Crazy Eights for Blogger’s Quilt Festival

I am so excited to have finished this quilt. And it just happens to coincide with Blogger’s Quilt Festival. How is that for timing? I actually have never entered BQF before. I am entered in the two color quilt category.

In my previous life, I did mostly accounting type work. Think repetitive number crunching, and attention to detail. I know to some people that also means boring bean counter, but let’s not go there, kay? Well, maybe go there. I don’t know that everyone would love making this quilt. It was a whole lotta repetitive steps; Carefully sewing a zillion curved quarter circles, pressing said quarter circles, carefully trimming quarter circles and then sewing it all together.

 

I have always loved the Drunkard’s Path quilt design. It does seem a little limited by the space that is usually left outside the circles. I thought it would be fun to have a center circle, and then an outer circle that “kisses” it’s neighbor. No spaces here.

I will admit that the idea of perfection of this quilt did hold me back a little. I have been thinking about it for over a year now. I had to give up on perfection and go with done. Although, when it is all said and done, I do think it is near perfection to me. It makes my heart flutter.

I quilted it with cross hatching in the center white circles. I quilted around each large oval, and then I just echoed inside the remaining pointy diamond and triangle spaces.

This pattern did push me to get way out of my comfort zone. I did find a lot of satisfaction in the rhythm I got into when I was chain stitching the curves. No pinning for me, I got fairly comfortable with just holding the top layer taught as I stitched. I enjoyed pressing and trimming each quarter triangle. It made me so happy when stitching the quarter curves together and they all nearly perfectly matched up. The rows went together smoothly because of the careful precision of trimming each piece up. The best part to me (aside from finally being done with it) is the lovely texture of the quilting. I adore how it crinkled up.

I wonder if most other quilters take their pictures before or after they wash up their quilts? I also wonder if other quilters enjoy the crinkles the way I do, or if they prefer a less crinkly quilt? Either way, I’m in love.

 

 

Measurement:

Special techniques: Pieced curves

Designed, pieced and quilted by: Me

Thanks for stopping by! Oh and be on the watch for the tutorial for this.

Anjeanette

Hexi window table runner!

I am in love. Sigh.

 

I started doing more hand stitching in the evenings. My hubby and I like to watch a show or two after the kids have gone to bed. I like to do some hand stitching while we watch our shows. Castle, anyone? Seriously, my favorite show ever. The writing on that is fantastic!

 

My LQS is a gorgeous shop that puts together the most fun (but a bit traditional) bundles. I was on the lookout for something happy and spring-y. This bundle of 30’s inspired prints just made my heart skip a beat.

 

When I was putting these together, I started thinking about leaving a hole in the middle of the flowers. I thought it would be lovely to see the wood grain of my entertainment cabinet through the holes in each flower.

 

 

It did cross my mind to piece together some hexi’s in the same shape for the back. But that just seemed wasteful to me. I didn’t want lovely fabric, carefully hand stitched together, that wouldn’t be seen. What is the point of that?

I wanted a little white outline around the hexi’s, like a frame. I didn’t want to have a binding on the edges.

 

 

 

I had planned to hand stitch all around the edges of the hexi’s. I ran a blanket stitch around the inside of each hole by hand. And then it sat unfinished and called out my name. “Finish me.”

For Mother’s Day weekend, we had rented an auger machine and some attachments, to drill holes for a fence we want to put up. Our house, apparently is built on a huge rock. Ha! We ran into more HUGE rocks in the ground than we could have planned for. What a mess. I had planned on sewing all day on Mother’s Day. But instead I assisted my dear sweet husband in the dirt. He is such a hard worker. I couldn’t play while he put in so much hard work.

 

 

I was determined to finish this little runner on Mother’s Day. So in the evening, when the kids were in bed, I decided to split the difference and machine stitch the outline of the hexi’s down to the white.

I still think it is lovely! I adore the grain of the wood in the windows and I just love the happy fabrics used. It makes me happy to look at it and even more happy to know that it is done! Yay for done.

Enjoy!

I signed up for a swap!

I have always wanted to do it. I’m not sure what kept me from doing it. But I finally jumped in and signed up for the 4 X 5 block swap on Flickr. There are six people in each “hive”. If you decide to make one for yourself, you end up with six blocks. I only made five though.

It was fun! I found this block in a magazine that I thought would be fun to play with. I tried to see how I could change the look of the block by fabric placement.

I was a little surprised to find how much I liked the colors the other ladies chose. In the last couple of years, yellow has become my favorite color. But I am also leaning towards orange too. It is just a happy color. So making the two blocks with orange, were kind of hard to actually mail out.

I have a friend in my quilt guild who says she doesn’t like purple. But somehow almost every time she makes something or posts images, they include purple. I may have pointed it out a time or two to her, and yet she is still in denial. I have come to understand that I may actually be liking purple now too.

The biggest surprise for me was that I LOVE the block with the black background!

It was a lot of fun to make things in fabrics I wouldn’t normally choose, and discover how I liked them too!

