Esch House Quilts

And Now: The "Kiss" Pillow!

2012-02-10T09:34:00.000-05:00

Just in time for Valentine's Day or whenever someone you know could use a lift.

As in the "Hug" pillow, I used four reds and four creams for my pillow. Maybe it is the unseasonably warm winter we've had so far, but I felt like a lighter, springier look than with the "Hug".

The "Kiss" block finishes at 12" and the pillow at 16". This is such a great scrap busting block, I'd love to see a whole quilt of them with lights and darks in place of the reds and creams. Or what about a quilt combining the hugs and kisses!

If you make a pillow or a quilt, please add it to my Flickr group. Have fun!
I'm linking up with Amanda Jean's Finish it Up Friday.

Finished size: 16" pillow

Block size: 12"

Fabric requirements:

Cream:
8 2 1/2" squares,
8 3" squares,
2 strips 2 1/2" x 12 1/2",
2 strips 2 1/2" x 16 1/2".

Red:
8 3" squares,
12 2 1/2" squares

Batting, lining, and backing: 16 1/2" square

16" zipper

Construction Steps:

This is an easy pillow to put together. Just 16 half square triangle blocks, 20 squares and four "border" strips. Let's get started!

Draw a diagonal line from corner to corner on the wrong side of the 3" cream squares.

Place each square right sides together with a red 3" square.

Sew 1/4" away from the drawn line on each side of the line. Chain piecing these makes this go very quickly.

Press. Cut along the line. I use scissors at this point since you are cutting the seam allowance and it does not need to be an exact 1/4".

Press the block open. I usually press toward the darker fabric.

Lining your ruler up along the seam, trim the blocks to 2 1/2" square.

Layout the blocks according to the picture and sew the blocks into rows, alternating the pressing direction of your seams.

Sew the rows together. The "X" block should measure 12 1/2".

Sew the cream 2 1/2" x 12 1/2" strips to the top and bottom of the block.

Sew the cream 2 1/2" x 16 1/2" strips to the sides of the block to complete the pillow top.

Layer the pillow top with the batting and lining and quilt as desired. My pillow is quilted with a red "X" through the middle of the "X". I quilted double triangles in the spaces around the "X" and one line of quilting in a square around the border.

Using a 1/2" seam, insert the zipper in the bottom of the pillow using your favorite method. Lining up the raw edges of the backing and pillow front, sew the remaining three sides using a 1/2" seam.

Turn the pillow cover right side out, insert the pillow form and enjoy giving someone a "kiss"!

WIP Wednesday - Kiss Pillow

2012-02-08T09:28:00.000-05:00

I'm working on my "Kiss" pillow tutorial to go with yesterday's "Hug" pillow tutorial. Yesterday's pillow included very dark, rich reds and bright whites - tone on tone fabrics that read just about solid. I considered using the same or similar fabrics for the kiss pillow so they would be a set, but I was really feeling like trying out a slightly less intense look.

My stack of Sweetwater's Reunion fat quarters is sitting right next to my cutting mat patiently waiting for me to get to them. Reunion has some great reds, so I cut a strip off four of the red fat quarters. Then I decided to dip into my stash of text fabrics for the creams. I've been hoarding these fabrics for years and I have a tendency not to use them because I love them so much. I know that sounds silly, but I bet you understand :)

The Kiss pillow tutorial will be up on Friday. I'm linking up to Lee's WIP Wednesday. Are you tackling any of your WIPs today?

Presenting: the "HUG" pillow!

2012-02-07T08:56:00.001-05:00

Just in time for Valentine's Day or whenever someone you know could use a hug.

This is a great scrap project. I used four different reds and four different whites in mine, but you could use even more if you like.

The hug block finishes at 12" and the pillow at 16". Thinking beyond Valentine's Day and red and white, wouldn't this block make a darling baby quilt in softer colors or a fun, bright quilt for an older child or teen?

If you make a pillow or a quilt, please add it to my Flickr group. Have fun!

(Note: My apologies for an error in the cutting information in my last post. I listed 8 white 2 1/2" squares when it should have been 4 white 2 5/8" squares.)

Finished size: 16" pillow

Block size: 12"

Fabric requirements:

Red:
8 3 1/2" squares,
8 2"x3" pieces,
2 strips 2 1/2" x 12 1/2",
2 strips 2 1/2" x 16 1/2".

White:
8 3 1/2" squares,
4 2 5/8" squares, (the pillow in the picture has these squares cut at 2 1/2", so if you cut yours at 2 5/8", your A units will match up with the B and C units better than mine did)
8 3"x4" pieces.

Batting, lining, and backing: 16 1/2" square

16" zipper

Construction Steps:

There are four different units that make up this "hug" block. A is the half square triangle in the corner unit. B is the wedge on the left unit. C is the wedge on the right unit and D is the double wedge unit. The complete block requires four of each unit.

Unit A: Draw a line from corner to corner on the wrong side of a 2 5/8" white square. Line the square up with one of the corners of a red 3 1/2" square. Sew on the drawn line.

Leaving a quarter inch seam allowance, trim the excess. Press the white triangle open to make a 3 1/2" unit.

Unit B: On the wrong side of a white 3 1/2" square make a dot 1 1/4" to the right of the upper left corner and one 2 1/4" below the upper left corner. Draw a line connecting the dots.

Matching upper left corners, place a red 2" x 3" piece right sides together and sew along the drawn line.

Trim the excess between the corner and the seam and press the red piece open. Trim away the excess red to make a 3 1/2" unit.

Unit C: This unit is made the same as Unit B except make the marks measuring from the upper right corner. Match upper right corners and sew on the drawn line. Complete as Unit B.

Unit D: On the wrong side of a red 3 1/2" square, make a mark 1/8" to the right of the upper left corner and 1/8" above the lower right corner. Make two more marks 1 3/4" to the right and above the lower left corner. Connect the marks with the ones on the opposite side of the square.

Place a white 3" x 4" piece, right sides together with the red square and matching the lower left corner and left edge. This will leave some of the white poking above the top of the red square. Sew on the drawn line.

Trim away the excess. Press open and trim unit to 3 1/2" square.

To add the second wedge, turn the unit back over and extend the line drawn on the red square onto the white section.

Place a white 3" x 4" piece right sides together with the new unit, aligning the lower right corners and the right sides. Sew on the drawn line.

Trim away the excess. Press the wedge open to make a 3 1/2" unit.

Layout the units according to the diagram:

ABCA

CDDB

BDDC

ACBA

Sew together in rows, pressing seams in alternating directions.

Sew rows together. The block should measure 12 1/2".

Sew the red 2 1/2" x 12 1/2" strips to the top and bottom of the block.

Sew the red 2 1/2" x 16 1/2" strips to the sides of the block to complete the pillow top.

Layer the pillow top with the batting and lining and quilt as desired. My pillow is quilted in rough circle shapes about 1" apart using red thread in the red parts and white thread in the white areas.

Using a 1/2" seam, insert the zipper in the bottom of the pillow using your favorite method. Lining up the raw edges of the backing and pillow front, sew the remaining three sides using a 1/2" seam.

Turn the pillow cover right side out, insert the pillow form and give someone a hug!

(Edited to add: linking to Connie's linky party here)

"Hug" Pillow

2012-02-05T10:39:00.000-05:00

Wanna make a "hug" pillow for Valentine's Day? Tutorial available on Tuesday. No paper piecing required.

There will be red strips around the "hug" to make it float.

If you want to start gathering scraps and cutting, you'll need:
RED:
8 3 1/2" squares,
8 2"x3" pieces,
2 strips 2 1/2" x 12 1/2",
2 strips 2 1/2" x 16 1/2".

WHITE:
8 3 1/2" squares,
8 2 1/2" squares,
8 3"x4" pieces.

Plus batting, lining, and backing for a 16" pillow.

A "kiss" pillow tutorial to go with your "hug" available by the end of the week too.

Deep sewing roots

2012-01-31T21:15:00.000-05:00

My mom was looking through some old photos recently and stumbled across this one. This is me with my first sewing machine shortly after Christmas the year I was seven.

I have to say I don't remember a lot about this little machine specifically, but I do remember making all kinds of things when I was young. I got serious about sewing when I was in junior high. Smock tops were big fashion back then and I made a few of those. My Dad wouldn't let me take Home Ec ("Your mother can teach you all those things"), but did let me take "Clothing" in 8th grade. I made a full length lined dress which I think I wore once. When I was in ninth grade, I was a cheerleader for the basketball team and made the uniforms for myself and many of my cheerleading friends. I was in the orchestra during those years too and we had to wear a white blouse and a long black skirt for concerts and I remember making my black skirt.

In high school, I continued to make tops and skirts and made both my graduation and prom dresses. I thought about making my wedding dress and bridesmaids dresses but decided against it. I was still in college at the time and only would have had a few weeks at the beginning of the summer to complete the dresses.

During my working years pre-children, I made lots of my work clothes and later my maternity clothes. Once I had children, I focused on making things for them for a few years. Then I discovered quilting. The only garment sewing I have done since then is Halloween costumes and nightgowns (you can't beat a flannel nightgown in the winter)!

I hope you don't all find this too boring and think I am older than dirt, but it is fun to be reminded sometimes of where you've been and how the direction you are going can seem so obvious in retrospect.

Cincinnati in April

2012-01-27T09:11:00.001-05:00

Some of us from the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild are planning to go to the Quilts Inc, International Quilt Festival Show in Cincinnati in April. I am so excited! I haven't been to a large quilt show like this in years. But, this year, I am going. If you aren't familiar with Quilts, Inc and the International Quilt Festival, they are the ones that put on the huge show in Houston every Fall attended by something like 60,000 people. Their midwest Spring show was in Chicago for years and moved to Cincinnati last year.

I went to the show when it was in Chicago twice, but the last time was at least four years ago and I was only there for a few hours that time. Going to an international quilt show like this is a great way to see what is new and exciting in the quilt world. Of course, I try to keep up on the internet and that works pretty well, but there is nothing like seeing several hundred quilts in person.

And... the vendors! The amazing number and variety of vendors you find at these kinds of shows is worth the trip by itself. So many fabrics and products to see and try (and maybe a few to buy).

I also understand that the Cincinnati Modern Quilt Guild will have an exhibit at the show so I'm really looking forward to seeing their quilts.

This may be the year of the quilt show for me too (in addition to being the Year of the Swap). The other major American international quilt organization, the American Quilter's Society, is having one of their big shows in Grand Rapids, MI in August (about 2 hours away from me). This show has been held previously in Nashville, but will be in Grand Rapids this year. I don't know if this is a long term change or a temporary one, but I'm going to try to get to that show too. AQS's main show is the big one in Paducah, Kentucky every April. I went to that show back in 2005 and have been hoping to get back every year since. I almost went last year since I had a quilt in the show (it won a prize!), but the logistics didn't work out.

Are you planning any big quilting related trips this year?

The Year of the Swap

2012-01-22T19:36:00.000-05:00

There are so many great ways to mix quilting and community out there these days.

My Pillow Talk Swap mosaic

In 2010, I joined my first two virtual quilting bees. They were very different; one fairly traditional and one modern and improv. My Warm Winter Night quilt was the result of The Bee's Knees VQB and I just love the way it turned out. Unfortunately, my Mid Mod Bee quilt is still in blocks. I really do want to get this put together as my bee buddies made amazing blocks for me.

In 2011, I participated in my first quilt along and took an online class. I made Cherri House's Socken in the quilt along and Rachel Griffith's Facade in the online class.

My For The Love of Solids mosaic

In 2012, I have signed up for three swaps. My participation in the Pillow Talk Swap has not yet been confirmed, but I am in on the Valentine swap from GenerationQ magazine and the For the Love of Solids Swap on Flickr. I've been having a lot of fun reading (and answering) all the questions from members of the FTLOS group. There are so many fun decisions ahead. Swappers in the FTLOS group post mosaics and answer a questionnaire as to the things they like. Now I get to "stalk" my partner and see how she answers the various questions so I can try to make something she will love.

Are you trying anything new that mixes quilting and community this year?

