Baby's quilt

It isn't often I have helpers around to show off a quilt. I took advantage of the girls' visit this week to capture the quilt for their new baby brother due to arrive this Spring.

They were kind of cooperative...

And kind of noisy...

So here are a few more shots of the finished quilt. I titled it "Big Hugs, Little Kisses", as I'm sure he may be a bit smothered in love!

The 6-minute circle technique was perfect for the 8 inch "hugs" and the 4 inch "kisses" were made from a simple drawing and then paper-pieced.

The quilting is done in straight diagonal lines radiating from the center, forming a giant "X" of quilting. It was tough to capture the way the light was hitting the quilt, but you get the idea!

We hope he likes it!!! . . . Cindy

Thank you Redbird Bee!

 Thank you to Gina, Kelly, Rene, Toni, Carolyn, Hanna, Linda, Nancy, Miss Nancy, Kyndra and Tess. The girls of the Redbird Bee made my blocks and I couldn't be happier with them!

 White sashing between the blocks was all it took to make them a quilt...

The block is one I used in the cover quilt of my first book, Gathered From the Garden, called Garden of Eden. I love the design and always knew I had to make a quilt using it some day.

I found this cute owl fabric at our local store, Fabric Nosherie and thought it would make a perfect backing. Don't you think? The binding is a brown stripe I've had stashed for a while - and I'm glad I did. It sure works here!

This is my first Bee ~ what fun to have a quilt made by your special quilty friends! . . . Cindy

Continuous Curve Quilting

I've been quilting my quilt with the blocks made by the girls in the Redbird Bee. I find deciding on a quilting design for pieced blocks quite difficult. Continuous Curved Quilting is really a great technique, especially when you can quilt the whole block without stopping and starting again.

It takes some study and thinking. A bit of venturing off from the direction you might presume at first. I thought I'd share with you the path that made the quilting one continuous line for this block. 

You can see here where I started, traveled to the center square and completed that...

 The pink lines represent where I continued around 3 sides of the squares and 2 sides of the triangles, ending up where I started...

Following a chalk line I drew from corner to corner on each outer square, I quilted continuous curves on either side of the lines. I wanted to end up back to the corner I entered. The dashed lines represent the last 2 quilting lines in the square...

I then quilted the 4th side of the inner square which brought me to the next outer square and continued around the block in the same manner...

I think it creates a nice design that really highlights the piecing. My thread choice is Aurifil 50, a nice fine thread that doesn't make a big impact on your fabric. I switched between using gray blue and soft orange for thread colors, depending on the color of the block.

I'm on to stitching the binding down and can't wait to show you the finished quilt. Those Redbird girls are awesome!   . . . Cindy

Modern Courthouse Steps

I so love this idea of taking one traditional block and turning it into a quilt! That's exactly what Denyse Schmidt did in her book Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspiration. 

 The quilt in the book uses solid fabrics, but I chose to bust some of the stash by using prints in analogous colors of orange/yellow, orange, orange/red, red and fuchsia. For the light strips, I used leftover bits of solids in creams and tans.

It's quilted using the #4 serpentine stitch on my Bernina through the middle of each strip. I've played with this stitch for quilting before, but was never happy with the result. The key was increasing the length quite a bit - length of 4 and width of 5 - and I'm super happy with it.

The back is a combination of a solid cream and print with a 1" strip separating them to mimic the 1" strips in the quilt.

After quilting, I was stumped on a binding, but ended up using the leftover solid pieces for a solid scrappy binding.

I'm wondering what other traditional blocks would look nice blown up as a whole quilt?

. . . Cindy

The 6 minute circle

A pieced circle in 6 minutes! I first saw this technique on Simply Quilts, an HGTV show back in 2005. I thought the technique was cool and immediately bought the book about it, Pieced Curves So Simple by Dale Fleming. Of course, the moment passed and I never did anything with it until this week.

I was inspired by my Redbird Bee buddy, Hanna's quilt Hugs and Hugs. I thought they'd make the perfect addition to my "X" blocks for a hugs and kisses baby quilt.

Was I able to do a pieced circle in 6 minutes? At first, not by a long shot. But after a few, I managed to make a block in about 15 minutes. Considering my blocks were 2 pieced circles, I was pretty pleased.