I will confess, I had one block that just wasn’t happy with me. For some reason, the white fabric was just not right. I have used it before. Actually it was the first time I bought white Kona fabric. I don’t know what the deal is, but I don’t like the feel of it. I remember when I used it before, I thought how I didn’t like the feel of it and wondered why I had heard people liking Kona. I know it was Kona, I bought it off the roll at a LQS. I bought a few yards of it at the time. But sadly, I think I am going to have to retire it. I have purchased other yardage of Kona and they are not like that at all.

Have you done swaps? Did you like doing them? I am dying to do a bag swap or something like that now.

Enjoy!

I have a post on Moda Bake Shop!

I am so excited to say that I have a tutorial up on Moda Bake Shop. I have been following Moda Bake Shop since the very first recipe was posted.

 

 

This year I decided I was going to submit some projects to them to see if I could workout some tutorials for them. Yay! They liked my Linked Octagons tutorial.

      

I was so lucky to get to play with  Joanna Figueroa’s new Avalon fabric line.

I have to admit that I may be a bit of a hoarder of Fig Tree fabrics. I love them so much that I hate to even cut into them. But this time, I was excited to play with it.

   

I have this quilt sitting by my chair. It has kept me warm going into the long awaited spring. It makes me happy just looking at it.

I don’t think I shared pictures of the back of it on Moda Bake Shop. Isn’t it lovely?

I love the bold blue on the back paired with the red polka dot binding.

Here it is in all its crinkly goodness. Thanks so much for stopping by!

 

Enjoy

Pellon is updating Pellon Projects

It is going to be so pretty too. I received a preview of my new designer page and it is going to be lovely.

See my three projects on the bottom there? Sweet! My neck roll hasn’t shown up on the blog yet. But it will soon.

The new page goes up live on April 3rd. It will be more user friendly. And no more having to sign in before you can get the directions for the projects. I know that was a pain and maybe kept people from looking into actually doing something you may like from Pellon Projects.

 

Wednesday, make sure you check out the new site!

 

Enjoy!

I love Fig Tree and Co.

It is surprising how little I wanted to blog while my machine was in the shop. I was so sad to be without her. Of course, it is a she. I have had her for two years and alas, she is nameless.

I was able to borrow my girlfriend’s machine for some basic straight stitching. But I quickly remembered just how fancy my machine is. And I remembered how much I love her. Is that bad to love my machine? Well, I do. She has such lovely stitches. Her built in walking foot is sweet and her ability for FMQ is so easy and lovely.

I have been playing with some of the gorgeous new fabric from Fig Tree, Avalon. Oh my! Fig Tree seems to just make my heart jump. I played with some FMQ on the back, by tracing some of the basic floral shapes. I realized how long that would take to finish a whole quilt that way. So I went to a meander and some organic echoes instead.

I always do mock ups before I jump into a full on quilt design and the mock up has me itching to make more with this pattern. I want to finish it in Mama Said Sew. But I’m not sure how big I want it or where I would use it. Mama Said Sew fabric is not leaving my house. I think it too is lovely. This quilt is MINE too. So heavenly. I think I have my new favorite combination for backing and binding. Can I make every quilt with this line from now on?

I also did a small mock up in Comma and you guessed it, I love it too! It would rock as a large quilt. I have some fat quarters of Comma, but not the whole line. I either need to find some of the other designs, or just dive in with what I have. Oooh, decisions, decisions.  

  When I was making the small Comma mock up from a Charm Pack I won at DCMQG, I remembered how nice my walking foot is. I was using my girlfriend’s machine and there is no walking foot. I remember the quilts I made before this machine. What a pain.

So glad to have my machine back. So glad everyone in the house seems to be healthy too, knock on wood.

 

Enjoy!

Anjeanette

This and That

So what am I up to lately?
I’ve been doing a lot of chain stitching.

A crazy amount of trimming and pressing.

I almost have this top completed. I just need borders the I can quilt it and bind it. It is a lot of matching seams and trimming and pressing and matching. But it is so lovely.

I went to the DC Modern Quilt Guild Meeting which was great fun. I was able to give away a ton of 60 weight three ply thread from Presencia. I love that stuff for quilting. It is very strong and super thin. LOVE!

I worked in some time to make a little neck roll for my favorite boys. This one adores it and carries it with him everywhere he goes.

I snuck in a little time for a birthday party for my favorite 7 year old complete with Superhero Masks.

Then my machine got sick with the clickety-clack. I am so sad. I admit I cried a little. (Ahem, a lot). The dealer where I purchased it closed and the next one isn’t very close. I will be sans machine for almost two weeks. Boo hoo.
 
But all is not lost. I picked up a lovely 30 reproduction bundle and am working with my fingers.

A little hexi love.

I can’t tell you how happy the yellow fabrics make me!
 
And even though it is so dreary out, I discovered some of my bulbs have come to see me!

Enjoy!

Added to http://www.freshlypieced.com/