Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Make Your Story Bloom



That's my current title for this quilt. I love it. The quilting turned out great, even though there are some flaws (which I know I'm really the only one that can see them). Free motion quilting is still fairly new to me, so I love it.







This was from the Modern Quilt Guild Madrona Road Challenge. Our guild decided to limit it to mini quilts. I really wanted to use the fabric as the inspiration for the design. I thought about a castle or roads, but settled on some modern flowers.














The yellow and blue flowers and the leaves are hand appliques using a freezer technique I found at (well, I looked through my browser history, and I can't remember anymore). I pulled the paper out when I had sewn most of the way around. The stems were cut on the bias, then pressed with the seam allowance underneath. I pinned them in the shape I wanted, then stitched them down.






I really enjoyed playing with different textures. I so glad I was brave enough to attempt the roots in the "soil." You can still read the text, which I love. The pebbling in the blue flower gave just the effect I was hoping for.









The back side is so fun to look at.





 For the first time, I quilted with my feed dogs up on my Bernina. Eureka! No more tension issues that I had with the last quilt. I used a super slider, taped down on the edges so it wouldn't flip up, and set the stitch length and width to 0. If you haven't tried it, you should! I can't wait to free motion my next quilt.



Tuesday, May 7, 2013

May UFO Goals!

I have been slowly working on my UFOs, and I want to participate in Fiber of All Sorts and Sew Bittersweet Design's "A Lovely Year of Finishes" challenge. So, my goals for this month are:

Put together the center panel of the Bionicle quilt. It has been sitting in pieces for a couple months.
Getting to that point would put a completed top much closer.















My second main goal is getting a sleeve onto my Madrona Road challenge quilt, so I can actually hang it! A full post on this beauty will be coming soon.









Bonus:
Finish the pink & purple dresses for the girls. One mostly needs hemmed and a zipper. The other has yet to be cut out.

Finish a block or two of the Farmer's Wife sampler. It's been waiting a long time to get started!


PS Don't be alarmed if the pictures look different in the next couple of days. I just got my new camera today, as my old one had broken.  The color was all wrong, and the image was distorted with lines across everything. Daylight meant a whited out picture. The new camera is awesome, but I want daylight to take some proper pics of these projects!



A Lovely Year of Finishes