Swell for the Win

Last month I decided to pull all my Bonnie and Camille fabrics for a quilt, learn more here. The final decision came between my tutorial Twisted Nines and Swell from Simply Retro. Clearly, Swell won. I was able to work on the top while at fall retreat.  It was a prefect retreat pattern! Simple so I could talk and not focus, but not too mindless.

A gigantic roll of batting arrived at the house yesterday. Now I need to baste some quilts so it fits in the closet!  Apparently last time I got the 20 yard roll, not the 30 yard. Those 10 yards make a huge difference. This roll is going to last a while!

Another Swell Quilt

Another quilt start is in order after finishing many of my WIPs and conquering my scrap bin!

Lately I have been good about not starting new projects but finishing up what I already have going. Each year I start off making and planning a bunch of new projects then spend the rest of year getting said projects under control.

I wasn't about to let it happen again this year!

I have decided to go crazy with my Bonnie and Camille fabrics.

Stashed away was one layer cake of Hello Darling, a jolly bar of Little Ruby, and a charm pack of Miss Kate. To start, I cut the layer cake and jolly bar into 5 inch squares.

The pile had more oranges, reds, and greens than I expected. Michelle at From Bolt to Beauty got herself a nice stack of squares that were not deemed to be the "right" color.  Then added in a couple fabrics I deemed to be the "right" color.

As of now, the plan is to make another Swell quilt, but I am tempted to try my Twisted Nines tutorial on a bigger quilt using some Kona Midnight in the corners again. 

What do you think?

Starlight: Finished

Ten Glorious Weeks of Summer Vacation.

Half done, and, not much to show. 

After teaching summer school each morning. My afternoons have been spent on the couch with Rosa Pug knitting and watching 70's game show re-runs. Really exciting. It's been too hot to go out mid-day so I have been capitalizing on the air-conditioning. 

In in the mist of my machine gathering dust, I did get this quilt finished. I started this Starlight quilt back at retreat in April. Ta da! Shamefully, this is only my second finish of the summer. 

Rosa wanted to be apart of the photography so she went for the photobomb approach. Silly thing.

QUILT DETAILS: 

• Finished Size: 74 inches x 80 inches 
• Pattern: Starlight by Thimble Blossoms
• Fabric: PB & J by Basic Gray, Kona Snow background
• Batting: 80/20 Blend
• Thread: Connecting Threads - Parchment

Ok, back to watching game shows. Rosa is eyeballing my bowl of fresh strawberries with her face gently resting on the keyboard. She giving her saddest puppy dog face in hopes that I will spare just one berry. Just one! 

LINKING TO: Needle and Thread Thursday

Starlight: Pulse Check

Over retreat I was able to get this quilt top put together. 

A while back I went shopping in my stash for new quilt project and fell in LOVE with this fabric all over again. The fabric is an older line by Basic Grey called PB & J. I pulled the pattern Starlight from my library and was good to go! Old stuff with a new life.

At first I was worried about sewing on the bias for a whole quilt. 

My take away, the bias was more forgiving than it was a nuisance. This top came together easily. The pattern has no y-seams, everything is laid out in row. 

This might be my new favorite go to pattern! Always a sucker for stars.

Not to mention this fabric is so yummy to photograph.

Net: - 8 yards, YTD: -17.25 yards

LINKED TO: Needle n Thread Thursday, Finish it Up Friday 

New Project: Starlight in PB&J

Somedays I just crave something new. New motivation. New inspiration. New technique. New project. Today I am embracing new. 

Notice I neglected to say new fabric? 

For that I will applaud myself. I have been stashing a jelly roll of PB & J designed by Basic Grey and made by Moda. Along with some yardage cuts. So almost new fabric, it was plucked from my stash but I have never used any of the fabrics in this line. 

So new to me! 

Also, new pattern was missing from the newness. I bought the Starlight pattern from Thimble Blossoms years ago. Once again I have never used the pattern, so new to me.  Talk about a double win on the stash!

The pattern uses triangles to create a star pattern inside another star. It's pretty awesome check out what others have done on Instagram.

Thimble Blossom's Sampler {Finally!} Finished

While being forced to watch season 5 of Game of Thrones, I got a lot of hand quilting done. Here is my last post about the Thimble Blossoms Sampler, back in August (of last year). This quilt is no longer sitting lonely and abandoned. It was fun trying out all my favorite Thimble Blossom blocks.

Just realized the quilt is upside down.  How can I tell?  The houses are upside down, oops! 

Poor Dwell block, this just didn't do you justice! 

After finishing the quilt top, I was unsure how I was going to quilt this one. One day I just came to the conclusion about hand quilting. Then started. The last two months have been spent on the couch quilting away and I am very excited about the outcome. This monumental task was well worth the effort. 

If you are also interested in quilting using big stitches, here is the tutorial. Instead of using floss, I used pearl DMC thread size 8. The whole quilt was done using white thread. Yay, third project finished this summer :) 

-Patch & Chels 

Thimble Blossoms Update

Taking a little blogging break got me hand-stitching ambitious! Right, I was supposed to take a break.   Either way it kinda happened. One night I basted this quilt and sat on the couch for the remainder of the night hand stitching. It felt good doing nothing, but still productive. My kind of nothing. 

