Yeah, you read that right, a broken machine! 😦

Let me start at the beginning. As of Tuesday night, I had three quilts basted and ready to quilt.

First, I had this one. I didn’t piece this. I saw at a garage sale last spring and I just didn’t have the heart to leave it there. I spoke with the maker, and got her name so I can give her credit on the label. I’ve decided to name this one “Via Gleneagle” after the neighborhood where I found it.

I did minimal quilting on this one and honestly didn’t do that great of a job. I was really sick at the time (I’m getting better!) and probably wasn’t as careful as I should have been. I have a few big puckers in the back that I’ll be fixing. I kept the quilting minimal on this because I thought it gave it a more old-fashioned, poofy, ‘snuggle on grandma’s couch’ sort of feeling that matched the design of the front.

The next quilt I had basted and ready to go was my Quilt of Champions. I am taking the quilting on this one a lot slower because I really love this quilt and don’t want to screw it up! I managed to get the quilting around the circle done this week. I WANTED to get it completely quilted, but c’est la vie!

Lastly, I have this quilt, which I haven’t shown on the blog yet. You’ll have to excuse the terrible photo. I know I had good shots of this at one point, but they seem to have gotten deleted off my computer. After this photo was taken, I added a bunch of white and put the diamond in the lower right side. It’s been basted for months and months and I’ve been trying to decide how to quilt all that negative space. I have a plan in mind now, so it’s just a matter of getting the thread and getting to it. This is a big one, and I free motion quilt on my domestic machine, so I have to be really careful.

Speaking of my machine…. my poor machine.

Sewing blogger confession time.

I sew on a 15-year old, very basic Kenmore sewing machine that my husband bought me when we were first married. This machine sat neglected for years in the crawl space of my house until I realized two and a half years ago that I love quilting.

It’s not even close to being the best machine out there, but it’s always done everything I’ve asked it to- until this week.

 Over the last week, the cord on my foot pedal was acting a bit sketchy. When I’d turn my machine on, it would take a bit of wiggling before it would jump into action.  And then, yesterday, it just stopped mid-seam.

I knew the day was going to come eventually. So I starting scoping out new machines. And then like a good, budget-conscience sewist….. I ordered a replacement pedal.

Dear Lord, I hope it works! In the meantime, I’m just going to be working on my embroidery skills!

Happy sewing! ~L

About a month ago, I mentioned that I had made some Home is Where the Heart is blocks. This week, I decided to do a few more blocks in aqua and coral.

You can get the pattern for these blocks by taking Amy Gibson’s For Keeps Pledge. Amy is accepting donations and will be making these blocks into quilts for an organization called People Comforters of Evergreen, Colorado. I’m planning on sending these out in the next few days.

Another thing I did today was add a border to the quilt I talked about last week. I decided to name this one The Quilt of Champions, since it’s been completed during sports practices. Practice is where champions are made!

With this border, I’ve finished the quilt top. I will be basting it and starting the quilting later this week.

What are you all up to this week? I’d love to hear from you!

Happy Sewing, ~L

This week, I’m linking up to:

Whew! The end-of-summer madness is in full swing, and I’ve been a busy girl! I realized today that it’s been three WEEKS since I last posted anything to the blog.

In those few weeks, I’ve done some non-quilting sewing that included helping a friend sew a cover for her baby carrier and getting together with a great group of ladies for some assembly-line pillowcase dress making. I was the shoulder strap sewist! The dresses will be going to a pastor in Uganda who visited my church back in April. He’ll be giving them to the girls in his congregation.

It was really nice getting together with other ladies and working towards making something to give. There was a lady in the group who brought and donated 67 adorable dresses that she’s made over the last year. And she also sews for Project Linus. Amazing.

I’ve only been a quilter for a couple of years, and I’m constantly learning more and more how absolutely generous my fellow quilters are. Not many other pastimes include spending countless hours working on something that you turn around and give to a stranger. And I know some of you out there are doing it all the time. You inspire me!

So on that note: Today I’m sharing my latest finish, which will be donated through my guild to a local hospital.

Choosing a quilting design

This one was started as an entry for Pat Sloan’s Hip to Be Square challenge. The challenge was to make a quilt with 2.5″ squares, with an emphasis on using up scraps. I also challenged myself to see if I could make a quilt that I loved out of fabric that I most definitely did not love.

The answer was a resounding no.

Honestly, I don’t like this quilt and wasn’t going to put it on the blog. And then I quilted and washed it and sort of fell in love with the crinkly goodness of it all.

I was able to grab this backing fabric out of the charity quilt fabric bin at the guild. I felt like the seafoam color cooled the quilt down a bit and the busy floral went along well with the crazy florals on the front.

One thing I do love about this one is the quilting pattern. It created these crazy, bunched up sections that gave it the perfect amount of old-fashioned texture. I know I’ll be using that one again really soon.

I also wanted to update you on the progress of the Windows Into My World quilt that I talked about here and here.

I’m proud to say that after a ton of work, I’ve finished the hand piecing of the Windows AND appliqued them to the background!

I’m very excited about this one! I will be framing out what I have so far in Kona Coal Grey and either doing a blue or lime green binding. I haven’t come up with a name for this one yet, but it has to be sports related. For one, it’s Seahawks colors (you see these colors EVERYWHERE where I live!). And second, I worked on this mostly during my kids’ Tae Kwon Do and Cross Country practices. Any name suggestions?

This week, I’m linking up to:

Happy Sewing! ~L

Welcome to the last Color Play Friday of 2015!  Trina and I have doing this for a few months now, and it’s been more fun than I had even hoped. I’ve come up with some bundles of fabric that I never would have put together in a million years had it not been for this exercise. And having a post to write every week has made me keep at it even when life gets a little too busy.

