Aspen Glow Quilt Along

The Cora's Quilts Aspen Glow quilt along is starting on 9/1/14 and I signed up.  It's my first quilt along ever (cyber or real).

These Bluebird Park fat eighths have been sitting around in my stash for a while, so when I saw there was a quilt pattern using Kate and Birdie Paper Co fabrics, I thought, "hey I should make that and I can use these."

This picture was actually taken a week ago- I finished cutting these into pieces for a lap quilt, though I am still working on the many little pieces of white fabric.

Believe it or not, I have ambitions of completing a second Aspen Glow quilt for our queen bed.  This does not mean that the quilt will cover the entire bed, because DH is sort of like a spaghetti spoon in bed and twirls everything - sheets, quilts, sometimes cats- around him as he tosses and turns at night.  But, I can certainly use it if this winter was anything like last winter.

So, here is the general idea for the fabrics for the second quilt.  Some Winter's Lane, a plaid called Honky Tonk Chili Pepper Campfire Coffee (!) by Moda, taupe fabric from the local quilt store for the background.  I'm probably not using the gray with white flowers for this one- but it works as a stand-in until the real fabric arrives.

I wanted something similar to the color choices in the winter color-way as described in the pattern instructions.  It should match the bedroom wall color, and I just like the mint, red, and white together.  One of my favorite color combinations.

I look forward to seeing what others choose for their fabrics!

Goodnight Moon! the quilt

The wonky star quilt took nearly a year of fiddling, procrastinating, and finally quilting for me to complete.  It is beautiful and I already love cuddling with it (and usually a cat).

And then I saw this Goodnight Moon fabric on sale online, and when it got to my house I made a complete quilt out of it in three days.  Three days! If inspiration would always hit so quickly.  (Maybe not- I can't really afford to make a quilt every three days).

I love Goodnight Moon.  This was required, repeated reading in the house growing up, and since I was the oldest of four kids, I did my share of reading it to the younger kids.

There were actually these panels for sale, which are from Quilting Treasures, and also some organic fabric with Goodnight Moon patterns from Cloud 9 was on sale.

I didn't follow a pattern. I cut out the individual panels and then made borders around each one so that they came out to be all the same size.  Originally, two panels were smaller than the others.

I decided to use the rest of the fabric in what I guess you could call a three-patch pattern - one long rectangular block paired with two square blocks to create a larger square.  I included some white blocks in there to stretch the Goodnight Moon fabric farther, but also to break up the rich primary colors of the fabric, as inspired by the book.

Then, put the panels in near the top and sewed it all together.

I did meandering free-motion quilting, just like on the wonky star quilt.  It turned out ok- my Janome machine seems to get choked up on the top thread a bit, though.

I did actually remember to save a selvage to make a label this time.

And the final quilt...

Which was immediately taken over to my parents' house and loved on by my mom, my 6-year-old niece, and I'm sure the border collie as well.

Wonky Star Quilt

This is my wonky star quilt inspired by this tutorial, and by this quilt on Flickr, using PB&J charm squares plus some Denyse Schmidt fabrics and one red fabric that belonged to my late Granny.

This quilt took nearly a year to make.  It started on an eventful day about a year ago, when my husband and I left the teenagers at the Mall of America with their aunts and uncles and drove west to see some Archean gneiss in an abandoned quarry.

No, I will not spare you from pictures of rocks.  Actually, we only got a couple of miles down the road before we hit a huge piece of metal on the highway in Minneapolis and ripped our tires to shreds. So first, we had new tires installed on the car.  Then we went to the quarry.

On the way back, we stopped at this cute quilt shop, and this is where I found the PB&J charm packs.

I had seen wonky stars in various places on the internets, but it took me a bit to come up with a design.

 I started with the idea of having lattices surrounding the squares, but I liked the stars so much I didn't want to detract from them.  So then I was left with this:

Which didn't have enough color for me.  Lucky are those people who can actually have mostly-white quilts- I don't think one would stay pristine in my house for very long.  Also, this was meant as a lap quilt, and this was not nearly enough stars.  So, I started adding reversed stars and smaller stars, and rearranged and rearranged...

The backing is Denyse Schmidt fabric from Joann's.  Binding from PB&J.

And the result, unquilted:

And quilted:

This is the first time I tried quilting in a meandering pattern- ie, not straight-line quilting.

Woohoo! This one is a lap quilt for me.  I am not looking forward to winter after the last one, but at least I can cuddle under this in my armchair in front of the fire.