WIP Wednesday

2012-01-18T09:34:00.000-05:00

I feel like I have a bit of quilting ADD lately. It's not that I get bored with projects, but it seems like another challenge or opportunity that I can't resist pops up in the middle of one project and leads me to start another. Sometimes, that one gets set aside too. So I've decided to link up to Lee at Freshly Pieced's WIP Wednesday in an effort to keep me a little more accountable for what I start.

The project I started most recently (after my last post) is my modern floral vine project. I'm not really sure if I'm going to like where this is going yet, so I'm just showing a tiny peek.

Next is a half square triangle project with some of Malka's fabulous fabric. This one is my highest priority as it is the closest to being done. I have about 3/4 of the blocks pieced.

This poor half square triangle project has been sitting around waiting for me to get back to it for I don't remember how long! I sold the original version of "Spell It Out" so I'm making another one. As you can see, I have a ways to go on this one.

I don't usually consider stacks of fabric to be WIPs, but this pile of three groups of fat quarters is patiently waiting for me to get to it. I washed them all and it took me FOR-EVER to flatten them out and trim most of the frayed threads. I did not iron them. The full fat quarter set of Reunion is on the top and Half Moon Modern on the bottom, with some Echo in between. (Sorry, but my lighting really washed out the color on the top Reunion fabric - it is a very pretty spring green).

Wish me luck! Maybe one of these won't still be a WIP next week.

A new quilt?

2012-01-15T19:21:00.000-05:00

This drawing has been taped to the wall behind my computer for several years now. I drew it way back in 2006 or 2007 as part of a series of row robin quilts my Colorful Scrunchers group was doing. (An amazingly creative experience!) Back then, I did it as a traditional machine applique project.

I've always wanted to do something more with it. My style has changed quite a bit since then, but I would still like to adapt the idea to a new quilt. One of the ideas I have is speaking to me much louder than the others, so I think I'll try to work out that design first and see if it works.

What do you think? Does it say anything to you?

Facade

2012-01-12T11:07:00.000-05:00

My first completed quilt of 2012 is a Christmas quilt. Does that mean I'm really early or really late? I bet you can guess which one. Good thing Christmas comes along every year.

Back in early October I stumbled across Rachel Griffith's (p.s. i quilt) Build A Quilt Workshop: Facade class. Several things appealed to me about the class right away: first, I really liked the quilt; second, it used pre-cuts which were something I hadn't really worked with before; third, it was an online class which is a new format for me; fourth, it only cost $10! What have you got to lose there! (Sorry if you are getting a sense of deja vu - I wrote about the class back here). If that sounds appealing to you, Rachel is starting a new Cascade class soon.

I finished the top in early December and it has been waiting patiently for me to get it quilted. I opted for fairly simple quilt in the ditch quilting as the fabrics are pretty busy. I quilted along the horizontal and vertical block lines and then along the angle of the half square triangles. The red and white strip for the binding just begged to be cut on the bias for a candy cane effect.

I have to say that I just love the colors in this fabric line - Countdown to Christmas by Sweetwater. The olivey (springy?) green, the deep red, the lovely cream and the crisp black just work for me.

Being a dedicated prewasher of all my fabric, I was a little nervous about not being able to wash the precuts before I started. To be consistent, I didn't wash any of the yardage I used for this quilt either. I heaved quite a sigh of relief when I took the quilt out of the dryer and there was absolutely no bleeding at all. My husband and I are using this quilt to keep us warm while we watch TV. Christmas can hang around our house for a little longer this year.

Edited to add: I'm linking up to Amanda Jean's Finish It Up Friday.

Colorful!

2012-01-08T19:52:00.000-05:00

I've been keeping busy with a layer cake of Malka Dubrawsky's A Stitch In Color. Yum!

Some handwork

2012-01-05T11:02:00.000-05:00

My handwork group (Seven Sisters) meets every two weeks. After I finished the appliqué on my Very Long Term Project, I didn't want to jump into a new long term project just to have something to do. Given the time of the year, snowflake designs were on my mind. I'd thought about piecing some, but wasn't in the mood for fussing with the diamonds (too much holiday craziness filling my mind!).

So my thoughts turned to appliqué . Usually, I would just cut out the shape I wanted and sew it down onto the background. But, with this particular shape, I thought reverse appliqué would work too and decided to do it that way. I haven't done much non-bias appliqué in a while, so I'm a little rusty and some of my diamonds are a bit wobbly. However, it was a fun little project and reminds me how soothing this kind of work is. And it provided me with a project for my Seven Sisters meetings. I haven't made a final decision as to my next longer term handwork project (hopefully, not as long term as the last one), but I have a couple of ideas and am narrowing it down.

If you aren't familiar with reverse appliqué , you put the fabric underneath the background instead of on top. Then you cut away the top (background) fabric to show the fabric underneath. In this case, I basted the white fabric behind the red. I drew my design on the red fabric. Then I cut down the center of what became the white snowflake lines and needle turned the red fabric under.

2012 here we come!

2012-01-02T19:40:00.000-05:00

There are so many posts in blogland over the last few days about everyone's amazing accomplishments for 2011 and goals for 2012. I find these posts so inspiring!

As I look back to my goals for 2011, I did pretty well on the sewing and time goals I had for myself but not as well on the business goals. It is so much more fun to design and sew quilts than it is to work on the business part :)

Unrelated picture of the duvet cover I made for my niece.

I've been working on my list of goals for 2012. At this point it is ridiculously long! I have goals for the number of new patterns to design, charity quilts to make, tutorials or free patterns to release and projects to submit to magazines. If I add up all these quilts it comes out to about forty! Not very realistic for me if I ever want to get any of the business goals accomplished too.

I could eliminate some of the goals, but I'll probably just leave them and not meet them all. That's OK with me. It is the working toward the goals that is the most important activity. For instance, I'd like to have six new patterns designed and published by Spring. Six isn't really a magic number, so if I get four or five done, I'll still be satisfied as long as I'm making progress on other fronts too.

Another one of the things I'd really like to do this year is to host a quilt along. I participated in two last year and it was so much fun. I have a few possible ideas running around in my head, but haven't worked them into just the right project yet. If you have any ideas about what would be a fun quilt along I'd love to hear them!

2011 Mosaic

2011-12-31T12:14:00.000-05:00

1. SMS Giveaway Day, 2. A New View Baby, 3. Spell It Out, 4. Rebel Flock, 5. A very long term project, 6. Curried Plums, 7. Purple Pillow, 8. Mosaic, 9. Elegant Celebration, 10. Keep Calm, 11. Five Frames, 12. Lines Pillow, 13. The Bee's Knees bee quilt, 14. Off The Deep End, 15. Read Between The Lines, 16. LinesSpring

Many of my completed projects for 2011. Happy New Year all!

Quilty Christmas gifts

2011-12-30T10:45:00.000-05:00

None of my family members are quilters, so they needed a few hints from me as to what I might like to feed my obsession. I was so excited to get these two books and a magazine!

I've been a huge fan of Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr of Modern Quilt Studio (formerly FunQuilts) ever since I discovered their first book The Modern Quilt Workshop. So, when I learned they were putting out a new magazine I couldn't wait to put a subscription on my Christmas list. I love how they include pieced quilts and applique, but one of my favorite parts of the way they write patterns is how they explain their color choices and provide us with sketches of alternate color schemes. I can't wait for the next issue!

Sweetwater's fabric designs have been delighting me for several years now, starting with Authentic right through to Reunion. I love that they use words and text in their fabrics. Of course, I had to have their book "Sweetwater's Simple Home". The clean lined projects for every room in the house, many including some words, did not disappoint me :)

Last, but not least, Modern Blocks from Susanne Woods of Stash Books. This book is chock full of wonderful inspiration! I know I used to have one of those sets of mirrors you can set up to reflect a single quilt block so you can see what four blocks would look like together - this book has me searching to see if I still have it or if I got rid of it. I just love that cross block on the cover by Emily Cier! I'm not sure I have the patience for a whole quilt full of such small pieces, but the layout and colors of the block alone make me smile. Weeks and Bill have some great blocks in here too, as do many of your favorite designers and some designers that might be new to you.

Did you get quilty gifts this year?

2011-12-25T10:37:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Fabric Frenzy!

2011-12-22T14:27:00.000-05:00

I remember the days when I was a calm and careful purchaser of fabric. I often worked from my stash, adding new fabrics when I didn't have enough of a certain color or style. I was aware of new fabric lines, but didn't pay too much attention unless one or two of the fabrics suited my needs.

Enter 2011, Sweetwater, Basic Grey, Daisy Janie, Half Moon Modern, Malka, and Lotta! All of a sudden, I can't resist these lines - the colors and prints have been calling my name, loudly.

These are the latest bundles of fun to come home with me. Fat quarter bundles of Reunion and Half Moon Modern and a layer cake of A Stitch in Color. Many of my fabric indulgences (including these) have been satisfied by Brenda at Pink Castle Fabrics, but I've also found some of my favorites at Pink Chalk Fabrics, Marmalade Fabrics, and Fat Quarter Shop. (No sponsorships or anything here, just a happy customer).

Part of me is dying to pull these packages apart, spread them out and look at each individual fabric but the other part loves to look at them all neatly stacked just as they are. I'd better get sketching - I have lots of quilts to make!

How about you? Do you have a favorite line or two from this year or that you are waiting for in 2012?

Christmas Sewing

2011-12-18T22:23:00.002-05:00

I'm not making any quilts for Christmas gifts this year, but my sister asked me if I would make a duvet cover for my niece. Of course! We had fun at our LQS last week picking out these fabrics.

The top and bottom fabrics will be the center panels on the front or back of the duvet cover and the center fabrics will run down the sides. I'm using French seams so there won't be any raw edges on the inside. I haven't done a French seam in years. Hooray for the internet to reassure me that I remember how to do it properly! (I'm also sure I have this information in a book somewhere).

We bought a long zipper to put across the bottom and I'll be attaching some ties to the duvet itself and inside the cover so it doesn't shift around all over the place. The front and back panels are finished. I cut them a little long because I'm not sure how much ease I need to include to account for the puffiness of the duvet. Now to add the zipper, the ties and sew the front and back together. I hope she likes it!

Giveaway Finale!

2011-12-16T21:45:00.000-05:00

First of all, thank you so much to all of you who sent me good wishes in my battle with this cold. I am making steady improvement. My voice even sounded close to normal yesterday :)

I try to respond to comments left on my blog and this giveaway is no exception. I have been having lots of fun reading through them and replying. I'm not quite finished yet. My responses tend to vary in length based on how many of them I have done in one sitting. Early ones get wordier replies than the thirtieth one :)

Neutral threads seem to be the most popular quilting choices with white, off white, beige and grey being used by many quilters. There was also a strong contrast and variegated thread contingent and a lot who said it depends on the quilt. A few people said black, which I have never tried but will keep in mind for the future.

Now, drum roll, please! Jennifer W. is the winner of the quilt!
Jennifer said "What a gorgeous quilt!
I prefer neutral thread for quilting, but I'm up for contrasting thread if it seems to suit the mood of the piece." Congratulations, Jennifer! I've sent Jennifer an email directly.

Thanks so much to the wonderful group at Sew, Mama, Sew for organizing this event! Welcome to all my new followers. I'm so excited to have you all here! Posting here may be a little light for the next week or two as I try to catch up on Christmas sewing and enjoy some family activities. Wishing you and yours the happiest of holidays seasons!

SMS Giveaway Week!

2011-12-13T09:44:00.000-05:00

It's a very lucky thing for me that Sew, Mama, Sew decided to expand their Giveaway Day to a Week. I have been dealing with the worst cold I've had in years and that put me way behind on finishing up my giveaway quilt.

Welcome to those of you who are new here! My name is Debbie and this is where I share my sewing adventures and a little of the rest of my life too.

Some of my regular readers may recognize the pattern I used to make this quilt. It is my Triangle Maze pattern, which was originally a free pattern here on the blog. I have updated the pattern and added five more sizes - yes five! The free pattern was for a crib sized quilt and now I have added the baby size (shown) and throw, twin, full, and queen/king sizes. You can find the pattern in my Etsy shop or at PatternSpot.