I found my Olfa circle cutter handy to make the freezer paper templates and a pair of super sharp to the point scissors for all the clipping. All in all, I loved this technique and plan to use it again. A nice video of the 6 minute circle technique can be found on the HGTV website here. You might want to bookmark it - I had a hard time finding it until my friend Kelly pointed me in the right direction!

As far as other projects go, my Bee blocks are also pieced together and the quilting has started!

. . . Cindy

Design Wall Monday

When I looked at my design wall this morning, I realized it's been a paper piecing few days...

A start on the baby quilt ~ big hugs and little kisses...

A redo of block one ~ Lucky Stars Block of the Month...

And Gina's block for the Redbird Bee ~ Star quilt block tutorial...

It's progress! Back to sewing! . . . Cindy

My half trip around the world

My Half Trip Around the World quilt was inspired by Rachel's over at Stitched In Color. I love a traditional pattern (in fact you'll see more of them around here this year) and I loved her modern twist on the Trip Around the World design. 

I've had it in the back of my mind waiting for the perfect fabric line to appear. Notting Hill turned out to be it - and I'm happy with how the pattern shows off all the beautiful prints. The squares are 5" finished. On the large size compared to the traditional, but really perfect for the large scale prints. It's 50" x 60", so should quilt up pretty quickly.

My next project involves this bright and very boy fabric. Can't wait to get started!

. . . Cindy

Is it a quilt?

 My flannel hexagon top is finally a "quilt".

Maybe it's not a quilt? I used the same technique that I used in my Summer Blankie, combining flannel and voile, sans batting for a light weight, very soft and drapey blanket.

The two layers are held together with minimal quilting. I simply stitched 1/2" on either side of every seam. Quick and easy! Done in a day!

The voile is on the back this time and the "quilt" has a traditional, but machine-stitched binding. These blankets are so soft and very comfy for napping. {I know this from experience}

In other projects, I fell hard for Joel Dewberry's new line Notting Hill. I used the decorator weight for a new Multi-tasker Tote. {The first one given to my daughter}

And a sneak peek at the quilt I'm making using the Poppy Palette. It's making me smile!

. . . Cindy

Bags and Blocks

I made a few bag/pouch gifts over the holidays. They were a little late getting out, but I can finally say they're with their recipients. The first is a great little lunch bag - pattern from Sew the Perfect Gift. It had some nice details and was fun to make!

 I also made 4 zippered pouches (Gina, I forgot to get a picture of yours!) from Elizabeth Hartman's Perfect Zip Bags pattern. I can't say enough good things about this pattern! I'm really not very skilled at these kind of projects, but this one is fun, easy and turns out perfectly every time - even with a zipper to install!

 My to-do list this week also included making Rene's block for our Redbird Bee. I love this block!! She used Elizabeth's Patchwork Wheel block tutorial but changed it to a whopping 20 inches. It's just gorgeous and I'm ready to go out and stock up on some more Cameo!

And finally, I'm on target with my Lucky Stars BOM. This was our practice block for December. I'm really happy with it, but realized when it was finished that I'm in a color rut. So I'll be redoing this one in my new palette...

I'm sticking with the navy, but switched to a brighter aqua and changed the orange to cerise (a purply, pinky, red). These were so much fun and I'm ready to do the next one!

I'm looking forward to our St Louis MQG meeting this weekend. It's always an inspiration and a few laughs! Hope your weekend is creative! . . . Cindy

Catching Up...

You may remember I was trying to finish up some projects and start the new year with a clean slate. Well, the slate is still a little dirty, but I do have a few more projects that actually were bound at the very end of 2012.

My Ruby Strings quilt is done!

The back has some leftover "strings" and a nice red and gray fabric found on sale!

My Chevron quilt was nicely quilted by Annie, a friend from our St Louis MQG. You've seen this before, but it's nice to have it done. She quilted lovely, various designs in all the chevrons!

The back is again some leftover strips and I thought this zig zag fabric was a perfect choice.

And finally, this block made from Summersville got a border and some quilting to finish it off.

I also wanted to share my new cabinet with you. As you can probably guess, quilt storage is badly needed around here! I'm so thrilled with this cabinet, from Crate and Barrel. I've already put 7 quilts in it and there's easily room for 5 more. I just love a stack of quilts!

And you know one thing leads to another when you add something to a room. I decided to sew up some new pillows and used one of my absolute favorite Amy Butler fabrics of all time!

We're almost caught up! Next I have a few bag/pouch projects that were gifted. Then we'll be all caught up!  . . . Cindy