Man, did this quilt almost give me a heart attack??? I was in the process of quilting it. I quilt on the dining room table. We had family friends over for dinner, so I just through my quilt and the machine in my son’s (also known at Lulu’s room, our 3 year old great pyrenees mix) room. Well, the pup got super excited about our guests, so we put her in ‘her room’ to calm down… When we go in the room, she has chewed up the quilt. I stifled my scream! we did still have guests… But luckily, she had just chewed the excess you add to the batting and back! So it was totally ok, but, man, did it scare me! And no, she didn’t get sick at all!

My token label picture that I take for each quilt!

I’m so excited to have it finished! And even though I have a list of more Halloween projects to do, I’m also excited to move on to handmade Christmas presents! What you working on after Halloween? Did you sew anything for Halloween?

 

Zig Zag Big and Small Quilt

Another Quilt that I finished last year, but never blogged about!

This was the April 2017 quilt for the Nurture Circle of do.Good Stitches. I finished it last summer and took it on a photo shoot in White Sands, NM before sending it on to the group to be donated.

This is just a half square triangle quilt that I arranged into squares. Nothing too dramatic, but I was inspired by the scraps from the quilt design the month before.

These are the blocks we made the month before. They were made from a square and a rectangle, using the tutorial from A Bright Corner. You sew the pieces together, then cut off the corners that are left.

As I was making my block and saw the scraps, I quickly let the group know to keep their scraps and we’d be using them the following month! We sewed those together to make mini half square triangles! I have to admit, I realized then that not everyone enjoyed the small piecing phenomena going around! But they played along with me anyway.

After piecing the tiny half square triangles, everyone made these little blocks out of them.  I pieced them using the same way I pieced my Crosses Postage Stamp Quilt, using a super thin fusible interfacing. I also asked everyone to make larger blue and grey HSTs. I then arranged the larger ones the same way as the tiny ones for a play on scale.

I debated between blue or grey or even green binding. Obviously, I went with the grey. It just kinda fades away, where the others would make more of a frame. Either one would have been nice, but I like how the grey turned out.

Nothing too exciting about the back. A little green and black print.

I’m no longer a member of the Nuture Group, but I still have a couple quilts to finish for the group. Slowly but surely, I’ll get them done!

 

Triangle Mountain

 

Introducing Triangle Mountain! This is another one that took forever, yet didn’t take forever! A few years ago, I donated a quilt design/custom quilt to my son’s school. I give some design options and the size. they get to pick the colors. Solid colors, because that’s what I do!

But I realized that when I’m quilting for a particular person, it makes me nervous! Kinda like when I tried to be a photographer… I was a stress case! Will they like me? Will they like my pictures? And on and on… Needless to say, that career idea didn’t last long! Back to quilting. I guess that kinda carries over into quilting. I knew the design, and I knew the colors she wanted, but I was nervous she wouldn’t like it! Gifts, no problem. ‘Client’ is where I got stuck!

All the designs I gave as options were designs I had made through the Quilt Design a Day FB group!

This is the inspiration photo from Design Seeds.

And the design that came from the inspiration photo! Obviously, originally it hade a white background, but the ‘client’ wanted a coral background. Originally we were going to use some hand dyed fabric from her mother, but that didn’t happen.

Then by the time I got to adding the background, the Pantone Color of the Year for 2019 had come out. Living Coral! I was so excited! I have had grand intentions every year to participate in the Pantone Quilt Challenge hosted by No Hats in the House and Bryan House Quilts every year and finally I knew I’d have one completed for it! I did it!

I love how the triangles turned out! I was a little intimated by the triangles too! But I found this tutorial from Jaybird Quilts that got me past it! It’s not an earth shattering tutorial, but it gave me that push I needed to realize I could do this! And just look at those corners!!

And I added a couple of matched binding transitions at the corners of the mountain. They aren’t quite the exact same angle, but it’s ok! Still gets the point across!

And the back! I just all the scraps from the triangle in that little pieced box on top. I didn’t have as much as I thought I would!

Such a relief to get this one done, out of the house and to it’s new home! And my ‘client’ was very appreciative and seemed to be very happy with her purchase. Her long, overdue purchase…

Starting the Begonia Quilt

Every year, the Seattle Modern Quilt Guild does a block of the month quilt.

And each year I start them, but I am very behind on finishing them! Like the 2016 BOM… and the 2017 BOM… I’ve finished all the blocks for those quilts, but I haven’t finished the quilt! I did finish the 2015 BOM!

This year we’re doing the Begonia Quilt designed by Stephanie from Satterwhite Quilts. And this quilt is looking just like her! She loves a HST!

