Baubles Quilt Finish

Posted on January 31, 2016 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Finished Quilts, Holiday Sewing, Quilting / 9 Comments

Baubles is one of my oldest UFOs, and I am thrilled that I finally finished it up this week!

The blocks were designed on EQ7 when I was first experimenting with the program. These are some of the first paper piecing blocks that I designed from scratch. Once they were assembled, they got set aside, and I didn’t touch them for nearly a year.

From the start, I didn’t have a particular plan for the blocks, but eventually I brought them together in a configuration resembling hanging ornaments.

The quilting was probably the most fun of the entire project. I really enjoy doing all over free motion quilting, and this quilt is done almost entirely with this technique.

The only exception is that each bauble is quilted with coordinating thread and a combination of free motion and ruler work specific to each block.

Once the quilting was finished, I embroidered silver hanging strings for each ornament.

I decided to keep the binding white to allow the illusion of the baubles floating in space.

Quilt Stats

Title: Baubles

Size: 44″x53″

Techniques: Foundation paper piecing, traditional piecing, hand embroidery

Quilting: Hand guided longarm quilted on an A-1 Elite using free motion and ruler work techniques

Fabric: White Kona cotton and assorted pink, red, blue, and turquoise cotton prints

Batting: Warm and White cotton blend batting

Thread: Pieced using white Gutermann Mara 100, Quilted with white, bright pink, and blue Aurifil 50wt cotton thread, embroidered with silver Wonderfil and Gutermann Metallics

Binding: White Kona, cut in 2″ wide strips on the bias, machine stitched to the front, hand stitched on the back.

This quilt was my One Monthly Goal for January!

Goal #1 is Complete!

Pi Day: Mini Quilt #11

Posted on March 14, 2015March 18, 2015 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Finished Quilts, Holiday Sewing, Mini Quilt Mania 2015, Quilting / 17 Comments

Happy π Day! Best wishes for peace, hope, and joy during the glorious season of pi day- Who can’t get behind a holiday that requires the consumption of pie! There are so many kinds of pie you could celebrate with . . . fruit pie, cream pie, ice cream pie, chocolate pie . . . Or a savory pie . . . pot pie, shepherd’s pie, pizza pie, quiche . . . Okay now I’m hungry. I thought that the best way to celebrate such a wonderful day would be to make a mini quilt that could serve as a pie plate mat.

I knew I wanted to do a circular mini quilt, and a pie motif seemed too perfect to pass up. I pieced a “lattice” top and then used a bias cut strip of fabric to create the outer edge of the “crust.” I had never attempted curving a bias strip around the edge of a full circle, but this worked out well (a great deal of steam was involved).

Today is a particularly special π Day since twice today we will have seven digits past the decimal point align with the date and time. 3.1415926 translates to March (month 3) Day (14th) Year (’15) and Time (9:26 am & pm). To commemorate this once in a lifetime event I decided to embroider these numbers to my mini quilt.

The backing and binding fabric is a grey print- think tin pie plate. For the quilting I decided to keep it simple by stitching around the edge of each red square in the lattice work. Of course “simple” involved a whole lot of thread tails to bury- maybe I should have thought that through a bit more! But since I like the result, we’ll say it was worth it!

Now to see the pie mat in action:

Coconut Pie with Meringue Topping- I adore Meringue.

Cherry Pie.

Quilt Stats

Title: π, pi, PIE!

Size: 14″ Diameter. 3.1415926 x 14″ = 43.98229″ Circumference

Techniques: Machine Piecing

Quilting: Machine quilting- stitching in the ditch

Fabrics: Red: Batik, Tan: Print from Carolyn Friedlander’s “Doe” line, Grey: Lonni Rossi print from Andover Fabrics

Batting: Hobbs Heirloom Bleached Cotton Batting

Thread: Pieced with white Gutermann Mara 100, Quilted using Mettler cotton quilting thread in red

Binding: Bias in coordinating grey fabric, cut in 2″ strips, machine stitched to the front, hand stitched to the back

What was new:

Adding a strip of bias around a circle and pressing it flat (other than bias binding)

Quilt 11 / 50

Goal #10 is Finished!

I’m linking up with Show Off Saturday at Sew Can She, Let’s Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts, and Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation. Please stop in to see all of the fantastic work being done!

Valentine Tic-Tac-Toe: Mini Quilt #5

Posted on January 30, 2015March 31, 2015 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Finished Quilts, Holiday Sewing, Mini Quilt Mania 2015, Quilting / 22 Comments

What could be more fun than a mini quilt? Eleven mini quilts! This week I decided to make the fun and games of Mini Quilt Mania into a real game! This mini is a quilted version of tic-tac-toe with a Valentine’s Day twist.

The game board section section of the set is comprised of a grid of red echoed with this fun pink print. The background of white Kona Cotton really shows off the echoing heart spiral quilting.