This is the fourth or fifth quilt I've made from this pattern and every time I get more ideas for color combinations to try. Right now, I'd love to make this baby quilt again with lots of pretty pink prints. I'm not sure if I'd use only pink or whether I might add in a little grey too.

Anyway, giveaway details:
I'm giving away this baby quilt which measures approximately 36" x 45". I used Kona Ash, Bright Peri and Bahama Blue and an orange solid from my stash that is similar to Kona School Bus or Orange. It has been washed and is full of crinkly goodness. The vertical quilting lines are quilted with grey thread and the horizontal quilting lines are in aqua thread. The back is the same orange used on the front.

To enter, leave me a comment telling me what color thread you like to use for quilting. Do you always use white, another color, variegated thread, matching or contrasting? If you are a follower or become one, leave me a second comment letting me know and you'll be entered a second time. (You can follow me on FaceBook too - button in left column) I am happy to ship internationally. The giveaway will close at the end of the day on December 16 US EST. Please be sure to leave me a way to contact you if you are a "no-reply blogger".

Don't forget to check out all six categories of giveaways back at Sew, Mama, Sew!

Guess where I was...

2011-12-11T15:09:00.001-05:00

on Friday and Saturday? Picking my daughter up from U Chicago for the holidays.

I've been staying at the same hotel (4 times now) when I go there. The decor is a little old and beat up, but the rooms are clean and the location is very close to her school. Plus - this is the view from the front of the hotel looking north.

This is right across the street. I just love looking at Lake Michigan. Water views are so calming to me.

My room didn't have a lake view this time, but I could see the early morning sun shining on these buildings. Plus, for some reason, they gave me a huge room with a large seating area in addition to the bed area.

How would you like to have to climb down this fire escape! I guess you'd be happy it was there if you needed it, but yikes!

Even though I'm not there very long each trip, I'm really enjoying getting a chance to visit and get to know this city a little better.

SMS Giveaway Day

2011-12-06T16:39:00.001-05:00

Sew, Mama, Sew! Giveaway day is coming December 12! I'll be participating again. Stop back to see what I'm giving away. Hint: it starts with a "q" :)

In the back of the closet

2011-12-04T18:55:00.001-05:00

Remember how I said my quilt closet was overflowing? I had totally forgotten about this quilt. I made it as a throw sized version of my Shadow Boxes pattern by reducing the number of columns and removing one block from each column. I didn't think the quilt itself would be all that great looking, but I had plenty of black, white and grey solid fabric so I went ahead with the quilt.

As I suspected, I wasn't wowed by the final result, but it ended up a nice size at about 48" x 72". I like my throws to be long so I can nap on the couch and cover all of me :)

The real surprise was the back. I bought this lovely soft green quite a few years ago because it matched the color of my living room walls. I never did anything with it and so it ended up on the back of this quilt. I love how it looks - so soothing. It was one of the first backs I pieced with a design in mind and not just making it big enough. The cream fabric is one of my favorite handwriting prints.

The funny thing is that, in real life, the back is nicer than the front, but, when I look at the pictures, the front looks better than the back. And they say pictures don't lie :)

Do you like the new blog header? I haven't changed it in months so it was about time.

Giveaway winner

2011-12-03T10:36:00.001-05:00

Molly from BaileyGirl5 is the winner of the Jovial charm pack! Congratulations Molly!

December!

2011-12-01T10:13:00.001-05:00

I've been in denial since Thanksgiving that December and the holidays are coming soon. I think since today is December 1, I have to finally admit that this is the situation.

It isn't that I don't enjoy the holidays - I do. I think it is just that my already busy life needs to kick into a higher gear and part of me really wants to put that off until later :)

The Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild met last night and we had a fun ornament swap. This little mitten is what I made. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out but there were some serious moments of doubt along the way. I started off with a totally different idea that didn't work out at all. So after searching all over the internet for a good mitten shape, a trip to JoAnn's for supplies and an hour or so or stitching, I breathed a sigh of relief that at least I wouldn't be totally embarrassed to admit which ornament was mine.

I was lucky enough to get this cool kanzashi made by Kathy. It is such a pretty blue and I can't wait to get our tree so I can add it to my collection. Isn't that button in the middle amazing?

On another subject, I had this great idea in October that I was going to make a darling little Christmas quilt out of a Jovial charm pack and then give a Jovial charm pack away. Well, that quilt was a failure. What looked like good minimalism in a drawing turned out to look just plain boring in fabric. I really love this line of fabric so I am planning to rework the quilt, but haven't got there yet.

Anyway, if you've had the patience to read this far, I'm going to give the Jovial charm pack away anyway - quilt or no :) To be entered to win the charm pack, leave a comment telling me if you are making any quilts (as opposed to quilted items) for gifts or if you'd like to, but haven't gotten started yet. Because, I know there are others like me out there who have lots of great intentions and ideas well in advance, but are a little more last minute on the actual sewing.

Edited: Oops forgot to say, giveaway ends at the end of the day on December 2.

Quilts for Sale!

2011-11-27T13:38:00.001-05:00

My quilt closet is overflowing, so I've added some quilts for sale to my Etsy shop!

New Shoots (left) is one of my favorites! A version of my Bold pattern, I love the serene and hopeful combination of the blue and greens. The lavish quilting adds so much detail and texture to this quilt.

I also added two versions of Triangle Maze (Choppy Seas and Blueberry Lime Fizz), two table runners (Holly Street and Elegant Celebration) and my Off the Deep End version of Spell It Out.

As always, I am also happy to take commissions for custom versions of any of my quilts.

More sizes!

2011-11-20T21:03:00.001-05:00

A New View was one of the first quilts I designed myself and one of my first patterns. I had so much fun collecting all the beautiful browns and turquoises for the original quilt. It is a full/queen size (80" x 84") and the pattern originally only included instructions for that size.

Now, I have gone back and added information for a baby size (36" x 48") and a throw size (60" x 63").

When I bought a fat quarter bundle of Daisy Janie Shades of Grey last summer, I didn't know what I wanted to do with them - I just knew I had loved the line since I first saw it and I needed to have it! You know what I mean.

As I worked on the idea for a baby sized version of A New View, I realized these fabrics were perfect! I added some seafoamy/aqua colors and a soft baby quilt was born. A couple of my (non-quilting) family members thought that it was kind of strange to make a grey baby quilt, but it is such a pretty, soft grey, I love it!

The new, multi-sized version of A New View is available now in my Etsy shop in both paper and PDF versions and at PatternSpot.com in PDF format.

Tidying

2011-11-18T15:51:00.001-05:00

As I was tidying up my sewing space yesterday, I came across a large, rumpled pile of solid fabrics. A few weeks ago, Pink Chalk Fabrics had a sale on grab bags of solids. For a good price, they sent random pieces of solid fabric. Who could resist? I didn't :)

I always pre-wash my fabric. When I buy larger pieces, I don't usually iron them after pre-washing as the first thing I have to do before I cut them is iron anyway. But with these smaller pieces (most are nearly fat quarter or quarter yard pieces, some smaller) I had one big rumpled mess so I ironed them before I put them away.

Don't they look better now?

Sewing, sewing...

2011-11-17T12:03:00.001-05:00

You may be wondering if I fell off a cliff or something since I haven't posted anything since last Friday. Truth is, I have been working on a bunch of things that I can't share (mostly magazine submissions). Four projects to be exact, so I've been very busy, just no blog content.

I finished the last of these projects this morning, so I decided to make a kind of collage that reveals small bits of each one. A few HSTs, a bit of bias and a lot of great fabric.

What next? My UFO pile is unusually large. I definitely need to finish up some works in progress. I'll have to clean up the sewing room, take inventory of what is half done and make a plan! I must admit that I am very good at making plans, but not the best at following them - I always think I'll be able to finish things faster than I actually can. But, it is a good place to start!

Have you ever made a plan for tackling your UFO/WIP pile? Did it help?

11-11-11

2011-11-11T08:42:00.001-05:00

I just had to write a short post on 11-11-11! As we have moved through the first decade of this century, I realize these fun dates have been happening every year. However, as 11-11 is also my birthday, this one is a little special to me! Of course, I'm not turning 11, but I am turning an age with a one in it :)

This picture of me and my older daughter was taken last weekend in Chicago by my younger daughter. We were looking in the window of a real estate office in Hyde Park. My guess is that this was when Michelle thought she saw a gorgeous six room condo listed for $35,000. No, Michelle, that is for the garage :)

Amish Quilts

2011-11-09T09:43:00.000-05:00

Sewing has been slow over the past few days. My younger daughter and I went to the University of Chicago this weekend to visit my older daughter. It was a beautiful day on Saturday and we had a great day!

The Flint Institute of Arts is about an hour or so away from where I live. They have had an exhibition on Amish quilts there since early September. The exhibit closes on Nov 13. I have been trying to get there to see it and, on October 28, I finally succeeded!

Amish quilts have had such a huge influence on my quilting. Their use of color and simple shapes is extraordinary. I was lucky enough to see Amish quilts from the collection of Faith and Stephen Brown at the University of Michigan Museum of Art in 2000 (two years before I even started quilting).

As expected, photography of the quilts in Flint was not allowed. So I bought the book about the exhibit. It includes the quilts from the exhibit and a few extras.

To help me remember, I made some notes about some of the things I thought were interesting about the quilts.

The color schemes: there were a lot of black quilts that I really liked. Several were black and charcoal grey (faded black?) with antique rose or lavender. Now antique rose and lavender are not my usual colors, but I was impressed with how great they looked in these quilts. There was also a black and coppery brown combination that was very effective. Another quilt was mostly black with blues, some of which were very dark so that the difference between the black and blue was very subtle.

Another quilt looked at first glance as if all the same fabrics were used in the same places, but when you looked a little more closely, there was some wonderful and subtle variation in shade among the background fabrics. It made a lovely quilt interesting as well.

As for the quilting itself, many of the quilts included three double lines of quilting inside each quilt block regardless of the piecing lines of the block itself. Many of these blocks had been set on point.

There was one quilt of all Counterpane blocks with two nine-patches mixed in. It made me wonder if the quiltmaker was teaching her daughter to quilt as she was making the Counterpane quilt.

For those of you who worry about your points - while there were many perfect points, there were also many that were cut off. The quilts were just as stunning :)

Have you ever had the chance to see Amish quilts? Do they speak to you?

Another quilt for quilters

2011-11-04T09:40:00.003-04:00

A while ago, I wrote that my Seven Sisters group was making a quilt for volunteers at the guild we belong to. I mentioned that I had done the same thing with the hand dying group I belong to (Colorful Scrunchers), but didn't have picture. One of the Scrunchers, Kathy, promptly sent me this photo.

I'm so glad to have the photo. Thanks, Kathy! This was such a fun quilt to work on. Ginia designed the basic idea - which is nine patches all made from hand dyed fabric. The small black squares are the centers of the nine patches. We had a great time blending the colorful parts into the final result.

I was new to the group at the time, so none of the fabric was dyed by me, but the rest of the group all contributed some of their fabrics. I'm not sure what year this was, probably about 2006.

This is such a wonderful and creative group of women. We aren't able to get together very often, but when we do the eye candy is spectacular!

Late to the party...

2011-11-02T08:36:00.000-04:00

I take so much joy in selecting just the right fabrics for my quilts, that I have not been interested in pre-cuts.

However, as I was blog hopping around one day I landed at Rachel's blog (p.s. i quilt) as she announced her Build A Quilt Workshop. An online class using pre-cuts, hmmm. Two things new to me. So I quickly signed up.

Rachel is using a private Flickr group for the class and posting instructions as we go along. I am having so much fun! While I'll never give up my usual method of quilt making, this is almost like a sewing vacation. The fabrics are chosen, the instructions are there to follow and all I am doing is having fun putting it all together. I'm guessing you might see a few more pre-cuts working their way into my quilts in the future.

How about you? Have you worked with pre-cuts? Do you like them?

Blogger's Quilt Festival

2011-10-30T17:14:00.000-04:00

My entry for the Blogger's Quilt Festival this time is "Spell It Out". I made this quilt late last winter as a commission and then developed it into a pattern.

