Irish Chain Quilt

I am OVER THE MOON to finally share this quilt with you all!

This quilt, by far, is the most labor intensive and beautiful quilt I've made to date.

Our very very dear friends were married this June. I wanted to do something beyond special for them, as they are beyond special to us. I decided to make them a wedding quilt. I knew a queen sized quilt would take a very long time simply because of the size. When I decided to do Irish Chain, I knew it would take a long time simply because of the piecing. And it would take a long time for Terry to quilt that much quilt. So I started this quilt in the Fall. Hubby helped pick out the fabrics, and I worked on this every available weekend through January. At that point, I gave it to Terry, and she returned it in late April.

So much love and time went into this quilt. Even Terry was so pleased with it.

To make this quilt, I followed Missouri Star Quilt Company's tutorial here. The fabrics were mostly pulled from Moda's Civil War line.

I used the deep purple for the binding. All the colors were used for the squares. And a nice antique cream was used for the background. I didn't want to use a stark white because stark white never stays white. Cream is more forgiving, and fit the feel of the quilt better.

The star of this quilt is Terry's quilting. Here is a link to her blog if you haven't visited already. Terry knew this was an important quilt. She was so excited to be part of it. Her amazing attention to detail made this quilt what it is. I mean, look at this!

In every single background square she made this AMAZING detail. Absolutely mind blowing. I can't thank her enough for the work she put into this quilt. It truly is a work of art. 

This is also the first time I made a tag for my quilt. I was shocked at how EASY it was! I drafted the tag in Word, and printed it to paper first. I just have one of those run of the mill at home printers. Nothing fancy. Once I liked the placement and size, I took the cheapest spray adhesive I could find, and attached the fabric to a regular piece of 8 1/2 x 11 paper. Finally, I fed the paper into the printer as normal, pushed print, and it was as simple as that!

When I was at Michaels, I asked the store associate which was the worst spray adhesive, and ended up with the cheap Elmer's Glue spray. I wanted the cheapest because I wanted to easily remove the fabric from the paper once I printed it. 

I used a decorative stitch to roll the unfinished edges under the sides, and sewed the tag into the binding. MAKE YOUR TAG BEFORE FINISHING YOUR BINDING. We don't want to undo binding we've already sewed!

I used a simple antique quilting stitch on the binding to complete the antique theme of the quilt. 

I'm so darn proud of this quilt. I'm so glad Brian and Maggie loved it! Enjoy the rest of the pictures!

The quilt received Sassy's Paw of Approval

Baby Clothes Quilt

I can't believe this quilt never made it to the blog!!

2 years back I made a quilt for a friend out of her son's baby clothes. And it would appear I only have 2 pictures of the whole thing! What a shame! These quilts are loads of fun to make. Lots of memories live in these clothes. I made sure to go through the bag with my friend to find out which ones were most important to her, and gave them a front row seat in the quilt.

Baby clothes requires smaller squares. All these squares were made with my 6.5 x 6.5 inch square ruler, which results in 6 x 6 finished squares. I used the same adhesive batting for this quilt as I did for the quilt I made here.

As you can see from this assembly, I first sewed the squares together to make rows, and then sewed the rows together.

The quilting was a simple meandering patter done by my good friend Terry. Unfortunately, there is no picture of the back. The back was a fuzzy red fabric her son LOVED. Red is his favorite color, and it was just so snugly to lay beneath.

The hardest part of making this quilt was cutting into baby clothes. I actually shed a tear and asked my friend if she was absolutely positive she wanted me to do this. Also, you need to be judicious in those initial cuts. Baby clothes are SMALL. If I cut something haphazardly, I ran the risk of having an uncentered detail or a piece that was simply too small.

Tee Shirt Quilt

Good morning/afternoon/evening/night internet world!

I thought I should share the tee shirt quilt I made my sister in law for Christmas 2013. I know, took me long enough...

Anyways, the "tutorial" part of this post may not be the best, as I was rushing and didn't even think to take progress pictures. 

Here is the finished product:

As it was a Christmas present, and I live in NH, outside pictures with nice lighting just couldn't happen. This quilt was 5 squares across x 5 squares down, with black 2 inch sashing in between. The border was made from tee shirt scraps and a bit of my sanity. 

The first thing I do when making a teeshirt quilt and rough cut the shirts. I use my fabric scissors to cut the face of the shirt out from the rest of the shirt. 

Next you need to stabilize the shirts for precise cutting. I used a batting that has heat activated glue on one side. You simply iron the shirts to the batting. WARNING: Screen printed tee shirts WILL come off on your iron and ruin your very expensive fancy iron... do NOT iron over the screen printed parts! Your quilting will hold those portions down if you are concerned about it.  For my next tee shirt quilt, I will NOT use this method. Cutting the material is very hard because it's so thick. The fibers from the batting will ruin your sewing machine. And it's incredibly expensive! Next time, I will buy a less expensive, thin stabilizer, and a separate batting. 

You cannot cut the tee shirt without stabilizing it in some manner. The material will stretch even under the best rotary cutter. 

I used my Fiskars 12.5 x 12.5 inch square ruler for each piece. This makes the finished square 12 x 12. For the shirts with only a small logo on the chest, I used my 6.5 x 6.5 inch square ruler to make the mini squares you see in the third row. 

Once all the tee shirts were cut, I attached the Black Moda jelly roll strips. First, you add the strips in between the shirts to make the long rows. Once the rows are done, you attach the back strips to pull them together. Simply put, you first add the black going vertically, then attach the black horizontally. I use the Missouri Star Quilt Company's method of lining up my sashes: Carefully. :) This is where you take your time, pin, double check, repin, and then sew. If your sashes don't line up, it doesn't have the appropriate window pane effect. 