January and February was a lot of cutting! And not a lot of sewing.

And a LOT of half square triangles! A LOT… And I think there’s more to come!

This one is kinda like a medallion quilt. Start in the center and then each month is a new border. The other thing about this one is it’s a MYSTERY quilt! No one has any idea what it is going to look like! You should check out the hashtag, #seamqgbom2019 to see all the different versions. It’s so cool how different they all look even though we’re all making the same quilt!

ok, the lighting is really off for these last two shots, but just when I was thinking it needed a pop of something.. The orange came in!

Feel free to join us! Even if you’re aren’t a member of the Seattle Modern Quilt Guild, you can still sew along with us here!

 

Curves Issue of Curated Quilts

I’m so excited to be featured in Curated Quilts!

I’ve been lucky enough to have had a couple mini quilts featured in Curated Quilts, but this issue I have a pattern in the magazine! I made a mini for this one too, but it didn’t get a trip to the photo lab! ha!

A quilt I started with the my do. Good Stitches group, and finished up way too late, was featured in the magazine!

I love this magazine and the talent it features, so you can only imagine how excited I was to see my quilt and name featured amongst some amazing quilters!

Each quarter the magazine puts a call for articles and patterns around a selected theme. When I saw the call for curved quilts, I was super excited to submit my Falling Stars quilt.

The magazine took some really great shots of the quilt, you should really check it out. And of course, there’s the tutorial to make your own! I don’t want to give it all away, so be sure to get the magazine to see more!

I actually had two quilts in this issue! My Raindrops on Wildflowers quilt was featured in the main gallery!

 

 

Madrona Road Challenge- An OLD WIP, finally finished!

 

If you are a member of the Modern Quilt Guild, you are probably familiar with the fabric challenges they do. I used to love them! I would get so excited and sign up right away for my free fabric. The problem is there are deadlines. You are supposedly to make a quilt using their fabrics within a certain time frame… I had a problem with staying within that timeline… A bad problem..  Does anyone remember the Madrona Road Fabric Challenge???

In 2012 (yes, 7 years ago now, see what I mean??) The Modern Quilt Guild announced their Winter Fabric Challenge. You signed up and then got the fabric around the first of Decemeber that year and were supposed to finish the quilt by January 31st. This fabric bundle was the Madrona Road line from Violet Craft for Michael Miller.

I had originally design this quilt to be a rainbow of hexi’s, but when I got this fabric, I decided to go with this designing using the Madrona Road to make the hexi’s. I started these hexi’s the summer of 2013. See, I was already behind. Way behind! Violet Craft had already selected her favorites!

I finished the top and back in January of 2014! And that’s when this quilt went into the pile of WIP’s. Wishing to be quilted… Yelling at me from the shelf… See, these pictures even have my old ‘logo.’

Then in 2017, this photo made it’s first appearance in the Finish A Long posts that I was participating in. (still am, though missed the last one!) And it’s been showing up every couple of months since then. Sitting basted, waiting to be quilted….

And then last year it finally got quilted! What a long story for this little quilt!

I just quilted it in straight line quilting with accent quilting around the box.

Of course, the other thing with the challenges is they don’t give you much of the fabric, so you pretty much have to buy more if you want to make more than a mini. and I did. I used the yellow flower fabric on the back.

And you know I love a label shot!

So this quilt started back in 2013 and had a long journey of 5 years before I finally finished it last year about this is same time. And I guess you could call it 6 years, if you count the year it took to actually blog about it! I finished it and put it in my son’s school auction. His best friend’s family purchased it and it lives on their couch just a block away! We went over to take care of their cat and I saw it sitting out. I was like, that looks familiar! Ha!

And needless to say, since I can’t keep up with the deadlines of the fabric challenges, I no longer participate in them.

It does feel nice getting a WIP finished and then to know it’s being loved by someone.

 

 

House Mini Challenge

I’m typically not a fan of mini quilts! Being honest here! Ok, I should say, I’m not a fan of making mini quilts. When I make a quilt, I like them ot be big enough to use as a quilt.

But recently I’ve started participating in the Curated Quilts mini challenges that they have for each issue. Have you made any?? This mini was for their House mini challenge.

I also have never made a house quilt block or a house quilt. Oops, I take that back. I did make some house blocks for a do.Good Stitches quilt. But I haven’t made any on my own. When I saw this challenge come up, I pretty much said nope. Not going to that one! In the end, I couldn’t not play along.