This quilt is made from a variety of Thimble Blossom blocks all smushed into one quilt. Here is the whole thing finished from this summer. Yeah, I've been sitting on this one for a while. If you are interested in learning about "chunky" style hand stitching here is the tutorial. It's my favorite kind of hand quilting. It just makes everything pop. 

You can see I have A LOT more to go. Looks like I will be spending more hours sitting in front of the TV! Anyone recommend a good show?

-Patch & Chels

Color Wheel Mini

The New Hampshire Modern Quilt Guild has challenged members to make a rainbow quilt. Over the past couple meetings the guild has hosted rainbow fabric swaps, to help us build our color palettes. I think this is part of a national deal? But, not quite sure. 

Any-who, I didn't need a huge rainbow quilt, I needed a color wheel to hang by my stash. Having a color wheel handy is great when pulling fabrics. Once again, I used a pattern from Simply Retro by Camille Roskelley called Adorn. 

The background is all scraps that were pieced together in long strips then cut into the triangles. I am trying to make a dent in my scrap bin, so this helped :)

Then finished it off by hand-stitching around each triangle and putting on a striped binding.

The backing is the same as my grandmother's quilt challenge, she gave me the leftover cute foxy fabric! It was almost big enough, but goes well with my leftovers from the same challenge :).

I am excited to get this mini hung up and put into use! 

-Patch & Chels

Feeling Dapper

DRUMROLL .......
The winner of the Looking Glass giveaway goes to,

pamspretties57November 25, 2014 at 11:57 AM

Hiya!!! I'm following along on the hop, and just love this quilt. I follow you by email and enjoy all the posts. Thanks for having the giveaway. Blessed be, hugs!!! Pam

Pam I just sent an email with the PDF attached!  Thanks for being a loyal follower :)

Now for the meat and potatoes, anyone feeling dapper today?

dapper |ˈdapər|adjective(typically of a man) neat and trim in dress, appearance, or bearing.

This little quilt is feeling very dapper ...

I used the quilt pattern from the book Simply Retro by Camille Roskelley. After looking through my quilt stack, I realized there was a lack of baby boy quilts in the pile. Ok, there was none. That needed a remedy and quick.

Solution, I pulled a stack boy colors, and got to work.

This quilt was a quick finish, the top took an afternoon. The quilting is a basic stipple and the back is flannel. This is my first time using flannel to back a quilt. There was no difference in quilting, which I was surprised to find out. I expected the worst and a huge headache. The whole thing went together without a problem. It has won me over! Plus, the additional snuggle factor is a bonus.

Quilt Stats: 

• Finished Size: 42 inches x 47 inches 
• Pattern: Dapper
• Fabric: Assorted fat quarters from my stash, Kona white background
• Batting: Warm & Natural - white
• Thread: Connecting Threads - Parchment

-Patch & Chels

Swell

The time change is killing me, the lack of daylight is making it difficult to take pictures of quilts. This quilt has actually been finished for some time, but I haven't had good weather to take pictures. Blah. I finally found a sliver of sun to get some pictures, before it dived behind a cloud.

Swell comes from the book Simply Retro by Camille Roskelley. Instead of using the 2.5 inch square in the pattern, I changed it to use 5 inch squares. It was great to use up some scraps. I made a quilt following the real Swell pattern too and liked it ... a lot. 

Quilt Stats: 

• Finished Size: 57 inches x 57 inches 
• Pattern: Swell
• Fabric: Assorted prints pulled from scrap bucket
• Batting: 100% Cotton
• Thread: Connecting Threads - Parchment

My very picky friend actually like ALL these colors in this quilt, so she finally gets one! Now off to conquer the rest of my WIP list. 

-Patch & Chels

Looking Dapper?

My summer goal was to get my WIPs down from twenty to five ... well, that didn't happen. It was a very ambitious goal! I was able to complete ten projects over the course of the summer, still calling that productive! Even if I was five shy of my goal, each project got worked on so they are all closer to completion! That should count for something. I also made a vow to myself that after I got all my projects under control I would only have five going at any given point. So, here's to project eleven!

Here's what I figure, since I got so much work done I deserve a new project! (pretty sure this justification is exactly how things got out of hand last time!) While working on my Thimble Blossom's sampler, I feel in love with Camille's Dapper block from her book Simply Retro.  Funny this is, it never drew me in until I actually made the blocks.  Does that ever happen to you? Once I saw these blocks with my own eyes, I was in love. 

She had made this pattern for her son's with two different variations on the pattern. It was a good idea for a baby/young boy pattern. For some reason, I always have a hard time finding good boy patterns/fabrics. Plus, it's only fitting to have at least one baby boy quilt hanging around. From this decision I pulled some "boy" colors, aqua/orange/gray and went with the idea.  

The backing is the blue dot behind the book in the photo above, it's flannel. I have made full quilts from flannel, but never just the back. This smoky blue dot was perfect with the colors and will be the perfect size for the backing. Plus, adds to the overall snuggle factor of this quilt.

Love it when stash fabrics work to my advantage! 

-Patch & Chels