I think my favorite thing about it is its versatility. I love the summery blues and greens with white in this quilt, but, lately, I've been thinking of making one for the holidays that says "merry, merry". One of my amazing pattern testers, Darlene, made one in her favorite team's colors with their team name written on the side. Of course, I can always see one in my daughter's favorite colors with her name on it.

The techniques in this quilt are some of my favorites too. I don't think I'll ever get tired of the endless possibilities of half square triangles. And words and applique, yep, love those too :)

I've been too busy so far this weekend to spend any time looking at all the other quilts entered for BQF, but I'm planning on a little time tonight to check out some of the them. If you haven't already, click on over and enjoy!

Giveaway Winner

2011-10-29T08:32:00.000-04:00

The Pink Castle Fabrics purple and gold bundle winner is Safiya! Congratulations Safiya, I have sent you an email. Thanks to everyone who entered.

Introducing Rebel Flock...

2011-10-25T20:20:00.000-04:00

Because my geese are flying north in the Fall!

This was such a fun quilt to put together! You know how I love HSTs. The quilt measures just under 46" x 58" and is made with 5 yellow fat quarters, 3 purple fat quarters and 2 yards of Kona Coal. How simple is that.

I got the perfect yellow and purple fabrics from my friend Brenda of Pink Castle Fabrics. Brenda has a great stock of the best modern and basic fabrics and there was no way I could resist this group. Even better, Brenda is sponsoring a giveaway of the same bundle of purples and yellows that I used. All you have to do to enter is click over to Pink Castle Fabrics and leave a comment telling me which bundle or fabric from Pink Castle Fabrics you like best. I'll draw a winner at the end of the day (US EDT) on Friday, October 28.

If you can't wait that long or you aren't the lucky winner, Pink Castle Fabrics will be featuring an Esch House Quilts blog bundle in the shop.

For a limited time, you can also get the pattern for free under my "Free Projects" tab above.

I'm going to enter Rebel Flock in Rachel at Stitched in Color's October Celebrate Color contest. It is so much fun to look at the other entries and be inspired. Last month I entered something purple and yellow too! The contest continues in November - I think I'd better come up with a different color palette for next month!

PS Be sure I can reach you in case you win!

Not my usual quilting

2011-10-23T12:17:00.000-04:00

I'm almost finished with this newest purple and gold quilt. I got a lot of the quilting done on my retreat. But I decided these "flying geese" needed a little contrasting quilting. I don't use contrasting thread for quilting very often. Usually, I prefer the quilting to give texture only.

In this case, however, the purple triangles needed some more quilting and I thought bringing a bit of the yellow from the rest of the quilt into the grey and purple area would tie the different areas of the quilt together nicely.

I should be ready to post a picture of the whole quilt in the next day or two. There will be something a little different about that post, so check back to see what it is!

Working on #3!

2011-10-20T09:27:00.000-04:00

My Seven Sisters and I are having a wonderful time on our retreat! The weather is awful, but we don't care - more time inside to sew :)

The first project I brought with me was a small quilt to quilt. I finished what I had planned, but now have an idea to add some detail to one of the areas. I'll have to wait until I get home to add that because I didn't bring the thread with me. I don't want to waste sewing time driving to the store.

Project #2 is a quilt top for an eventual pattern and I completed that yesterday. Project #3 is this diamond quilt. The blocks are done and I hope to get the top finished before lunch today. I have never made a quilt with diamonds before so I wanted to give this one a try. The pattern is by Nellie J Designs and was in the March/April 2011 issue of McCall's Quilting. Working with the diamonds was really easy. Just using the 60 degree line on my regular 6" x 24" ruler. I am not a gadget girl, so if a pattern needs a special ruler, I'm not likely to do it.

I have to leave our retreat right after lunch time today as my sister and her family are coming to stay with us. They are attending a wedding on her husband's side of the family and will be here through the weekend. It will be so nice to have a chance to catch up!

I hope your week as been as wonderful as mine :)

Retreat projectssss

2011-10-17T07:44:00.000-04:00

So, how many projects do you take with you when you go on retreat? I'm taking four. I know this is crazy. I will arrive at the retreat around dinner time today and will leave after lunch on Thursday. That gives me just under three good solid days of quilting. I am nothing if not optimistic and prepared!

It is true that two of the four projects are already in progress. As you can see from the picture here, I will be quilting my latest yellow and purple quilt. The next two projects I'm taking are completely new starts. The fourth project is a bunch of HSTs that need to develop into a quilt top. To be honest, I really just threw them in to be sure I'd have enough. Because, you know, it is highly likely that I'll finish quilting one quilt and put together two more and not have anything left to do!

Well, regardless of what I do or don't get done, I know I'll have a great time working on these projects and hanging out with my Seven Sisters. I hope you have a great week ahead!

Seven Sisters

2011-10-14T14:08:00.000-04:00

My Handwork group began meeting in early 2007. The membership changed some over the first year or two, but has been stable at the seven of us since then. We meet every other Tuesday for 3 hours. This lovely group of women has been such a joy!

Earlier this year, we decided to make a worker's quilt for the Greater Ann Arbor Quilt Guild of which we are all members. Each member who has volunteered with the Guild during the year has their name entered into a hat and the person picked wins the worker's quilt. So we decided our group needed a better name than "Handwork group." One of the ladies suggested "Seven Sisters." Perfect! The name of a quilt block and a reflection of how close we have all grown.

Recently, my Sisters bestowed a special favor on me and I wanted to make some equally special thank you cards. I was not sure exactly what the Seven Sisters block looked like, so I googled it and designed this image for my cards. I just love the image of the six stars surrounding the center star! It was a lot of fun to create this virtual block. I hope, one of these days, to actually sew some Seven Sisters blocks.

In the meantime, lucky me and my six Sisters are heading off next week for a quilting retreat. I have so many projects I'd like to work on, I haven't been able to make up my mind which ones to take yet :) Whatever I end up taking, I know I'll have a wonderful time sewing with my amazing Sisters.

Remember this?

2011-10-11T08:24:00.001-04:00

This is what I'll be doing at Handwork today - burying the threads on the back of Curried Plums. Since I was on a deadline for the Project Modern competition, I didn't finish burying all the threads before I took the photos needed to enter. Time to go back and finish this detail. I may get the hanging sleeve sewn on too - I pinned it for the picture.

Just noticed this is my 200th post! Yay!

Purple and gold?

2011-10-10T08:27:00.000-04:00

Again? Yep, sometimes I just can't get a color scheme out of my system. Maybe the third time's the charm :)

What are you working on this week?

A long time coming

2011-10-07T13:44:00.000-04:00

I can't believe this quilt top is actually finished! It has been my long-term, no deadline or need to hurry project for over four years! It is hand appliqued using bias strips and only two fabrics from April Cornell's Sunshine line. Mostly, I have worked on it during our biweekly Handwork group meetings. I took at least one extended break during that time to hand applique and hand quilt my original Raindrops quilt. But, as the other members of our Handwork group have hand quilted their way through many quilts, I have returned to this one project nearly every meeting.

The design was inspired by a ceiling in Biltmore House in Asheville, NC. We visited there in February 2007 while staying with my Dad and his wife. In an effort to lighten my purse for a long day of sightseeing, I had left my sketchbook at Dad's house. The Biltmore House does not allow photography. So I stood there, staring at this ceiling, figuring out the pattern and how I could remember it.

As soon as I got back to my sketchbook, I made some very rough sketches to help me remember. Once we returned home, I finalized the design. If I recall properly, I purchased the fabrics while in South Haven, MI on our summer vacation that year and then purchased a little more of each fabric when some other quilty friends and I stopped at a quilt shop in Ohio on our way to or from Quilt National that same year.

I love the way the petal shapes in the block create the secondary circle pattern. I knew I needed to make enough blocks for that design to really show up. There are sixteen blocks in the quilt, but I cut out and appliqued them in large blocks of four. The inside of the quilt is about 48" square and the borders are 2".

I have to be honest and say I have no idea when I'll get around to quilting this quilt or what I'll do with it when I'm finished. But, it feels very good to be finally finished with the top.

What on earth am I going to do at our next Handwork group?!

I had some plans....

2011-10-05T09:23:00.001-04:00

to stitch these blocks together this morning. I have been working on this quilt for nearly four years! Last week, at my Handwork group, I put the final stitches in the applique. We meet from 10-1 every other Tuesday. As 1:00 approached, my lovely friends started talking about where to go to lunch and packing things up. I had about three more inches to applique, so I told them I was not moving until I was done! Of course, they were excited for me to finish too. I had brought the other three blocks with me and we laid them out to admire. Their ideas about how to finish off the top were very helpful as usual.

My plan was to stitch the blocks together this morning so I could show all of you. Unfortunately, I spent nearly an hour on the phone sorting out problems with my new cell phone. This is the third call on this phone :( Some days technology just makes you want to throw it out the window!!!

I took this picture with one hand while on the phone with the other. By the time I loaded the picture into my computer, I realized I could put the phone on speaker and use two hands! I never remember that I can do that. Anyway, I have an answer to the problem - we'll see if it works. Now, off to the day job. Hopefully, I'll get to some sewing this evening.

My voice

2011-09-30T16:03:00.000-04:00

"Curried Plums" is my entry into the Project Modern "Find Your Own Voice" challenge. I wrote that my voice is "...about minimalism, clean lines, bold shapes andlimited color palettes. It is aboutfabric and thread and batting."

Some of you may recognize this design as a variation of my "Raindrops" pattern with a lot of "border". I was playing around on the computer, thinking about the Project Modern monochromatic challenge (#2) when I set that quilt into a large field (Project Modern quilts need to be 45" x 45"). I didn't pursue the idea for that challenge, but decided to follow the idea for this one.

Even though I designed "Raindrops" a while ago (2008!) setting it in the larger quilt really shows the evolution of my design voice. Back then, I never would have imagined adding so much negative space to a quilt. I love how doing that also let me complete the circles that went off the edge of the original quilt. Another bonus to revising this design was that I love to hand applique and love the idea of hand appliqueing modern quilts.

For the quilting, I went with my standby straight lines. The lines inside the small applique part of the quilt are horizontal and the lines on the larger border area are at about a 30 degree angle. It is hard to see in the small picture, but each of the circles use a different plum colored fabric. The background under the applique is a Lonni Rossi fabric and the large border area is Kona Curry.

I still have a few threads to bury on the back but I'm glad to have met the challenge well before the midnight PST deadline!

Do you have a quilting voice?

Finished!

2011-09-30T10:04:00.002-04:00

I finished my Project Modern Challenge 4 quilt! Now "all" I have to do is the photography. I'll post pictures tomorrow.

Stitching away...

2011-09-29T14:24:00.000-04:00

on my Project Modern Challenge 4 entry. As you can see, I have a few thread tails to bury!

I'm not quite sure I'll get this quilt finished in time - keep your fingers crossed for me.

Stash buying?

2011-09-26T09:27:00.000-04:00

Perhaps I have been deluding myself that I don't usually buy stash fabrics. I tend to think I buy for certain projects. However, in reviewing my purchases over the past few months, I think it is pretty clear that this is not always the case! Oh well :)

Anyway - before we went to Chicago last week I checked out the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild's website. They include a list of several quilt shops in the greater Chicago area, so I researched which ones were somewhat near the University of Chicago. I think the closest two were Quiltfabric.com and Quiltology.

After we parted from my daughter on Monday afternoon, I thought a little retail therapy was in order! Quiltfabric is closed on Mondays (I'll get there next time I visit), so we zipped up Lake Shore Drive to Quiltology. What a sweet little shop! Lots of great modern prints and they were having a fat quarter sale. Who could resist?

These are (top to bottom): Floralicious, Michele D'Amore, Bentartex; Habitat, Michele D'Amore, Benartex (two); Modern Meadow, Joel Dewberry, Free Spirit; more Habitat; more Habitat(!); Kaffe Fassett; Midwest Modern, Amy Butler, Rowan. I didn't realize I had picked up so many from Michele D'Amore's Habitat line! There are a lot of other great prints in the line that I didn't get.

Also falling under the "I couldn't resist" category: a solid scrap bundle from Pink Chalk Fabrics that included about 4 yards of fabric for just under $13!