Do you ever google vintage mid century house plans? If not, you should! Every now and then I do because the drawings and ads and plans are just so cool! Being an architect, I knew that if I was going to do this challenge, I would have to do a floor plan. So I went back to my google searches and found a design I wanted to make into a quilt.

I took that plan and then laid out how I was going to break it down into a mini quilt.

And this is what I got! Walls, windows and planters. Originally I had planned to hand quilt in the pavers in the patio. I finished this right before I headed out on summer vacation last year, so the plan was to finish it on the road. That didn’t happen. I really think it would be more dynamic if it did have the hand quilting, but oh, well!

This quilt did not make the cut! And I totally see why. It’s not my best work, but it was still fun to make it!

Seattle Modern Quilt Giving Quiltcon Quilt for 2019

With three years of giving quilts under my belt as one of the Seattle Modern Quilt Guild Giving Committee co-chairs, I think this is my favorite giving quilt! OK, I love it! Really love it! Like want to steal it kinda love it….

 

Introducing our quilt for the Modern Quilt Guild QuiltCon Charity Quilt Challenge, The Last Hurrah! If you’re at QuiltCon right now, be sure to take an up close look at our quilt!

 

The basic layout of our QuiltCon Charity quilt was inspired by an antique quilt made of hand pieces diamonds from our guild President, Matt Macomber’s, antique quilt collection. From this quilt layout, I designed the layout colored diamonds, white on white diamonds and the solid diamonds.

 

For our quilt we jumped right in and embraced the Modern Quilt Guild small piecing challenge. Between the two of us Seattle MQG Giving Committee Chairs, Debbie Jeske and myself, 18 yards of fabric was cut into 1 inch by 6 inch strips! We shared those strips with the guild in little baggies of 18 pieces each. Guild members sewed them back together into 185 rectangles. Then the Giving Committee Chairs cut the rectangles into diamonds and pieced them into hexagons! I love explaining this process to non quilters and watching their blank expressions as I tell them, ‘We cut up the fabric, then sewed it back together and then we cut it again and then sewed it back together again…. ‘

 

There are a lot of great things about QuiltCon, but one of best things is meeting new people and online friends. We designed the quilt based on a particular size diamond. Instead of using paper as a template to cut 309 diamonds, we wanted a plastic template and we remembered taking a class at last year’s QuiltCon with a woman who owns a company that makes acrylic templates! So we still had her card and looked her up online and ordered our 5″x8″ custom templates ordered from MakeATX!

My co-chair Debbie pieced half of the hexagons and I did the other half. The quilt plays on a very traditional quilt design, but makes it modern. The diamonds are pieced into a group of 12 to make an 18″ hexagon. The placement of each of the striped pieces and solid pieces are laid out to break out of the hexagon to blur the lines between hexagons and stars and where one hexagon starts and stops. I love how it looks in the end, but I did confuse myself once or twice when piecing the top together!

 

 

The amazing quilting was also done by Matt with a mix of machine and hand quilting. Again, he drew from his antique quilt for the quilting inspiration. And a special thanks to Kathleen for putting the finishing touches by binding the quilt!

 

With the design taking inspiration from the antique quilt, the color inspiration from the MQG, and the design goal of small piecing, we created a truly modern quilt.

 

You may have noticed the name of this one…. The Last Hurrah! This one really is our last hurrah being the Guild’s Giving Committee Chairs! We think it’s a great one to go out on. Debbie and I would like to thank every single person that took the time to make even a single block for any of our Giving Committee Quilts for the last three years! To everyone who made a block, quilted a quilt or added binding, we appreciate it! We think all the quilts turned out fantastic! I had my doubts about some of them, but when it all came together, I loved them all!

Seriously, do you really think anyone would notice is this quilt ended up at my house????

 

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Quilt Name: The Last Hurrah

Design by: Louise Wackerman, @imfeelincrafty

Quilt Size: 70″ x 90″

Blocks by: Seattle Modern Quilt Guild Members

Top Pieced by: Debbie Jeske @aquilterstable and Louise Wackerman, @imfeelincrafty

Quilted by: Matt Macomber @odditease

Bound by: Kathleen Munns @quiltmunnster

Seattle Modern Quilt Guild Giving Committee 2018

Another trip down memory lane, although this lane isn’t that far back! Today I want to share the giving quilts I helped coordinate as a co Chair of the Giving Committee with the SMQG!

Does it kinda look like the same quilt twice? We didn’t start with that plan, originally for 2018, Debbie and I decided to make three quilts with the guild. One using the 2018 Kona Color of the Year, Tigerlily, one using a bunch of green fabric we had from Clothworks and the QuiltCon Quilt. For both of the first two quilts we ended up with two each from all the blocks we received!

