September 6, 2021 by crossquilt

Summer Sewing 2021

My sewing has been limited for a large part of this year as I had been packing up house and moving across country. I’m slowly getting settled in and getting things organized. The first thing to get in working order was my sewing area and my fellow crafters out there know that it had to be.

I gave myself one project to keep me sane while going through all the stress that moving brings on. That project was a Temperature Quilt. I thought it would be great to see the split between the two areas of the country – one hot and humid and the other a bit more mild during those spring and summer months.

I gave myself 10 degree color ranges and am working with Alison Glass fabrics. Left is the daily low and Right is the daily high. I’ll also adding weather conditions to the mix.

Yellow vertical stripe – Sunny
Light Grey horizontal stripe – Cloudy
Dark Grey diagonal stripe – Rainy
White circle – Snowy

My plan gives room for 13 additional blocks that I will be calling Personal Events. If there was no big personal event then I would use the holiday for that month and add a single block for that.

I have a month’s worth of temperature blocks to work on. But, I also did Block One of the Summer Sampler 2021 hosted by Lee Heinrich, Katie Blakesley, and Faith Jones. A friend that I saw in May needs a quilt for her living room and I mocked up this plan using her color theme of chambrays and greys with a touch of red.

The Finishing Instructions just got released so I’ve got a number of blocks to make to get to that point. I’ve got to dig some of my fabric out of boxes and get the fabric selection all worked out. I have a small selection but need more to round out the full color palette and get moved no on this project.

I’m also working on some Improv Piecing and I’m super excited about a quilt retreat that is coming up with a couple of fabulous instructors. I’ve got to pull fabric for that as well and I have a lot of notions and other stuff to locate in order to prepare for this retreat.

Lots of plans for the next few weeks and I cannot wait to share them all with you!

May 19, 2019 by crossquilt

Random Roundup #22

I’ve been working on some quick little projects so I have a lot of little things to share.

Midibag:

I was preparing for a minor surgery and had quite a bit of nervous energy so I made a Midibag the day before which worked great for holding my clothes, phone, and wallet. I also got a few compliments from the nursing staff.I combined 3 mini charm packs – one Modern Background Ink and two Just a Speck by Jen Kingwell. The bag turned out so cute and was the perfect size! You iron the squares to the supplied interfacing and then fold and sew it together. The pattern contains interfacing for 2 bags. I need to decide on mini charms for the second bag. It’s a great little bag for art and craft fairs or the beach.

With the remaining squares, I was able to make this cute little pouch which is now with my sister-in-law. It worked beautifully for transporting a selection of Peppa Pig figures to my nephew.

Microwave Bowl Holders:

My brother’s family requested some of these bowl holders last year when they were here and I finally got around to making them as a housewarming gift. I use a great tutorial from Happy Hour Stitches.

Fabric Swap Box:

My guild is setting up a fabric birthday box swap and I needed a box to use to turn in my bought or ‘curated from stash’ fabric. The accessory box from The Container Store can hold 15 to 18 fat quarters depending on how you fold them. So I created a fabric name label to fit that box. I used my favorite fabrics for this one.The letters are from the Just My Type – lowercase pattern by Kristy of Quiet Play. I used headbands as the straps and sewed them into the binding and it worked beautifully.

Summer Sampler 2019:

I have been wanting to join in on the Summer Sampler that is hosted by Lee at Freshly Pieced, Katie at SwimBikeQuilt, and Faith of FreshLemonsQuilts but I was always preoccupied. This year the theme is Piecing Bootcamp and I love learning new techniques or improving my current techniques.There are two different finishing options but I just adore this curved layout. I’m planning on rainbowing this thing up and chose to use the Ombré Confetti Dots that I’ve been hoarding. I’m combining that with Tula Pink Fairy Dust and a grey Essex linen and it’s going to be epic!This Sampler Series starts tomorrow (May 20) with a block being released once a week. Here’s the link to sign up through Katie’s blog – Summer Sampler.

Stash Enhancement:

Alison Glass Holiday arrived and I cannot wait to get started on the quilt I designed last year. These fabrics will just pop!

I also received Alison Glass Sunprints Light. No plan for those but I just had to have them to fill in my low volumes.Lots more to share but I will pause here to take a breath and get some more sewing done!

Until next time- happy sewing!

March 13, 2016 by crossquilt

Wavelength Wrap-up

The Wavelength quilt is finished! I absolutely adore this quilt! It’s actually hanging over my lap as I write this post. The pattern is Wavelength designed by Lee Heinrich of Freshly Pieced. Her version is in a gradient rainbow but I wanted to use my favorite colors and use that same gradient technique. I chose teals moving out to aquas and I love the way the whole quilt looks.

I used an echo quilting technique inside each wave and then did a zig-zag outside the wave from seam to seam. This one was a while in the making as I did not know how I wanted to piece the back or if I wanted to make it any larger than the pattern called for. I ended up keeping it the same size as in the pattern and I picked up some Prisms wideback fabric a few months back when it was featured on Massdrop. I had previously made this finish one of my March goals and will happily check it off the list. I’m just going to enjoy my new quilt for a little while. I suppose I can share with the cats……

June 21, 2015 by crossquilt

Hello Old Friend

I pulled an old Work-in-Progress off my quilt rack. It was hanging right behind my ironing board and I could see it everyday. I’m glad it was there and I loved looking at it and kept thinking that I needed to keep working on the quilt top and finish it off. That time came this week. It is the Wavelength quilt pattern by Lee Heinrich of Freshly Pieced. I started it sometime last year and had gotten 3 rows around done. I’m doing this in teals and aquamarines with some greens mixed in. It’s going to be fabulous when it’s done.