Guess I'd better get busy sewing!

Dorms and quilts

2011-09-24T10:26:00.000-04:00

Sorry to have neglected you my bloggy friends! It has been a whole week since I posted anything.

We left Saturday to move my daughter into her dorm. It rained the whole day! Luckily, the times we were doing the most running in and out it was only raining lightly. Michelle and her longtime best friend are rooming together. They have a double that has two small rooms. One has a fireplace in it! I'm pretty sure they aren't allowed to actually use it, but I promised to give her some of my pillar candles to put in for a fireplace effect.

The beds and dressers fit in one room and the desks fit in the fireplace room. They also have a large closet with some great storage space above it. I didn't get a picture of it, but the beds are quite high so there is also storage underneath them too. If she fills up all that space during the year, we'll never be able to fit it all in to bring it home next spring!

Of course, I can't go anywhere without seeing quilt possibilities! This picture is the outside of her dorm building. I love the arrangement of the blocks. There are so many windows that this was the biggest chunk of wall I could take a picture of. Now that I can look at the blocks a little closer, the arrangement may be random, but it still has a few wheels turning :) If I make a quilt inspired by her dorm that would be a different kind of "dorm quilt" wouldn't it!

I'm stitching away on my Project Modern entry - not sure if I'm going to make the deadline!

Project Modern Challenge #4

2011-09-17T09:23:00.001-04:00

The Project Modern Challenge #4 deadline is September 30. So, of course, I just started a quilt to enter! Since I made the decision to enter Challenge #2 about 8 days before the deadline, you might get the idea that I like to work under pressure. Not really.

I think what happens is that I have trouble deciding whether I want to make a quilt to enter or not. Some days I definitely do and then other days I think I have so much else going on that I'll skip this one. As the deadline approaches, it becomes clear to me that I really do want to enter. Hence the "last minute" situation.

This color palette may look a little familiar. However, for this quilt, the yellow golds will be the main colors and the purples will be the accents. Wish me speedy sewing!

Do deadlines motivate you or not?

Purple Pillow Project Payoff

2011-09-14T09:15:00.000-04:00

I didn't end up with much sewing time this weekend. I think that was probably a good thing for this pillow. I kind of needed to leave behind my original vision and switch to what I was working with.

In the end, all I really did was to add some more yellow and rearrange the pieces. Because, really, this pillow is all about the purple. I just love the depth of these fabrics! They are the perfect color to add some richness and warmth for the coming fall.

I am happy with the final result and think it looks pretty good on my couch. I used up quite a few purple scraps and made something in a more improvisational style than usual. Another fun thing about this project is that some of the scraps I used were partially made strips and blocks from other projects so that when I cut my squares, they already had piecing in them. Extra detail and pattern without any extra work - can't beat that!

I am entering this pillow into two of my must-read blogger's events this month. Rachel at Stitched in Color is organizing Celebrate Color and Brigitte of Farbstoff is focusing on pillows with Pillow Talk.

Sorry about the post title but I'm a sucker for alliteration!

Work in (non)progress

2011-09-10T15:48:00.000-04:00

You know how you get a great idea (maybe in the shower) and can't wait to work on it? I had this idea yesterday morning of lots of shades of dark purple with a few little pops of yellow. Somewhat inspired by the work of Yoshiko Jinzenji - I love how some of her piecing lines blur the background fabric with the pieced fabric.

So I dig around in my scrap bags, because I don't really have much purple fabric. I found quite a lot of fabrics left over from this quilt - which was perfect because that is exactly the color I had in mind!

So I cut squares out of the scraps and added a few wonky bits of yellow to some of them. Then I made a bunch of half square triangle blocks and put it on my design wall - yay!

Not so much :( Pretty underwhelmed here. So I moved the pieces around some - it only got worse!

Staring and thinking in progress...

Giveaway Winner!

2011-09-09T07:47:00.000-04:00

The winner of the copy of Quilting Arts Gifts is Sandi P! I have sent Sandi an email.

Thanks for your great gift suggestions everyone. Lots of people suggested various kinds of food gifts. I have to agree - those are always popular at our house! We love to give and receive homemade goodies.

If you are looking for some great ideas for the holidays browse through the comments. The three I am most likely to try are aprons, mug rugs and zippered pouches. I am a longtime apron wearer, so I suppose I should spread the love a bit! Mug rugs are such fun to make and so pretty and useful I'll definitely make a few of those. I've seen so many cute zippered pouches all over the internet, but have never made one. They seem like such a great gift, especially for the teenagers on my list.

If you weren't the lucky winner today, you can still order QA Gifts here.

QA Gifts Giveaway

2011-09-05T13:06:00.000-04:00

The new Quilting Arts Gifts is out! Aren't those little bird ornaments on the cover darling? I enjoyed last year's issue so much that I submitted a project to this one and they included it!

My Holiday Ornament pillow project is on page 62. Those of you who were reading this blog last holiday season may recognize this pillow as part of a series of red and white pillows I made then. I love the shape of the ornament on this pillow! I used the same shape for the quilting.

Quilting Arts added recipes to this issue too. Everyone who submitted projects was asked to include a favorite recipe. Mine is for Cream Cheese Cookies. I've been making these cookies since I was in high school (we won't discuss how long that has been :)). They are fast and easy and when I take them to a gathering I know that there won't be six other plates of the same thing.

OK, now for the giveaway part - I'm giving away a copy of this Quilting Arts Gifts magazine! Leave me a comment and tell me what small gift you love to make. We all love to make and give quilts, but what do you like to make when you need or want a smaller gift? You can enter until the end of the day Thursday, September 8. International entries are welcome!

Playing with Blocks

2011-09-02T15:48:00.000-04:00

Wednesday was our Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild meeting and those of us who had finished our Habitat blocks turned them in. We will be putting together a charity quilt in the future.

I got temporary custody of the blocks and couldn't resist playing with them on my design wall. We need at least 35 blocks for our quilt and have collected 26 already. We know there are quite a few more out there from those who weren't able to make the meeting.

I threw them up rather randomly onto the design wall. I thought I would like it if the ones with more solid were sprinkled around the quilt. But, maybe because the fabric is already quite busy, that just seemed to make the quilt too scattered. So I bunched the blocks with more solid in the corners. It isn't a perfect layout, but I had a fun half hour or so playing!

New Flickr Group!

2011-08-28T11:55:00.000-04:00

One of my lovely customers this weekend, Paige, asked about sending me photos of quilts she made from my patterns. I had meant to set up a Flickr group for just this purpose, but it hadn't yet made it to the top of the to-do list.

So, now it has! If you have made any quilts or other items from any of my patterns or made a quilt inspired by one of mine, I'd love to have you add it to the group. It is so exciting for me to see another quilter start with an idea of mine and make it their own. Whether you follow the pattern to the letter or just use one of my quilts as a jumping off point, your personality and fabric choices are so much fun to see.

Paige had another idea that made me smack my forehead and say "Now why didn't I think of that before?" which was to have a discount deal for a purchase of multiple patterns. So, now in my Etsy shop, you can buy three patterns of your choice for $24.

If you have any ideas to share, I'm always happy to hear them!

Habitat Blocks

2011-08-24T18:54:00.000-04:00

Even before we finished our Robert Kaufman No Prints Allowed challenge, Free Spirit offered modern quilt guilds an opportunity to get free Jay McCarroll Habitat fabric. Being in the midst of the RK challenge, we weren't quite ready for another one at the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild. But, of course, not being crazy, we wanted to take advantage of the free fabric!

After some discussion, we decided to make a charity quilt. We each took some fat quarters with a promise to add some solids of our own and bring back as many 12" blocks as we could make from what we took.

I took two fat quarters and made the blocks shown here. It was a lot of fun. I don't usually make just one block at a time where I can do anything I want.

The first block I made was the large star block (upper left). I've been thinking of making a quilt with star blocks in it for a while so I decided to try this one out. I like the pinwheel effect, but it didn't strike me as very "modern" so I made another smaller one so I could add fabric around the edges to make it wonky (lower right). I was surprised at how much fabric wonkiness requires :)

The triangle block (upper right) was next. This is a trial run for the last block I owe in the Mid Mod Bee. The fabric design hides all my crazy little seams nicely.

My final block is the cross block (lower left) inspired by Carol's quilt and the many other cross quilts I've seen around the past year or so. I may play around with this block idea to see what I can come up with if I make more of them.

It will be fun to see what everyone else did and how many blocks we end up with.

Shop Hop Report

2011-08-21T12:33:00.001-04:00

We had a great time on our custom shop hop yesterday. Even some pretty serious rain and lightning didn't slow us down. Our first stop was Sew Unique Threads in Battle Creek. What a wonderful quilt shop! Lots of great modern fabrics and lines we all loved. Most of us just about broke our budgets at this first store, but nobody was complaining.

Next we went to Bernina Sewing Center in Kalamazoo. A more traditional fabric selection, but nice. The ladies at Bernina pointed us to Field's Fabrics just down the road. I had been to a Fields Fabrics in Holland, MI before, but didn't realize there was one in Kalamazoo too. Apparently, there are seven of them in western Michigan. Field's is the first fabric store I have been to in ages that had clothing fabric nice enough to make me want to go back to my garment sewing roots. We had also planned to go to Quilts at the Marshall House in Marshall, but it was too late by the time we left Field's.

So, here is what I got! Clockwise from the top left green fabric: Both the green and the white on the left are a check fabric from Origins by Basic Grey (Moda), the charm pack is Jovial by Basic Grey; the white underneath it is also from the Jovial line, a white "grunge" type; next some soft teals - Grunge by Basic Grey (Moda), Natures Elements and Floral Elements by Art Gallery, a teal dot from Natural Effects by Michele D'Amore (Marcus); Bahama Blue and Pink Kona cottons; the uneven black, white and dark grey stripe is Dilly Dally by Me and My Sister (Moda), the even black and white stripe is from Sis Boom by Jennifer Paganelli (Westminster) and finally, a fat quarter of Lotus by Amy Butler! Whew!

The white grunge, the teals and the Konas are all for in progress projects - the rest is stash buying or because I just couldn't resist :) Now I need to take a break from the fabric buying and get to some serious sewing!

Custom Shop Hop

2011-08-18T18:19:00.000-04:00

A few members of the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild and I are looking forward to our own customized shop hop on Saturday. Last May, Andrea from Brighton Modern Quilters (and Creative Quilt Kits in Brighton) and I met Sue, the owner of Sew Unique Threads at a quilt show. Sue was a vendor and looked like she had lots of stuff that modern quilters like so we decided to make a mini shop hop of our own.

Sew Unique Threads in Battle Creek will be our first stop and we may also stop at Bernina Sewing Center in Kalamazoo and Quilts at the Marshall House in Marshall. I will be looking for some fabric to go with the Daisy Janie Shades of Grey I cut up the other day. It should be a fun day!

Remember these?

2011-08-14T10:10:00.000-04:00

I'm starting a new project today using these lovely Daisy Jane Shades of Grey organic fabrics! The Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild has a sew-in today and I am so looking forward to cutting into these.

The quilt I'm planning to make is a version of a much earlier quilt. I'll need to do some shopping for the fabrics to go with the greys as I don't have the right colors in my stash. I'll be sure to show you what I get!

On another note, I realized I talked a bit last year about my older daughter's college search, but I don't recall ever letting you know what happened! I'm sure you have all been on the edges of your seats :)

Michelle is going to the University of Chicago! She is very excited and we have been having some fun shopping for all the things she'll need. Chicago uses a quarter system, so school doesn't start until late September. They get almost a month off in December but then go thru mid June.

My younger daughter, Heather, will be a junior in high school this year, so we'll be starting the whole search process all over again soon :) It is so exciting to see them continue to develop into such lovely young women.

I finished a quilt!

2011-08-11T18:40:00.000-04:00

If sewing has been a little light around here, finishing something has been even more elusive! Yesterday, I finished this quilt for Cheryl's Quilts Recover. Unfortunately, it is past her deadline, but I'm sure she will be able to use it somewhere :) My first post about this quilt is here.

