I finished my Mini Pumpkins quilt! This was so fun and quick to make. Although it did take me several hours to quilt it, about 5 hours.


The pebble quilting is time consuming but worth it! The pumpkins and stems are quilted in the ditch. If you want to see what it looked like before quilting, click here.

The finished size is 36" by 36". 

I finished the Strip & Flip quilt I shared with you recently. The pattern details are all in the link.


It was fun to quilt.


I thought about quilting it horizontally following the piecing lines but decided to change things up and quilted it vertically instead. Simple lines of loops made for speedy quilting.

For the back I used the woven-look print from the fabric line.


The quilt measures about 46" by 54" so it is wider than width of fabric. The brown text print from the fabric line matched nicely with the woven-look print so I was able to extend the fabric with a strip along the side to make it wide enough.

For binding I used leftover strips from the jelly roll. So one jelly roll and 1/4 yard of contrast fabric for the vertical strips on the front are all that is required for the top and binding of this quilt. This one will be a shop sample but I plan to make another using Judy's fabric for my guild's oncology project.

I'm really happy with how this one turned out. To see it before quilting, click here.


I won't always have the time to do this much quilting on a shop sample but I love how it turned out. 

Here is a closer look.


It does hang straight although it doesn't look it in the photos. The wind was blowing just enough to ruffle the edges. I took several photos but the quilt was not still in any of them.

Yes, it is another shop sample, but I do love this one.


The fabric arrived last week. We promptly cut kits and I got to work piecing one of them. I'm trying to get it quilted too. Here is a sneak peak of how I am quilting the center.


It is a Christmas line but doesn't have a traditional Christmas feel to it, in my opinion.

The center of my All That Glitters quilt is done and the first border is on.


The second border is pieced and I'm working on that now.

I'm also quilting up a shop sample.


I hope to finish it soon so I can show you the whole quilt.

My second finish of the week!


This is my UFO completion for December. It took many hours to quilt but worth the time.


The finished quilt measures 51" by 63". I think it will hang in my dining room after Christmas.

I've been doing pretty good at finishing one completed top from my pile each month this year. I chose my Metro Medallion for this month. The link will take you to the finished top post. That was September 2013.


I only have the black areas quilted. I did not have a thread color I was happy with for the rest but I have ordered it and it has shipped. Hopefully it will be here in a few days and I can continue.

I've fallen into the pattern of giving you a store update each Monday. I forgot to take a photo of the whole space when I was there yesterday but I did take a picture of my first shipment from United Notions.


These boxes are filled with notions and pre-cuts for the notion wall and pre-cut wall. I promise to get pictures of the store space this week for you. A lot of progress is being made!

Yesterday I was able to get Judy's quilt quilted for her. Click here for my first post on this quilt.


I did a simple all-over meander. It's nothing fancy, but is fast and looks good on just about every pattern. Speaking of the pattern, it is from The Big Book of Nickel Quilts by Pat Speth and Charlene Thode. I believe Judy said that this was actually a "bonus quilt" because it is made from the leftovers of another quilt from the book. The dark green fabric along the right hand side in the photo above is the left over of the backing fabric Judy provided.

I'm not sure if Judy wants to bind this herself or if she wants me to do it. For now I will do nothing until I hear from her.

I completed this top in August 2013. Click here for that post including a photo of the unquilted top. I'm happy to report that it is now a completed quilt.


For the quilting I did a back and forth pattern in the solid blue and then quilted flowers and loops on the print. You can see the quilting better on the back.


I used the block instructions for one of the blocks from my Curve It Up Quilt. The block is in the top left in the photo below. 



In the photo above, the center of the block starts out as a four-patch. For my quilt I used a single fabric. The finished quilt measures approximately 46" by 54".

It feels great to have an UFO completed!

This is my mom's quilt. She brought it to me for quilting.


She requested a simple all-over meander. I am returning it to her and she will do the binding.

I think the backing fabric may be my favorite part of this quilt.


Bicycle fabric seems to be popular right now.

I finished my Swoon top several years ago, February 2012 to be exact! The link will take you to that post where I showed the finished top.

It finally made it to the top of my to-be-quilted UFO pile.


I hope to be able to share this as a finish soon!

I used a combination of scraps and orphan blocks. I titled it "Tiger in the Scraps." It finishes at about 40" square. I find it interesting that it ended up square. This was not planned. Well, not much about this quilt was really what you'd call "planned."


This was fun to do, sort of like a jigsaw puzzle with scraps. The binding is from my roll of scrap binding, left over bindings from other projects all sewn together.

This QAL was hosted by Amanda of Crazy Mom Quilts. If you like working with scraps you should go check out her blog. She does beautiful work.

I took lots of photos as I worked, mainly for myself to see if things were working. In looking through them it was fun to see the quilt come together so I thought I'd share them below. If you aren't interested in the process photos (there are quite a few) then stop reading now, you won't miss anything else.

Here is how it looked on June 15th. These are the scraps I'd sewn together as Amanda instructed.


Then I raided my orphan block basket and pulled out some improv economy blocks I made a few years ago. 


I put them up on the design wall and started filling in the white areas with scraps and more orphan blocks.


Bits that were similar in size were sewn together.




Things moved around a lot and not everything I put up on the design wall ended up being used in the quilt.





For a while I had resigned myself to having to use at least one partial seam, but if you look closely at the above photo you can see that I managed to avoid partial seams in the end.


Above is the finished top. I quilted it with straight-ish lines. I did the lines free motion as I find that to be faster for me than a walking foot. By doing them free motion I can use my HQ Sweet 16.


And here it is again all finished.

It's done! I'm glad I had the presence of mind to purchase enough extra of the charcoal gray for the binding and kept it with the completed top for two years.


Here is a detail shot of the quilting.


The pattern is Urban Birthday by Jenny Pedigo of Sew Kind of Wonderful. The pattern uses her Quick Curve Ruler which is really fun to use.

The finished quilt size is 58" by 77". I used a layer cake of one of the French General fabric lines (I don't remember which one and didn't write it down) along with a charcoal gray fabric. I quilted it myself on my Handi Quilter Sweet 16. I used two different colors of Signature 40 wt. 100% cotton thread, Rail Grey and Persian Red. The quilting design is my own and isn't perfect because I didn't mark anything or use any rulers or stencils. It's all hand guided, no computer or stitch regulator.

I'm still working on getting the sleeve hand sewn to the back. Hopefully it will hang in my guild quilt show in June. After that I don't know what will become of it. I made it as a class sample and to sell patterns and Quick Curve Rulers. The fabric isn't even my style. I only used it because we had several of these layer cakes and my LQS owner asked me to use one of the layer cakes to "make something." However, I do really like the finished quilt even though the fabric isn't my style.