The backing of the quilt is also white Kona, which shows off the pink quilting thread.

One quilt isn’t enough for this week, so I made ten more mini quilts to act as game pieces.

The five X’s for this game are square blocks made from half-square-triangles that are paired with one another then stitched and cut again along the opposite diagonal.

I replaced the standard O’s of the game with five heart shaped pieces. The inner hearts are fused using Wonder Under before being machine blanket stitched around the edges.

All of the game pieces were “bagged out” (stitched together with right sides of the fabric facing one another and then turned right side out through a small opening in the stitching) with a piece of cotton batting. I had never tried this technique with batting before, and I was a bit concerned about the bulk around the edges of the pieces. Fortunately, a row of edge stitching around each piece allowed them to lay flat. The added bonus was that the edge stitching closed up the openings used to turn the pieces right side out. No hand slip stitching on this project!

To keep the game pieces together, I whipped up a cute little drawstring bag in matching fabric. It is fully lined in the light pink cotton.

Quilt Stats

Title: Valentine Tic-Tac-Toe

Size: Quilted Game Board- 16.5″x16.5″ Hearts and Squares- 3″x3″ Storage Bag- 5″x7″

Techniques: Machine Piecing, Fusibles, Machine Applique, Bagged-out shapes

Quilting: Machine quilted. Game board- Heart shaped spiral. Heart Pieces- heart shaped ech0. Square Pieces- diagonal orange-peel shapes

Fabrics: 100% Cotton fabrics including Kona Cotton in White, Marble Dot from Moda, a Suzy Ultman print for Robert Kaufman, and a Nancy Halvorsen design for Benartex

Batting: Scraps of Warm and White and Warm and Natural

Thread: Pieced using Gutermann Mara 100 in White and Magenta. Machine embroidery done with Mettler Cotton Machine quilting thread in Magenta. Quilted with Connecting Threads Essential Thread in Magenta.

Binding: Marble Dots from Moda, cut on the bias in 2″ strips. Machine stitched to the front of the quilt, hand stitched to the back

What Was New:

Creating an interactive game in quilt form

Bagging out small quilt pieces with batting included

Quilt 5 / 50

Goal #4 is Finished!

I am linking this quilt up with Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, Whoop Whoop Friday at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Sew Cute Tuesday at Blossom Heart Quilts, Let’s Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts, Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation, and Show Off Saturday at Sew Can She. Please stop by to see everyone’s lovely work!

Triple Heart: Mini Quilt #4

Posted on January 22, 2015March 31, 2015 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Finished Quilts, Holiday Sewing, Mini Quilt Mania 2015, Quilting, Tutorial / 18 Comments

I had originally planned to post this sweet little mini quilt a bit closer to Valentine’s Day, but ultimately decided that there may be someone who could draw inspiration for their own heart-based endeavors in the coming weeks!

I recently did a quilt with a lot of hexagons that were made by cutting a circle and folding the edges in to create the hexagon shape. In creating these pieces, I became curious about how these shapes would look if I omitted the final fold. The result is a vaguely ice-cream-cone-shaped piece. Two of these together make an adorable heart!

To make these shapes you will want to start with a circle. I used a container from a round of Brie cheese, but this technique will work with any size circle.
With the wrong side of the fabric out, fold the circle into quarters to find the center point of the shape.
With a needle and knotted basting thread, catch 1-2 threads at the tip of the fold and pull the thread through to the knot.
Unfold the circle with the wrong side of the fabric facing up and your thread coming up from the center of the circle.
Take a small stitch at a point on the outer edge of the circle. You will want to insert the needle as close to the edge of the fabric as possible without the stitch pulling out of the cut edge. The needle goes in on the wrong side of the fabric and emerges on the right side.
Now pull the thread through, bringing the edge of the circle to meet the center. Press the fold you have created with your fingers.
At the end of the fold you just created, take another stitch and pull that point on the edge of the circle to the center. Finger press this fold, and take another stitch at the end of it. Pull this point into the center.
Continue around the circle in this manor until you have an ice-cream-cone-shape.
Knot off your basting thread or backstitch at the center point and take the shape to the ironing board to give it a good press.

To form the center design, place the shapes right side together and whip stitch them together.

You will end up with a shape that looks like this.

The back is almost as pretty!

I was originally planning to hand appliqué the shape to the background, but after thinking it over, I decided the hearts needed some additional emphasis in the form of more decorative stitches. I liked using decorative machine stitches on Fibonacci on the Seashore, and I was eager to experiment with using machine stitching for appliqué. For this project, I used a blanket stitch in a different color to stitch around the edge of each heart.

The hearts in this project are created without using curves, and I selected a gridded background for the piece. Given all the linear aspects of this mini, I thought it would be interesting to make the overall shape a circle. The radius for this 4.5 inches.