The blocks in this quilt are big - about 20". (A block is made up of two diamond shapes in each of the four colors.) I know that in order to get certain sized half square triangles, you have to cut squares at whatever inches plus something with eighths of an inch. If precision is required, I can figure this out. Since this quilt did not need to be a specific size, it didn't really matter if the blocks came out a few eighths of an inch bigger or not - as long as they were all the same size. So, I used 6" strips - which gave HST's of approximately 5". With 4 HST's across each block and the final layout having three blocks across by four blocks long, the quilt is a generous 60" x 80".

When it came to quilting, the speedy part of me just wanted to do a diagonal all over. But the part of me that doesn't really like black thread on white or light colors (or vice versa) prevailed. I quilted inside each non- black "diamond" shape with light grey thread and then inside each large black diamond with black thread. If you want to see this a little better, click on the photo to enlarge it.

What next? Finish up a UFO or start a new project? :) What would you do?

We had a relaxing weekend

2011-08-08T20:01:00.000-04:00

at this lovely place near Elk Rapids, MI! My younger daughter took this photo at dusk. So peaceful!

More fabric!

2011-08-05T09:32:00.000-04:00

I know I have said this here before, but when people ask about how I buy fabric, I usually say that I tend not to buy fabric just because I like it. I prefer to buy fabric for which I have a plan.

While this is still true, I've been doing a lot of buying because it is pretty lately! I bought the Marcia Derse fabrics not too long ago and recently succumbed to the lure of the Shades of Grey organic fabric by Daisy Janie and a fat quarter bundle of Basic Grey's Moda Grunge.

I got this Color Stack of grey and the Grunge from Pink Chalk Fabrics. The Color Stack includes all the Shades of Grey fabric except one and adds two solids. I have admired this line for a long time - ever since I first saw it. However, my brain has been busy with other projects and I haven't taken the time to think about what I might do with so many lovely grey fabrics. So, I put off buying any. It recently occurred to me that I might not be able to get any of these fabrics later, so I'd better get them now. So I did :)

The fat quarter bundle of Grunge fabrics was inspired by some paintings I saw recently at the annual Ann Arbor Art Fair. The paintings had a similar texture to the Grunge so I got some of those too.

I wonder if I am buying more fabric than usual because I am sewing less than usual? Life on the home front and work outside the home front have both been very busy this summer, so I've been sewing less than I like to. I always hope to get more sewing time in, but, realistically, with my younger daughter going back to high school in the next month and my older daughter going off to college, it isn't likely I'll have time on my hands any time soon.

This is all wonderfully right on one level. I'm lucky to have such wonderful daughters doing exciting things. On another level, I do miss the sewing! I hope you all hang around until I can get back on track again.

Fun!

2011-08-02T19:25:00.003-04:00

Look at the great table runners my students made at our Quilting Unlimited class on Sunday! From left to right, they are Amy, Anne, Dawn and Liz. There was a fifth student signed up for the class but she had a last minute scheduling conflict and wasn't able to make it.

These four ladies came up with such different takes on Celebration! Amy used a bright pink batik for her background, a purply/bluish mottle for her bias and a lighter pink for her border. Anne chose a dark blue snowman batik for her background, a light blue snowflake print for her bias and a turquoise metallic print for her border. Dawn chose Christmas fabrics - a red tone on tone for her background, a cream pine cone print for her bias and a cream and green holly print for her border. Liz chose a pale green background, an orange and white print for her bias and a coordinating yellow and white print for her border. Liz also added a small inner border of the same orange and white print as her bias. It doesn't show up well in this photo, but looked terrific in real life (and she mitred her border)!

One of the things I love best about quilting is that we can all start with the same idea and then make it our own. Thanks, ladies, for being such great students!

A more muted feeling

2011-07-30T11:38:00.000-04:00

At the Brighton Modern Quilters meeting on Monday night many members brought tons of scraps. The group is making the Tokyo Subway Map quilt by Elizabeth Hartman of Oh, Fransson! and thought some scrap trading would assist their personal stashes.

In spite of the fact that I think the Tokyo Subway Map quilt is totally amazing, I'm not going to participate. Too many other projects on my plate/in my mind that aren't getting done.

Of course, that didn't stop me from looking through all the scraps! I chose a few small pieces and this strip above. I just love the colors! I've been thinking about doing something in a more muted color palette and this may be it. For now, I've stuck it to my design wall and I just stare at it from time to time.

More HST love

2011-07-27T09:09:00.000-04:00

I've been working on a quilt this week for Cheryl Arkison's Quilts Recover. When I first decided to participate, I thought I might make a quilt inspired by her logo which I love. As the time got closer though, I saw this quilt using the mosaic block that people are doing as part of the Summer Sampler Series quilt along. I love the block and, better yet, it is made up of HSTs! (I do plan to get over my obsession soon :))

Next question: what colors? I've been feeling like working with some black lately (unusual for me) so I decided that would be the background color. In general, when I make quilts for charity I try not to make them for young children. Based on the charity quilts I see at the large guild I belong to, there are already many quilts for younger children. So, I tend to think about teenagers, boys or less girly girls - or maybe even adults!

Anyway, I looked at my fabrics and decided on white, two yellows and grey. This shot is from my design wall a couple of days ago. I'll be shipping it off to Cheryl soon.

An Elegant Celebration

2011-07-24T12:10:00.000-04:00

Next Sunday afternoon will find me teaching a class on my Celebration table runner at the Greater Ann Arbor Quilt Guild's Quilting Unlimited.

I love the idea of having a table runner you can pull out for special occasions. I made the bright version as a class sample and have wanted to make another, more elegant, version. Besides, working with free form bias is too much fun to stop at one!

For the elegant version, I used a Fairy Frost as the background and a great Lonni Rossi print for the border. I believe the dark red I used for the bias is a Nancy Halvorsen print from a few years ago, but I'm not sure since it was a fat quarter without selvage.

Keen observers will notice that I did not use any triangles for the confetti shapes in the new version. They just didn't seem to suit the more elegant style.

If you'd like to see larger pictures of these runners, check out my Flickr photostream.

Suzanne Marshall will be the guest speaker at our QU dinner on Saturday night. I admire her applique so much! I'm looking forward to hearing her talk and to spending a fun evening with quilty friends.

A quilt for quilters

2011-07-21T10:26:00.000-04:00

Every year the Greater Ann Arbor Quilt Guild, of which I am a member, makes a quilt to reward a lucky guild volunteer. The Guild has quite a few activities that require these volunteers and many people are very generous with their time. As a small thank you, the name of each of these volunteers is put in a "hat" and the lucky person drawn wins what we call the "Worker's Quilt".

One of the ways to volunteer with the Guild is to make the Worker's Quilt. Several years ago my hand dying group volunteered and made a wonderful quilt. This was before I owned a digital camera so I can't find a picture of it for you.

This year, my Handwork group (recently renamed The Seven Sisters) decided to take on this challenge. Renee suggested this pattern, we decided on the color scheme (neutrals), how many blocks we each needed to make (14) and we were in business!

Next up was a sewing day in Judy's basement sewing space to put it together. Here it is laid out on Judy's design wall with a couple of rows on top of her project boxes. We had a great time putting it together and are all really pleased with the way it turned out. The finished top has a small light colored inner border and a piano key border out of the darker fabrics. It is about 80" square.

This week, we met in Renee's basement and pin basted it. With six of us working (Judy was out of town) it only took half an hour! Wish I could baste all my quilts that fast! Renee is doing the quilting for us. I'll be sure to get a picture of the finished quilt. The drawing isn't until November, but I'll be sure to let you know if I win it :)

I couldn't resist any longer...

2011-07-18T09:34:00.000-04:00

I've been admiring the Marcia Derse line ever since it came out. The colors are so rich! A friend of mine made a wedding quilt for her son with it and it was totally gorgeous! Marcia's fabrics are very different from most fabric lines with a more hand dyed/hand printed look.

I'm not sure how I'll use these, but I had to have some before they disappear!

Deciding to buy this fabric, even though I don't know what I'll do with it, has given me a bit of insight as to how my design-mind works. I know many people are inspired by the fabric and then come up with a design to work with it. I tend to work the other way and think of a design first and then decide what fabric to use. When I go into a quilt shop, I am often looking for something quite specific.

This also helps me understand a little more why I'm not a "grab the full line of fabric as soon as it comes out" type of person. However, some lines of fabric are definitely worth it so I think I'll try to see if I can develop my fabric-first design muscles.

How about you? Are you a fabric first or design/pattern first kind of quilter - or both?

(The Kona cottons are jade green, regatta, Delft, cadet).

Sick leave

2011-07-15T09:10:00.000-04:00

Things have been pretty quiet here at EHQ HQ this week :) I had a great time sewing with friends on both Saturday and Sunday and then came down with a really bad cold. So, this week, I have been doing the minimum amount required and trying to get a lot of rest. I'm feeling much better already! I'm hoping to get some sewing done today and through the weekend. I hope you get to sew this weekend too!

PS The picture is a rose in my garden a few weeks ago. I'm not much of a gardener, so such gorgeousness is a bit of a fluke!

Quilts Recover

2011-07-11T08:34:00.000-04:00

We all go through difficult times in our lives but it takes a special person to look out from that haze and see that others have it worse. Cheryl Arkison of Naptime Quilter has endured quite a few hard times in the past year or so - the most recent being the loss of her beloved father. Out of her grief and caring, Cheryl has begun an organization called Quilts Recover.

Quilts Recover is an ongoing project to collect quilts for those in need, for those who are rebuilding their lives. In Cheryl's words:
"Earthquakes, tornadoes, fires, and more. The world is full of disaster news these days. The images and stories are gut wrenching. People are having to build their lives over, starting with less than they ever had. Quilts Recover is about providing just one bit of comfort during that rebuilding process. Quilts Recover is quilters providing finished quilts to communities ravaged by disaster.

The first community target is Slave Lake, Alberta, Canada. Earlier this month, May, a wildfire swept through the town of about 7000 people. Nearly half the homes and businesses were destroyed, utterly consumed by the fire. Quilts Recover will provide as many quilts as possible to families rebuilding their lives in Slave Lake."

If you would like to join Quilts Recover, Cheryl is accepting completed quilts through July 31. For more details, see Cheryl's original post, the Quilts Recover blog or contact quiltsrecover@gmail.com.

A book pillow

2011-07-08T08:16:00.000-04:00

Ever since I first saw Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr's "Book Club" quilt in their book, "The Modern Quilt Workshop" I have wanted to make one. As with many quilts, it never made it to the top of my list until I wanted to make a retirement gift for my boss. She is an avid reader so I thought a book pillow would be perfect!

I had a lot of fun making this, although I way overestimated the number of strips needed. I am very happy with the way it turned out, but if I were to make another one as a pillow, I would alter the scale a little. The original quilt is designed in rows that are 16", the same height as my pillow form.

This picture really makes the cream book next to the blue one disappear - it shows up against the background much better in real life :). I enjoyed adding a hand sewn binding to this pillow. Usually, I just sew my pillow pieces right sides together and turn them. I like the way the binding frames the bookshelf and it felt good to add some hand sewing to a gift.

A full quilt would be such a fun way to use a lot of scrap strips. Maybe, one day, I'll get around to doing a larger one.

I'm making progress...

2011-07-05T21:49:00.000-04:00

on my Mid Mod Bee blocks. This one is for Blair whose inspiration were a couple of very cool mid-century modern fireplaces.

Every time I see that Alexander Henry Heath fabric, I want some! I try not to buy too much fabric without an idea for it, but I may have to give in on this one :)

I hope those of you who had holiday weekends enjoyed them. Ours ended with a bit of unplanned excitement. I was finishing up a few blocks on a charity quilt when the smoke alarms all over our house starting going off. They are all connected, so if one goes off, they all do. Building code requires it to be this way, apparently, but the disadvantage is that you don't know where in the house the problem might be. I ran down to the basement to see if everything was OK there. It seemed to be. My husband had been in the kitchen, not cooking, so that was OK too. He finally discovered the "smoking" gun... my iron! The poor thing was smoking like crazy and giving off the most awful smell. The strange thing is that it seemed fine when I left the sewing room. Anyway, crisis averted, alarms turned off and iron placed outside to air out. I don't think it can be salvaged so I'll be looking for a new one tomorrow. I hope I can find one without auto shut-off!

