Therese's Quilt

First of all... yikes! The winner of the CSN giveaway that was supposed to be announced oh, about a month ago, is PAM! Congratulations, Pam! I'll send you an email with the info.

Recently I had the honor of making a quilt for a sweet little girl who will come from Africa to her newly adopted home here in The States. Her name is Therese and I really, really hope she loves her new quilt.

A lot of the fabrics are from MacKenzie of Dena Designs. There is one Kaffe Fassett print in there to add a little "African Flare" and one from Red Letter Day of Lizzy House.

I used a lavender chenille backing and made the binding from leftovers scraps of the quilt fabric. I can't remember if I've ever wrote about it before, but it IS possible to do free-motion-quilting with a chenille or minky backing. The secret is doing your FMQ with just the quilt top and batting -- NO FMQ'ING WITH THE BACK! Then do some straight-line/stitch in the ditch to attach the backing and you have the best of both worlds!

In other random sewing news...

For the first time ever I've entered a swap, the Hoop Up! Stitch and Send Swap on Flickr. This was a nice challenge for me. There are several groups of four people that each give their theme. Then each swapper creates something based on that theme and sends it to the person who wanted it. So not only is it fun to create something for another person but also you get some adorable little surprise in your mail as well! My swappees wanted a mandala and bird in a birdcage:

There was also a cereal design but I seem to have lost it for the time being! It is on the flickr link if you really have to see it. My designs are all done and sent and now I just sit back and wait to see what my partners stitched up for me! I highly recommend getting involved in a swap. There are quilt block swaps, pillow, coaster, and embroidery swaps... pretty much anything you can think of. It's a fun and relatively fast little project that helps to enhance your sewing skills. Plus it's always fun to meet new friends out there who don't look at you like you're a senior citizen just because you can use a needle and thread.

Happy Thanksgiving to all you US readers!!

Blogger's Quilt Festival

A little late to the party, but nonetheless I wanted to partake in Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival.

It is always a great source of inspiration to me and so fun to participate in the frenzy of it all!

So this time around I have my circle quilt(s). It was a commission for a brother and sister. Adorable! Mostly made up of Kaffe Fassett fabrics with a little Amy Butler and Tina Givens thrown in. They are both twin size.

I must say with alllllll the circles I cut (108 fabric circles per quilt + 108 interfacing circles per quilt x 2 quilts = 432 circles!), the sanity lifesaver award goes to the Olfa rotary circle cutter. It was about $20 at JoAnn and worth every penny. Also using Steam a Seam for the interfacing was totally fantastic as it is sticky on both sides. Very helpful for eyeball placement on the squares and ironing. No, I'm not getting paid for this (but I'm certainly up for it!) just giving my helpful tips should you attempt a circle quilt in your future.

Something new to me... I went big on the binding. I cut my strips a whopping 6" wide. I love it. Especially with all the craziness of the busy fabrics going on, it kind of doubles as a border, giving the eye a place to rest. Ahhh...

And the brother quilt, which is also mostly Kaffe Fassett with a little Joel Dewberry in.

Orange flannel backing worked well. I was a little hesitant how flannel would do for free motion quilting, but it was a total champ. I taped and basted these suckers like never before! And it paid off - not one wrinkle or a pucker here.

Thanks for visiting me for this installment of Blogger's Quilt Festival! See y'all next year for more quilty fun. I predict a baby quilt in my future about that time of year. wink wink!