The hearts are quilted a quarter inch inside the appliqué. The background is a radiating hexagon shape, with diamonds filling in the gaps. The binding matches the background and backing, and I love the linear effect. It was worth the effort I made to match up the design.

Quilt Stats

Title: Triple Heart

Size: 9″x9″ (circumference is about 28- 1/4″)

Techniques: Hand piecing, folded “hexagons” (without the final fold), Machine appliqué

Quilting: Machine Quilted. Hearts: Offset quilting 1/4″ inside the edge Background: Spiraling hexagon

Fabrics: Background from Carolyn Friedlander’s Doe line. Hearts are 100% cotton prints and batiks.

Batting: Warm and White cotton batting

Thread: Pieced by hand using Magenta Gutermann Mara 100 (and Thread Heaven); Machine appliquéd with red, magenta, and violet Cotton Mettler Quilting Thread; Quilted with navy cotton machine quilting thread; red, magenta, and violet Cotton Mettler Quilting Thread.

Binding: Bias strips cut at 2 inches, machine straight stitched to the back, machine blanket stitched to the front.

What Was New:

A round quilt!
5- sided “hexagons”
Machine appliqué with a blanket stitch
Finishing the binding on the front with a machine blanket stitch

Quilt 4 / 50

Goal #3 is Finished!

I am linking this post up with Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday at From Bolt to Beauty, Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, Show Off Saturday at Sew Can She, Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation, Fresh Sewing Day at Lily’s Quilts, and Whoop Whoop Friday at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. I hope you take a moment to see all of the wonderful work being created!

Happy New Year 2015! Mini Quilt #1

Posted on January 4, 2015March 31, 2015 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Finished Quilts, Holiday Sewing, Mini Quilt Mania 2015, Quilting / 21 Comments

I am excited to kick off Mini Quilt Mania with finish #1! For this quilt I wanted to use the New Year as an inspiration. For a lot of people, New Year’s is a time for big parties and fireworks. For me, the New Year is celebrated by watching the Times Square Ball Drop on television. So I decided I would focus on that iconic piece of lighted metal and glass for my inspiration for this quilt.

While I usually like to observe my objects of inspiration in person, I am in the midwest, and the Times Square Ball is not. Turning to the internet, I looked at several sources including the fact sheet found on the Times Square Alliance page about the New Year’s Eve Ball. Not really a true sphere, the ball is made up of triangles within triangles. These triangles are lit using LEDs (really exciting to the theatre designer part of me!) which allows for almost endless color combinations and patterns. I started out by creating a line drawing of triangles within triangles. Then I added borders around each main triangle to represent the metal structure of the ball.

I knew that I wanted to use medium to dark greys in the borders of the triangles to give the design a slightly industrial feel. (I like to juxtapose “utilitarian” with “pretty!”) Then I started to experiment with color. At first I was thinking along the lines of emphasizing the hexagons formed in the design, but I soon moved onto star configurations. The gallery below is a small sample of the designs I considered.

: Cool toned Hexagons

: Multi colored Hexagons

: Analogous Hexagons

: Red Stars

: Red, Orange, and Violet Stars

: Combination stars and hexagons

I am pretty sure the most challenging part of this process was decided which color scheme to go with! Ultimately, I ended up choosing the Red, Orange, and Violet Stars.

Red, Orange, and Violet Stars

I pulled from stash fabrics for this project, and decided to select one dark and one light material of each of the three star colors. I also pulled three different grey fabrics for the triangle borders. The top is constructed using paper foundation piecing techniques.

For the quilting design, I wanted to emphasize the straight lines found in the quilt top, and I ended up choosing to outline and enhance each element of the design using a coordinating thread. Since I was quilting in several colors, I used a white backing fabric to really show off the colors of the threads.

Overall, I am really happy with this quilt, and I may consider creating a larger scale quilt using this block design.

Quilt Stats

Title: Happy New Year 2015!

Size: 12.5″ x 14.25″

Techniques: Paper Foundation Piecing

Quilting: Outline stitching with additional interior lines using a walking foot on a Bernina 1008

Fabrics: White Kona Cotton, 100% cotton prints and batiks

Batting: Warm and White Cotton Batting

Thread: Pieced using Gutermann Mara 100 in white, Quilted using cotton machine quilting thread in dark grey, Mettler cotton quilting threads in Red, Magenta, and Orange

Binding: Grey bias- cut in 2″ strips, machine stitched to the front of the quilt, and hand stitched to the back.

Quilt 1 / 50

I am linking this post up with Show Off Saturday at Sew Can She, Let’s Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts, Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation, Paper Piecing Party at Quilt Art Designs, Whoop Whoop Friday at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, and Sew Cute Tuesday at Blossom Heart Quilts. Please take a moment to stop in and see all of the wonderful projects being created!