Esch House Quilts on Facebook!

2011-07-03T11:54:00.000-04:00

Esch House Quilts

I'm just getting started on Facebook. I've been thinking about jumping in for a while, so here we go. It feels a bit like learning a foreign language, but luckily my younger daughter is totally fluent!

If you're on Facebook, what would you like to see there? I'm still learning my way around, so if you are an old hand and have any advice, I'd love to hear it!

If you'd like to "Like" my Esch House Quilts page, you can click on the button in my top left sidebar.

I'm on Quilt Inspiration!

2011-07-01T08:49:00.000-04:00

The wonderful Marina and Daryl over at Quilt Inspiration are featuring some of my quilts today as part of their series on simple, modern shapes. I love how they pick a theme and explore the way several different quilters express that theme. You can find some of their previous themes in their sidebar. The sidebar is also loaded with tutorials and free patterns - there is enough there to keep you busy for a long time!

Finally!

2011-06-30T13:49:00.000-04:00

My Robert Kaufman No Prints Allowed quilt - Five Frames.

I am pretty happy with the way this quilt turned out. Working with so many colors is challenging for me. I wanted to avoid a rainbow look if I could and I tried piecing the colors randomly, but it just didn't work. So, I divided them into light, medium and dark and went from there. Another departure for me is the Amethyst background. You all know how much I love grey, but I really wanted to use a different color this time. I tried four or five and the amethyst really set off the colors of the charm pack the best. The binding is Bright Peri.

Putting this quilt together was quite a puzzle! I figured out what size many of the pieces needed to be and had to replace a few due to miscalculations. The actual sewing required many partial seams, but it all worked out in the end.

It isn't easy to see in this photo, but I quilted concentric squares inside the four squares about one inch apart. Inside the large rectangular frame, the quilting lines are straight horizontal lines about 1 1/4" apart. Outside the this frame, I continued the straight line theme, but at a 45 degree angle.

Anna and Emily took photos of all the quilts from our meeting last night. They will be posted on the AAMQG Flickr group. We are supposed to vote for our two favorite and I'll have quite a time making a choice!

Off now to finish a small retirement gift for my boss at my non-quilting job. For those of you in the US, have a great long weekend and I hope you get to include some sewing!

Quilting away...

2011-06-26T12:56:00.000-04:00

on my No Prints Allowed challenge.

I really shouldn't say this out loud, but I think I might get the quilting finished today. If so, that should avoid the last minute Wednesday binding scenario!

I bought the binding fabric yesterday. I already had some that I planned to use, but wasn't excited about. Even though part of my brain said it was the right binding, the other part was telling me it wasn't. As I was quilting, I had an idea to go in a different direction so I went and got the fabric. I am SO happy that one of my LQS's, Ann Arbor Sewing Center, recently started carrying the full line of Kona cotton solids. I have a color card, so it was just wonderful to make a decision about which color I wanted and then go and get it. I was home with the fabric in less than an hour. Of course, sometimes they are out of a certain color, but it is better than having to deal with the mail when you are working toward a deadline.

I also heard recently that the shop where the Brighton Modern Quilters meet, Creative Quilt Kits, is adding all the Kona cotton solids too! Even better! Brighton isn't as close to me, but it is so great to know they are there. The Brighton Modern Quilters are meeting tomorrow so I'll get to see how they are displaying the solids.

Do any of your LQS's carry solids or do you order online?

A Mid Mod Bee block!

2011-06-22T09:04:00.001-04:00

I won't tell you what month this block for the Mid Mod Bee was due - it is too embarrassing. All I can say is that Robin has been very patient. Robin's inspiration phrase was "Mondrian's nephew was a beatnik." She wanted blocks in Mondrian's block style but a little more organic.

You all know that improv is not my strong suit, but I promise this block is not all right angles! Knowing that Robin likes to free cut her pieces, I even made some of the cuts without a ruler. I did make a drawing before I started cutting, but then I cut the pieces larger than they needed to be to allow for some adjusting of the angles.

Robin sent a beautiful selection of shot cottons for her block. I have never worked with shot cottons before and was surprised at how lightweight they are. I am imagining a very light summer quilt made with shot cottons on front and back and flannel as batting.

By the way, I did get the Robert Kaufman challenge quilt basted on Monday night and am ready to quilt!

A Pieced Back

2011-06-19T20:11:00.000-04:00

I'll admit that I usually don't bother to piece nice backs for my quilts. More often than not I use one fabric that goes fairly well with the front and call it done. This time, however, I felt like my Robert Kaufman No Prints Allowed challenge quilt just needed a pieced back.

It still is not a very complicated pieced back and didn't take too much time. It was fun to piece all the scraps left over from the front into one long strip. I did this completely randomly. When I piece things for the front of a quilt, even if I say I'm doing it randomly, there is usually a little bit of selection going on. I just can't help myself! For this back, though, I just picked up whichever scrap came to hand. I still have a strip about one yard long left.

I don't know if you can see that little strip of purple at the lower middle left edge where the wind blew the quilt. I'm interested to see if any of that bit makes it into the quilt or if it gets cut off after the quilting. I generally make my backs about 6" longer and wider than the quilt top, so it will depend on how things get lined up.

I had hoped to get this quilt basted by now, but decided not to stress over sewing this weekend and try to relax a little. I'll be working at my non-quilting job tomorrow, so I'm planning on basting tomorrow night. The quilt is due at the Ann Arbor MQG meeting on Wednesday night, June 29. Knowing me, I'll be sewing binding an hour before the meeting. I seem to chronically try to fit more things in than there is time for. I'm sure none of you ever do that :) Hope you all had a great weekend!

I needed batting so...

2011-06-17T21:02:00.000-04:00

Of course, I had to go to a quilt shop! I have used Quilter's Dream Cotton batting in the "Select" weight for many of my quilts. Last year, however, I got a good deal on several pieces of another brand so I gave it a try. I wouldn't say I don't like it, but I'm feeling like I still like Quilter's Dream better.

A friend of mine (Sue) works at a quilt shop about 30 minutes away from me and they carry Quilter's Dream. Since I didn't make my plans in advance I didn't know if Sue was working today, but I drove on over to The Material Girls in Dearborn anyway. Sue wasn't there, but the owner, Barb, had the batting in the "Request" weight, so I decided to go with that.

Naturally, since I was there, I needed to check out the fabric selection :) The cream print is "Kangaroo Fan" by Nambooka (M&S Textiles, Australia), the next three are Lonni Rossi for Andover Fabrics and the black is "Authentic" by Sweetwater for Moda. I've been in a grey and mustard mood and how could I pass up that Authentic with text!

Now to figure out the back of my Robert Kaufman No Prints Allowed quilt. Do you like to make pieced backs, think you should make pieced backs or just use whatever one fabric you have enough of?

Robert Kaufman No Prints Allowed Challenge

2011-06-14T10:47:00.000-04:00

I'm working hard on my Robert Kaufman No Prints Allowed challenge for the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild. Using solids isn't hard for me as I do that a lot. The most challenging thing for me is using so many colors. I often work in a more limited color palette, but the solid charm packs have a wide variety of colors. I am working with the "Dusty" charm pack.

One of the rules we agreed on as part of the AAMQG challenge was that we need to use at least 30 of the 40 plus charms in the pack. I was happy about that as I thought I could leave out some of the charms to limit the color palette. However, the design I decided on will require me to use all the charms.

The other issue I've had is my desire to avoid a rainbow look. While I like many of the quilts with the charms arranged this way, I wanted to avoid it myself and planned to place the colors more randomly. However, random placement did not work at all with the rest of the quilt design and I ended up with something closer to a rainbow layout than I had envisioned.

This is one of the most wonderful parts of quilt designing! The process of adjusting your ideas as you go along is so totally absorbing. I love it when I am so focused on my process that I look up and discover that several hours have gone by without me being aware of it.

The next challenge for me was to figure out how to put together what I had designed! I had drawn it out and made some initial plans, but it ended up being more like putting together a jigsaw puzzle and involved quite a few partial seams.

I'm focusing on the border areas today and hope to finish the top in the next day or two. Our quilts are due on June 29 so that should leave me enough time to decide on the quilting and finish the quilt.

Have you participated in any challenges lately - either as part of a group or ones you set yourself?

Meet Madeline

2011-06-10T11:03:00.000-04:00

You know how I love black and white! For my twin sized version of Spell It Out I used black and white prints with one fat quarter of pink and one fat quarter of orange. I think this is a quilt that would take a girl from grade school to high school.

I had so much fun choosing a name to add to this quilt! I didn't really want to use either of my daughter's names, so I browsed websites with popular baby girl names. Madeline instantly reminded me of many happy times reading the Madeline books to my girls. The color scheme of the quilt doesn't match the colors of the books, but I decided to use it anyway because it makes me smile. The random arrangement of half square triangles continues to make me smile too.

I hope your weekend gives YOU lots of reasons to smile!

Not even on my list!

2011-06-07T08:59:00.000-04:00

Oh my goodness have things been crazy around here! With my daughter and my niece graduating, my Mother's birthday and the usual end of the school year activities, it has been nuts! Lots of fun and wonderful people, but frenzied. My sewing "To Do" list is growing longer by the day and has been largely ignored for the past two weeks.

So what do I do in the middle of all this craziness? I end up making a new ironing board cover :) Not even on the list! The small hole in the middle of my old one had become a large hole and it was time to replace it. So I threw it out and bought a new one at JoAnn (50% off!). It doesn't fit. Those of you who have purchased new ironing boards in the past few years may have noticed that the standard ones have gotten thinner - now 13" instead of 15". So I bought a "deluxe" model that is 15" wide. It has the iron stand on the end. The problem - it is only 51" long, not the standard 54". The bigger problem - JoAnn and Bed, Bath and Beyond (where I bought the ironing board) don't carry a replacement cover in this size. The standard ones are too long and the iron stand on the end of the board prevents tightening them enough to fit smoothly.

So, inspired by Yahaira, I decided I'd just have to make my own. I made mine very simple. I flipped the ironing board upside down and traced the outline on a piece of batting. Then I cut out along the traced edge and placed the batting on top of the orange fabric (how I wished I could have ironed it first :)). I marked a line about 2 1/4" outside the batting edge. Then I made a 1/2" wide casing, put some cording through it and put it all on the board. It seems to be working fine so far. It only took me about an hour - probably less time than it took to buy two covers at two different stores and return them :).

(The fabric squares on my design wall behind the ironing board are for the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild Robert Kaufman No Prints Allowed challenge - my highest priority sewing as it is due June 29.)

Spell It Out

2011-06-02T09:14:00.000-04:00

Spell It Out to the ones you care about!

I love text in quilts! I've had the idea for this quilt for a while now and when I received a commission from a local organization for a baby quilt and I knew exactly which one to make.

I love the blues and greens with the white background - so cool and summery!

I can think of so many great color combinations for this quilt. I made another version that I'll show you early next week (as soon as I get a good photo).

This quilt is my newest pattern and is available in 5 sizes. The quilt pictured is the crib size - other sizes are a smaller baby quilt, throw, twin and full/queen. Spell It Out is available in either hard copy or PDF formats in my Etsy shop.

A title...

2011-05-29T11:06:00.000-04:00

I never got back to you with what I decided to call this quilt! Thank you so much for all the wonderful suggestions. I combined some of them and have decided on "Warm Winter Night". I like the juxtaposition of warm and winter :)

Also, sorry the posts have been a little sparse lately! I was crazy busy getting ready to vend at the quilt show last weekend (lots of fun and great people) and now my older daughter will be graduating from high school in a few days. As you can imagine, there are many places to go and things to do associated with this milestone. Things should calm down a little after this week and I'll be back with some quilt content.

And the winner is...

2011-05-26T08:05:00.000-04:00

Christina of Christina, Steve, Clara and Elena! I've sent Christina an email and I hope to send her pillow cover to her very soon.