Trina and I will be taking a break for the next two weeks to enjoy a little holiday time with our families. Please join us back here on New Year’s Day for our next Color Play Friday! 

More about Color Play Friday:

Trina from In An Otter Life and I created Color Play Friday one day after a nice trip to the fabric store together.

 Here are the rules:

1. Each week, Trina or I will select a picture from our joint Pinterest board. These are all pictures that one of us has taken on our adventures.
2. We each create a palette using colors from that picture
3. We then create a bundle of 5-8 fabrics that is inspired by that palette. They don’t have to be an exact match to our palette, and we can throw in contrasting or accent colors, but the bundle should look inspired by the palette.
4. We don’t see anyone else’s palette or bundle before we post on Friday.
5. That’s it! It’s going to be so fun to see what we each come up with.

This week’s photo was taken at a shop called Kris Kringl in Leavenworth, WA. Leavenworth is an amazing tourist hot spot, and I’m glad Trina chose this picture for this week because I will actually be in Leavenworth tomorrow for the Christmas Lighting Ceremony!

Here are the fabrics I chose:

Bari J, Petals and Plume, Seeing Stars in Violet

Bari J, Millie Fleur, Ripples in Pink

Cotton and Steel Basics, Sprinkles in Summer Camp

Warner Brothers, Silly Snowman, Snowflakes in Royal Blue

Robert Kaufman, Metro Living, Metro Circles in Turquoise

Makower UK, Christmas 2015 Wonderland, Cars

A note about scale:

• While I believe scale is a very important part of fabric selection, the fabrics shown in my Color Play images are not always perfectly to scale. I do my best, by you should always double check scale before ordering!

Don’t forget to head over to In an Otter Life to see what Trina came up with and to Shimmy and More to see Steph’s bundle!

You can also head over to my Color Play Friday page to see my palettes and bundles from previous weeks.

Are you enjoying Color Play Friday? We’d love for you to get in on the fun and create your own Color Play post! You can create a bundle of fabric, select yarns or embroidery threads, or create a project inspired by our photo. Be sure to let Trina or I know so we can link up to you. You can get in contact with me via email, or by tagging me on Instagram.  

I hope you can join us next week!

Happy Sewing, ~L

This week I started piecing the black and white Sparkler quilt. This is for my 14-year-old son.

I decided on a dark grey solid (Kona Charcoal)  along with various black, white and grey patterned fabrics. There’s a lot of geometric designs with some math and techie stuff thrown in. He’s proud to be a total geek, so it’s perfect for him.

I only had a half yard of the Charcoal to start, so my progress is stopped until I can get more of that.

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have also seen that I’m trying to make some progress on my Windows into My World quilt. I’m basting the final ‘windows’ now, and it should come together fairly quickly after that, but it has been a exercise in patience! Hopefully I can finish it before Seahawks season…. aka ‘football season’ starts.

This week, I’m linking up to:

Thanks for stopping by, and Happy Sewing!

~L

Yay!!!

This week I finished the top of Ryan’s quilt! You can see previous posts about this quilt here, here and here.

The quilt measures 80×92 inches and will go on our bed.

That center section took so long, that it was shocking to me how fast the borders went together. Originally, I had planned to do several pieced borders to frame out the compass stars, but as I started working on it I realized that simple was going to look best.

The night I finished it I totally cried. I poured a lot of love into this one. I’ll be piecing a back soon and researching longarmers in my area.  This will be the first quilt that I send out for quilting and I’m pretty nervous about it.

Another thing I did this week was these cute Home is Where the Heart is Blocks. I got these after taking Amy Gibson’s For Keeps Pledge. It’s a nice commitment to more mindful sewing. Amy is taking donations and will be making these blocks into quilts for an organization called People Comforters of Evergreen, Colorado. I will be sending them out soon.

This week, I’m linking up to:

Hi guys! I hope everyone’s summer is treating them well. Here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, we’re getting a little break in the middle of a long stretch of hot weather. I’ve been enjoying the heat, but it sure does suck my motivation for working with fabric!

 I did manage to (almost) finish one of my WIPS this week. I just need to hand stitch that binding up and it’ll be ready to go. I love the DESIGN of this one, but there were some technical difficulties that made it hard to want to finish it.

Several months ago, I decided it was time to get rid of or use all the cheap fabric I bought when I first started quilting, and this project was born. I took all the cheaper fabrics that went well with the elephants, donated everything else and started to work.

I cut, pieced, basted and started quilting. At first, I was using a disappearing ink pen to mark some quilting lines. I dabbed it with water to get rid of my marks and……..that’s when THIS happened.

WAAAAAHHHHHHH! Poop, darn!

I should have just donated this fabric, apparently. Major bummer. I had to put the quilt away for a while. I was really bummed.

But, I made a commitment to myself to finish some WIPs before I cut into any more fabric. So my plan is to finish this one, wash it with a color catcher or two and pray fervently that it doesn’t get totally destroyed!

Now, I have to say that this quilt wasn’t a total bummer! I’m very excited about the way the border quilting looks, especially at the intersections.

I embroidered a couple of the elephants.  I love the designs on these.

And the horizontal striped binding made me so happy, I went crazy and made another 600+ inches of it! It’s my favorite thing to come out of this whole project. I’ll be using this for my son’s quilt and will still have enough for baby quilt or two!

Lastly, I know I promised an update on Ryan’s quilt, but I was stuck all week making a decision about the next border. I’ve made a choice and will be going for it this evening.

This week, I’m linking up to:

Happy quilting!  ~L