Let me introduce Tic Tac Tigerlilly! I’m not sure why, but this one totally reminds me of a tic tac toe game! Do you see it?

Having a co-chair like Debbie meant we were going to have to use one of the colors of the year in a quilt! She’s a pro at making a quilt using the Kona and Pantone colors of the year each year. She has inspired me to do the same thing, but I buy the fabric and have yet to make a quilt on my own with the colors of the year! Anyway… For these March quilts we knew we wanted to use Kona’s Tigerlily fabric.

We really enjoy improv, but knew some of our guild members weren’t as excited for improv as we are. So for this one, we decided to skip improv and go with something a little more structured. A Log Cabin. But of course, it’s not a simple normal ‘ole Log Cabin. We added a twist!

We started with a red square for the center. Instead of each side being made of one strip, two sides of the block are made of groups of two strips of fabric and the other two sides are each made of one thick wide strip. You can follow the tutorial here.

We didn’t know how many blocks we’d get or how big the quilt would be. But we did know how we wanted to lay it out and that we’d need at east four groups of four. We got more than enough for four groups fo four!  I took the 16 that were the right size, the correct layout and the requested fabrics and put those together to make this quilt. The quilting was done by Cindy Krafft. Love how the swirls work with the straight lines!

For the back I found this great orange circle fabric that I love! And of course, I really love to use extra blocks on the back and we just happened to have some extra blocks and an unfinished block to bring it all together!

Quilt Name: Tic Tac Tigerlily

Quilt Size: 66” x 66”

Blocks by: Seattle Modern Quilt Guild Members

Quilt Top Pieced by: Louise Wackerman

Quilted by: Cindy Krafft

Quilt Binding by: Louise Wackerman

Recipient: Northwest Breast Center

Organized by: 2018 Giving Committee Chairs, Louise Wackerman & Debbie Jeske

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Remember how I mentioned we had more than enough blocks for Tic Tac Tigerlily?? Let me introduce you to Scatterlilies!

For this one we used the more ‘scattered’ blocks. The ones that weren’t quite the right size, or colors or color placement. I added a little bit here and there to fit the blocks together.

A special shoutout to Pam Cole for doing both the quilting and the binding on this one.

Quilt Name: Scatterlilies

Quilt Size: 48” x 66”

Blocks by: Seattle Modern Quilt Guild Members

Quilt Top Pieced by: Louise Wackerman

Quilted and Bound by: Pam Cole

Recipient: Greater Seattle Intergroup of Alcoholics Anonymous

Organized by: 2018 Giving Committee Chairs, Louise Wackerman & Debbie Jeske

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For the May Giving Committee quilt, we started the design around a bunch of green cuts of American Made Brand solids given to the Guild by Clothworks. Then we added solids from member’s stash solids.

We started with making squares using the green as the dominant color in the blocks. We could use any colors except bright white. We tried to keep the colors the relatively same value as the green.

Once you had your squares using the green, we asked members to start filling in with their solids until they had created a 14 1/2″ block. You can find the whole tutorial we used here.

Kinda like with the Robbing Pete blocks, I had a moment that I didn’t know if I was really liking these blocks or not. I don’t know why I was second guessing the design idea, but I was! But then, WOW! It really excited me as Debbie was piecing the blocks! I fell back in love with the idea!

Again! I love it!

Quilt Name: Bein’ Green

Quilt Size: 56” x 72”

Green American Made Brand Solid Donated by: Clothworks

Blocks by: Seattle Modern Quilt Guild Members

Quilt Top Pieced by: Debbie Jeske

Quilted and Bound by: Jana Royal

Recipient: Northwest Breast Center

Organized by: 2016-2018 Giving Committee Chairs, Louise Wackerman & Debbie Jeske

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And last but not least! It’s the second quilt that started from the quilt above!

Once we had all the blocks laid out, there was a natural divide between the blocks based on the stash fabric choices. So again, we got two quilts out of one design! For this one, Debbie held out the blocks made with more brown fabrics and white linen blocks. And they just go perfectly together!

 

Quilt Name: GreenSquare

Quilt Size: 42” x 51”

Green American Made Brand Solid Fabric Donated by Clothworks

Blocks by: Seattle Modern Quilt Guild Members

Quilt Top Pieced by: Debbie Jeske

Quilted by: Jana Royal

Bound by: Debbie Jeske

Recipient: Northwest Breast Center

Organized by: 2016-2018 Giving Committee Chairs, Louise Wackerman & Debbie Jeske