I opened the box where I was keeping the fabric pull and the (already copied) paper-pieced patterns and found the most gorgeous collection of teal goodness! The box is in the order that I will piece the rows with the next row on top. There will be about 4 patterns per row ending with the white/aquamarine pieces. There are some great fabrics in here that I forgot I even had. It’s just like I bought new fabric this week but without the cash leaving my wallet.

Here’s where I was at this morning. The next row is where the mid-value teals will begin. Gryffin was helping me keep it secure on the floor. It’s what cats do best. I was able to get some of the teals attached and I’m really happy with where this is going. It is currently residing on the floor in my sewing room ready to be pieced together.

In other news – I got some hexie piecing completed on my way home from my brother’s wedding. I have a plan to use these in the Text Me Mini Quilt Swap but it’s not working out like I planned. I think I will stew on it for a little bit and revisit in a week or two. I may end up re-working it.

Speaking of the wedding – it was fantastic and I’m very happy to have such a sweet and wonderful lady added to our family.

June 22, 2014 by crossquilt

Waves, Shades, and Pouches

I finally got my hands on some Architextures text and ledger prints!

As an Accountant, I absolutely love that ledger print and can’t wait to see how I will use it.

One more row was added to the Wavelength quilt. We’re moving into the green section so it’s really coming to life.

I made a Cordless Roman Shade for my front room window – which is 1 inch shy of a standard width. It’s an Amy Butler home decor print and is perfect for the room. I found the tutorial here.

My nieces are in town and I put them behind the sewing machine for their first time. I showed them how to try and keep the line straight with the 1/4 in foot and let them go giving verbal instructions as they moved along. They both made zipper pouches with fabric of their choice. As we know, there is a lot of fabric to choose from.
My oldest niece was inspired by a Mickey Mouse ribbon that we found at a local craft store. So we went with black, yellow, and red to use with it. This pattern came off of Craftsy. It’s the Reversible tote and Zipper pouch free class.

Her sister chose to go with chevrons and polka dots in an aqua tone and use a different design.

Both bags turned out so cute! They each did about 75% of the sewing themselves. I’m so proud of them and they both love their pouches. With the weather sitting at ‘feels like 96’, it was a good day for indoor crafting!

My sewing room will be put back together tomorrow and I have a few more days off to get some sewing done before I need to go back to work.

June 7, 2014 by crossquilt

Wavelength in progress

I started my Wavelength quilt. I’m going to do dark teal/aqua on the inside and flow out to light aqua/white.

I printed out the 100 plus paper piecing patterns that I will need for the lap size design. I’ve got about 3 rows/columns complete. While working on those rows I have realized that I will not have enough fabric color variation to do the plan as I want. Though I LOVE what it looks like right now!

Darn – that means I will have to do some fabric shopping. Tell me it isn’t so. It’s just so ~~burdensome~~ exciting! :-). I have found that it is difficult to determine aqua/teal colors online. I found some fabrics on Etsy that I thought would work for the darker teals that I currently need. The color states teal or peacock and the photos showed a color that would flow well in this design. They were delivered today and are more of a green variety than teal and will not work as intended.

I still love these fabrics but they won’t work for the intended color flow of this quilt. But, you just can’t go wrong with some Bike Path, Urban Mod, Comma, Grand Hotel, Felicity, or Chicopee. There is a lot of yumminess in this bundle.

The 3 fabrics on the right, in this next photo, are already going to work in the quilt and were what I was trying to match. The values are just a little bit off.

I’m going to have to actually go to the store with some scraps to match up the colors better. I don’t think the online thing is going to work as well unless I decide to get more of the patterns/colors that I already have.

I’m excited to continue working on this. More progress to follow as long as I can get the fabric thing worked out. 🙂

November 19, 2013 by crossquilt

Bloom, Bloom, Pow complete!

I finished quilting the Bloom, Bloom, Pow quilt-a-long quilt designed by Lee at Freshly Pieced.

I used some cool blues as the flowers and a blue/purple blender on the border. I removed my first border quilting (see previous ‘Oops’ post) and continued the interior quilting out. I used a variegated blue thread in the border rather than the neutral that was used on the interior quilt top. I love how it all turned out.

I’ve also been working on some Christmas projects and my brain doesn’t stop thinking of new ones that I just have to make for holiday gift giving. My brain sometimes works faster than the actual time available to complete all these projects. However, all of the big quilts are complete. I’ve got work gifts to make, another stroller size quilt for dolls, and other random small gifts. This is my favorite time of year.
I also recently bought some gifts for me. New Fabric!!!

Both are Robert Kaufman. The bundle on the left is Somerset Spring and the bundle on the right is Grandeur Jewel. They are both shiny and sparkly as well as dripping with beautiful vibrant colors.

I must come up with something wonderful to make with them. I can’t wait to see what my mind comes up with for those gorgeous fabrics.

November 9, 2013 by crossquilt

Oops, let’s do that again…

Today, I was working on quilting the Bloom, Bloom, Pow quilt, a quilt-a-long at Freshly Pieced that occurred earlier in the year. I quilted it just as Lee suggested for her sample.

It turned out great. I decided not to go into the border and quilt that in a different manner. Well, this is what happens when you intensely dislike border quilting that you just completed.