The boarder. The boarder was a labor of love. I wanted to do something unique and colorful for my sister in law, because she is a unique and colorful individual. Each piece was cut 1.5 x 2.5 inches (1 x 2 inches finished) I cut an obscene number of pieces. All of them with the adhesive backing on them. My poor cutting mat and rotary cutter! Then, I sewed them all together. My sewing machine wanted to die after this one! It was very difficult to work with these, as the seams had double batting at this point. I mitered the corners to maintain the look of the boarder. The easiest way to do this was to sew the boarder the length of the blanket. When I got to the end, I measured a 1/4 inch out, and used the diagonal line on my ruler to cut a 45 degree angle. I would sew the 45 degree angle together, and continue sewing the next edge of the quilt. Again, this wasn't the easiest thing to do, as I was dealing with quadruple binding in some points.

The backing was fun to piece together. As this isn't a standard sized quilt, there was no standard piece of backing fabric that would fit the quilt. So I improvised with fabrics I knew my sister in law would love.

You can see the border pieces make an appearance, sewn together lengthwise instead this time. The black jelly roll piece runs the height of the fabric. And I pulled in a sky blue fabric strip to add some more character. I'm really pleased with the back. I think it's fun and different. 

My good friend Terry did a fun bubble detail in the quilting. I felt it offset the squares really well, and also represented my sister in law's personality. 

For the binding, I bought a mini jelly roll pack of bright fun colors, and interchanged the colors. I used my standard 2 1/4 inch binding, sewn to the back, and then the decorative stitch on top. 

Overall, I'm really pleased with how this quilt came out. I think I made it a bit more difficult on myself than necessary with how I chose to do the batting and border. Hubby would like a tee shirt quilt next, and I will definitely take those lessons with me. And hopefully establish a MUCH better tutorial!

Baby Fitz's Blanket

Quilt Post! Woot! I get so excited when I write a quilt post. 1: because that means another quilt is done and in the books, and 2: I get to share it with everyone! Of all the quilts I've made, I've seen only three reactions. And let me tell you- it is the BEST! It's like watching your kid open that one gift they've pined for ALL YEAR.

I won't see this quilt opened by the ultimate recipient, but I will see it opened by my dear friend who ordered it. Tina (of Tina Mortela Photography- I've mentioned her before, have you liked her page???) has a very best friend that finally conceived the baby they'd been hoping for. A lot of love and time went into planning the quilt. We finally decided on a timeless, elegant pattern that can be enjoyed for years.

I used a few fabrics from Moda's Honey Honey line, and added a green fabric for contrast. The background was done with Moda's Snow White fabric. 2 1/2 inch strips were cut in the white, and 5 1/2 inch squares were used for the colored fabric. The nursery theme is butterflies, so I had Terry Burris quilt butterflies throughout the quilt. With the scraps, I made a small accent pillow. The end result is simply breath taking.

Baby B's Baby Blanket

I am so excited to finally share this blanket with you.

A while back, I made a baby blanket for our good friends. It was finally unveiled at the baby shower yesterday. Everyone was so incredibly impressed and grateful for such a thoughtful present. This quilt was more difficult for me than others I've done. Halfway through this quilt, I realized I was working with faulty supplies. My cutting mat had warped, meaning a square wasn't square anymore, and the quarter inch seam allowance I thought I was using wasn't actually a quarter inch. I was able to finish this quilt using a new Olaf cutting mat, and a Pfaff Quilt Expression 2046 (best purchase EVER my friends).

Face of the Quilt.

This quilt, believe it or  not, is a disappearing Nine Patch quilt. Here is how you do it:

Please Note- Everything I do uses 1/4 inch seam allowances!

For this quilt, I used 2 Moda Noteworthy Charm Packs and 2 Moda Bella Solids Natural Charm Packs. A charm pack is a package of 42 pre-cut 5 inch squares in various different fabric that all coordinate. The boarder was made from 1 fat quarter, and the binding was made from another fat quarter.

Start with your simple Nine Patch. For this quilt, I put the same colors in the corners, with a contrasting color in the middle, but be creative! There are no real rules to this (well, except for your 1/4 inch seam allowances).

Nine Patch after sewing the pieces together

Now, you will take your rotary cutter and cut this finished piece into quarters:

Cut the Nine Patch along these lines

Now, you should have something that looks like this:

Please don't judge my poor computer art skills

Now for the magic. Take the upper left hand corner, and the bottom right hand corner, and flip them so the green square is now on the outside corner.

See what we did there?

Now, resew this bad boy together. You now have 1 finished block. For this blanket, I did 9 blocks (3 x 3) to make it square. And I had fabric left over.

For the backing, I always like to use something that is fuzzy and feels nice to your skin. I chose a light green for this quilt.

Close up of quilt with backing and binding.

The next part I can take no claim to. A wonderful woman named Terry Burris in Merrimack, NH does all my quilting for me. I just don't have the equipment. She and I worked together to choose this fun butterfly detail. I really think it brings the quilt to life, and offsets the blocky-ness of the quilt well.

I also machine bind my quilts. Some people may consider this cheating, but I consider it working smarter, not harder. I can provide a tutorial on how I do this, but I do exactly what the book "Still Crazy for Baby" by Barbara Groves and Mary Jacobson taught me.

I always reinforce my edges with extra stitches

In the end, I'm incredibly proud of how this quilt came out. This quilt taught me a lot about the quilting world and the importance of the right tools. I hope Baby B enjoys this quilt for years to come.