Thanks to everyone who played along. I hope you all had a good time visiting all the great blogs during the Sew, Mama, Sew Giveaway Day.

I'll be back soon!

(P.S. My apologies for not including a picture of the Random Number Generator, but I messed up and lost the image. And, as you can imagine, it is pretty hard to re-create the right number generated randomly!)

Sew, Mama, Sew Giveaway Day

2011-05-22T21:22:00.000-04:00

Welcome to everyone from Sew, Mama, Sew Giveaway Day!

I'm giving away this pillow cover I made. I love the grey and off-white - so clean-looking, serene and summery! I used Kona Medium Grey and Snow and it fits a 16" pillow form.
Sew, Mama, Sew Giveaways are open until May 25. I will be happy to ship internationally if that is where the winner lives :) So, to enter, leave me a comment and tell me whether you are a beginning, intermediate or advanced quilter. I'll select the winner randomly after midnight US EDT on May 25.

For those of you who aren't the lucky winner - if you really like this pillow, there is a free pattern download in my sidebar :)

Good luck to everyone and thanks for visiting!

A new quilt... back

2011-05-17T09:07:00.000-04:00

This shot is part of a quilt back that I will be pinning and quilting today. I am vending at a quilt show this weekend and am hoping to use this quilt in my booth! I"ll show you the front as soon as I can :)

For those of you in the area, the quilt show is the "Going to Pieces" show put on by the Capitol City Quilt Guild in Lansing. The show will be at The Summit at the Capital Centre, 9410 Davis Hwy, Dimondale, MI 48821. Show hours are 10-5 on Saturday and 12-4 on Sunday and admission is $6.00. I hope to see some of you there!

For the non-locals, don't forget to plan some time to look at many of the amazing quilts that are part of the Blogger's Quilt Festival. BQF runs through Friday and there are over 450 quilts entered! All the quilts show up on the BQF page in a thumbnail form so you can see an image of the quilt before you click over to the blog - a wonderful idea!

It's Blogger's Quilt Festival Time!

2011-05-14T15:34:00.000-04:00

Ephemeral Elegance

It's time for Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival again! It is so much fun to participate in the BQF and see all the wonderful quilts everyone shares. Thanks so much, Amy, for organizing it all!

Welcome to those of you new here. My quilt for the Blogger's Quilt Festival this time is Ephemeral Elegance. I hope my regular readers will forgive some repetition here, but this quilt has meant so much to me this year, that it had to be my choice for BQF.

I made Ephemeral Elegance in response to the Project Modern Challenge 1 contest to make a quilt with a photo inspiration. Sometime before, I had taken a photo of a glass vase filled with white tulips on my glass kitchen table. While I did use this photo as my inspiration for Ephemeral Elegance, I included some other ideas that had been running around in my head for a while.

Traditional floral applique quilts are some of my all-time favorites! I really wanted to find a way to make a floral applique quilt that reflected my modern minimalist style. Additionally, I also enjoy working with bias strips and have made a few Celtic applique quilts. Again, I wanted to find a way to use bias in my own style. These ideas and the transparency of the glass vase on the glass table in the photo merged to become Ephemeral Elegance.

Another reason this quilt is special to me is that it came out the way I thought it would :) That doesn't always happen when I make quilts. That isn't necessarily a bad thing - just part of the creative process. But Ephemeral Elegance felt right from beginning to end. After the Project Modern Challenge 1 concluded, I decided I wanted to share my quilt with a different audience. So, I entered it in the American Quilter's Society Quilt Show and Contest in Paducah. I'm thrilled to say that it won first place in its category (1st Entry in an AQS show/Small Wall Quilts)!

I hope you enjoy my quilt and all the other wonderful quilts and quilters in the Blogger's Quilt Festival!

Not much sewing...

2011-05-11T18:44:00.000-04:00

I've been busy doing a lot of useful things, but not much sewing. You may notice that I changed the font on my blog posts and titles. I've wanted to do that for ages, but it's the kind of thing I tend to put off for things I think of as more productive. It feels good to get it done.

Today I've spent a lot of time struggling with various ways to do curved templates for applique. I spent a fair bit of time with EQ5 this morning reminding myself how it works. I managed to get the shape I want, but the quality doesn't seem to transfer when I export it so I can put it in a pattern. PhotoShop didn't provide me with the results I wanted either. I sent a question out to an online group I belong to and one of the members suggested I try Inkscape, so now I'm working my way through a few tutorials to see how that will work.

I also spent time yesterday adding some alternate sizes to one of my older patterns. I'll let you know when it is ready to be re-released. I want to have some testers give it a try to make sure the new instructions make sense :) I plan to add additional sizes to several of my older patterns as I can get to it.

In sewing news, I am almost finished with a new quilt top - a little more machine applique and then "all" I need to do is quilt, bind and it's done! My fingers are really itching to get working on the "No Prints Allowed" challenge that the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild is doing too.

More soon...

It might really be Spring!

2011-05-08T12:01:00.000-04:00

Everything in Ann Arbor is blooming this week! We have had a lot of rain but several beautiful, sunny, warm days too. My neighbor gave me these tomato plants she grew from seeds. My garden isn't ready for them yet, but it will be soon. I am not much of a flower gardener, but I do enjoy vegetable gardening.

Happy Mother's Day to those who are celebrating today! My Dad and his wife are in town visiting and a group of us are all going out to lunch soon. I hope you enjoy your day :)

The Bee's Knees Finished!

2011-05-04T09:01:00.000-04:00

While I was on my retreat what seems like months ago (really two weeks), I quilted my Bee's Knees quilt. This poor quilt has been waiting for me to get it quilted for WAY too long. I pinned it last June, thinking I would quilt it while my daughter and I were on our East Coast college tour. Well, that didn't happen :) It is hard to see the quilting in this photo but I echo quilted inside the houses and quilted diagonal lines in the background. In the first three columns of blocks, the lines go from upper left to lower right, the next two columns go from lower left to upper right, and then back to upper left/lower right for the last three columns.

I love the way the quilt turned out! The black and white houses and background and all the different doors to the houses contributed by my fellow Bee's Knees group give me the feeling of a cheerful, snug community on a snowy night. I still need to make a good label to be sure I can remember who made which blocks for me, but I can't really do that until I decide what to call this quilt.

I cannot come up with a good name for this lovely quilt! It is driving me a little nuts. Everything I think of sounds either hokey or snarky. I'd love a name that incorporates the community nature of a bee quilt, the winter night idea and the fun of so many nearly identical houses with different doors. Any ideas?

A new place for patterns

2011-05-01T13:54:00.000-04:00

Have you heard about the new venture by the folks from C&T Publishing? It is called PatternSpot.com and will be a marketplace for downloadable quilting and sewing patterns.

Downloadable patterns provide such instant gratification I think the idea of having many of them in one place is fantastic. My understanding is that you'll be able to search on the type of pattern you are looking for whether it is for a quilt or clothing or other sewing projects. You will also be able to follow a designer so that you are notified whenever they upload a new pattern.

The site is still under development, but you can sign up to get their newsletter and see how things are coming along at PatternSpot.com. They are expecting the site to go live and be open for business around mid-May, with the official launch in June. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Speechless...

2011-04-28T11:49:00.000-04:00

It has been a busy few days what with some outside-the-home work, two Modern Quilt Guild meetings (Brighton and Ann Arbor), my Handwork gathering and dentist appointments for me and my daughters. But, the most amazing thing happened yesterday morning that rendered me completely speechless and stunned.

My quilt, Ephemeral Elegance, is on display at the American Quilter's Society Quilt Show in Paducah this week and it won first place in its category!! They have 15 categories and I entered mine in the "First Entry in an AQS Show/Small Wall Quilt" category.

I have enjoyed the quilts that have won prizes at the Paducah show over the years and noticed that most of them are masterpieces of intricate piecing, detailed applique and/or meticulous, elaborate quilting. Since my quilt is much more minimalist in approach, I really thought that it would just be fun to share my quilt with the people attending the show. However, something made me check the list of winners yesterday morning anyway :)

I was so surprised I couldn't even remember my husband's phone number and had to look it up so I could call and tell him! The shock is beginning to wear off now, leaving a wonderful feeling of joy and excitement.

Free pattern expiring...

2011-04-26T20:37:00.001-04:00

In an effort to keep the blog a little fresh, I am removing my Triangle Maze free pattern download on May 10, 2011. Over 200 people have downloaded the patterns since I made it available early last year. If you have always meant to download it and haven't done it yet, time is running out.

The three quilts I made from this pattern include Confetti Maze, Blueberry Lime Fizz and Choppy Seas. I think Confetti Maze is my favorite but, of course, I like the others too :)

This pattern really shows how fabric choices make such a change in a quilt. In Choppy Seas (bottom), I used medium blues for all the background fabrics and dark blue and white for the triangles. You can see that the triangles stand out the most and the medium blues kind of fade into the background. In Blueberry Lime Fizz (center), I used four fabrics. The dark blue and white for the triangle strips are nearly the same as in Choppy Seas, but the lime green background strips really stand out and make an interesting secondary pattern of "L" shapes. The periwinkle blue fabric stays in the background visually. In Confetti Maze (top), I used white for the background and half of the triangles, putting the emphasis on the bright triangles.

This is such a fun quilt to make and at 45" x 60" is a great size too.

Which version do you like best? Do you ever make the same quilt twice (or more) with different fabrics?

A mother's love

2011-04-25T09:35:00.000-04:00

I'm lucky enough to have two wonderful daughters and I wanted to make them a little Easter present. The idea started with my younger daughter (15). For the last few years whenever I say "I love you", she replies, "I love you more." At first, we used to have little verbal wars about who loved who more :) After a while, I stopped talking and just smiled and hugged. But, I figured out how to have the last word - and made her this pillow for Easter. The writing was too narrow to applique so I used an iron on transfer. I haven't done this much before and totally messed up the first one. This one isn't perfect either - there are a few spots where I probably should have pressed for longer, but she loves the pillow anyway, still insisting she loves me more.

So, what to make for my older daughter (18)? After coming up with, and discarding, quite a few ideas, I remembered how much she loves the "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters from WWII England (a message which suits her personality quite well). The walls in her bedroom are full and who knows what her college dorm will look like, so I decided that a pillow would be a great way to celebrate her "Keep Calm" love. The WWII posters were apparently hand-lettered, so there is no font that matches exactly but I managed to find one that is very similar. I opted to leave out the crown entirely. I used fusible applique for most of the letters and stitched the "and" using a regular straight stitch. I was rewarded with little squeals of delight!

As usual, after having this idea for at least six weeks, I left the actual sewing until this weekend. It was a little stressful getting it done, but SO worth it.

Re-entry

2011-04-23T12:32:00.000-04:00

We had such a wonderful retreat! Lots of fun and sewing and laughter. We all got a lot done and I am extremely happy with the fact that I got two TWO quilts quilted!! And a little piecing on a third quilt. The picture is a sneak peek of one of the quilts I quilted. (It is fuzzy because I cropped it down from a longer distance picture of the whole quilt.)

I'm afraid I haven't gotten much sewing done since I got home - all those re-entry chores from being away and Easter tomorrow. I hope you are having a wonderful weekend!

On Retreat...

2011-04-19T09:53:00.000-04:00

I'm on retreat with some of my quilting buddies - my Handwork group. We don't do much handwork on our retreats though :)

I'm having too much fun for a longer post. I'll be back on Friday. Hope you are getting some good quilting time soon.

More "Lines"...

2011-04-16T15:26:00.000-04:00

This time I took my "Lines" design from LinesSpring and LinesFall and made it into a pillow. The previous two wallhangings involved a lot of color so I went neutral this time. I like the way this pillow looks serene and summery in my living room. Of course, I can also see this pillow with lots of color and pattern. Wouldn't it look great in a kid's room with some bright and fun colors? Or on a porch bench with some florals? How about a Mother's Day or Easter gift?

I've added the Lines Pillow as a free pattern download in my right sidebar. Have fun!

Xandi is the winner!

2011-04-13T19:41:00.000-04:00

Xandi is the winner of 101 Patchwork Projects + Gifts! She has been contacted by email. Thanks everyone for your enthusiasm about these projects!