It’s been a while since I’ve remembered to snap a photo of my fabric stack prior to starting a quilt! This one started out with that great Alexander Henry Dasha floral print, which is unfortunately out of print now. Originally I thought I’d stick with solids to complement that print, but as I continued to look at my stash, I kept finding other great prints that seemed to need to join this group…

From the top -
Patty Young Running Stitch
Lecien Woodland
Lizzy House Stripe (from Red Letter Day)
Denyse Schmidt Chicopee
Denyse Schmidt (for JoAnns?)
Cotton Couture Gold
Denyse Schmidt Chicopee
Kei Geo Style
Cotton Couture Mermaid
Kaffe Fassett Shot Cotton (not sure of the color name)
Riley Blake Marguerite dot in green
dark charcoal solid (not sure of the manufacturer)
light gray solid (not sure of the manufacturer)
Denyse Schmidt teal barbells (original FMF)
Alexander Henry Dasha
Timeless Treasures (not sure of the name)
Riley Blake Marguerite stripe in green
Kona (can’t find my card – not sure of the color name!)
Cotton Couture Soft White

This must be my week to finish older quilts, because here’s another that’s a long time getting finished! The blocks in this quilt were made by my bee members from the Bee Imaginative bee. My month was way back in April of 2010 (yikes!)

You can read more about the quilt here, but for now, here are a few photos of this finished quilt.

I’m really quite pleased to finally have this one completed. My bee members did a really wonderful job making these blocks (thank you, thank you!), and I love seeing this great spring-y quilt around the house!

For being so small, this quilt certainly took a long time to become an actual quilt! I just looked back to see my initial post about these blocks, and it was way back in October of 2011.

This one uses small pieces of long-horded pieces of Liberty of London, made into cute little wonky cross blocks – each measuring 3.5″. At one point I think I had grand plans that this would become lap sized at least, but after all this time I had to finally come to terms with the fact that that just wasn’t going to happen! I made up most of these blocks and stuck them up on the design wall over our dining room table, and it had been a permanent art installation for over a year.

I’m kind of glad that I waited though, since I now had a very good reason to finish this one up. It will soon (once I sew up a hanging sleeve, that is!) hang on the wall in the baby’s nursery, and I’m happy that both Max and the new baby will have a little something handmade hanging on their walls (Max’s wall hanging can be seen here).

What you don’t see here is how many times I had to stop to pick up this quilt off the ground. I love this tape, but perhaps it wasn’t the best choice for taping a quilt to the side of a barn. My helpers stuck around for a few minutes, then found the side of the road to be far more entertaining.

(his biggest wave for each and every passing car!)

Well, I was supposed to write this post last night, but instead found myself passed out on the couch nearly as soon as I sat down – chasing a toddler all day while pregnant sure is tiring! But anyway, I’m sneaking in a little time this morning while he’s happily learning letters with Elmo.

Thanks for all your comments on my Briar Rose quilt! And now here’s a quick little tutorial showing how I did the honeycomb quilting… As I mentioned before, it’s a straight line quilting design, which I did with my walking foot. There is a lot of starting, stopping and pivoting, so you might want to try this design on a smaller quilt before committing to a large one. This quilt measured about 50″ square, and I found this to be manageable and not too terribly tedious!

The key for me in keeping it all straight and in line was to first draw out a grid on my quilt top with a washable marker (I use the blue Mark B Gone washable markers which I buy at JoAnns). This size grid creates elongated hexagons which measure 4″ tall at the tallest point and 2.5″ wide.

Start by drawing vertical lines 2.5″ apart across the quilt top. Then you’ll want to draw horizontal lines which alternate between 4″ and 2″, as shown above.

Next draw dashed vertical lines halfway between the vertical lines you already drew (1.25″ away from your vertical lines).

Then make a small tick mark 1″ away from each horizontal line (your mark should be drawn on your solid vertical lines – you won’t need them on the dashed lines). And that’s it for marking (phew!). Now onto the actual quilting!

The quilting is done in columns, starting at the top and finishing at the bottom of your quilt with one continuous line. You’ll create half hexagons for each column you quilt. I like to start in the middle of the quilt and quilt all the columns out to the right side of the quilt, then I flip the quilt and start from the middle again, working out to the side.

Starting on the dashed vertical line, sew until you reach the first horizontal line, then keeping your needle down, pivot and sew diagonally out to the first tick mark. Pivot again and sew along the solid vertical line to the next tick mark. Pivot and sew diagonally back to reach the point where the dashed line crosses the next horizontal line, then pivot and sew along the dashed vertical line until you reach the next horizontal line (and repeat!)

[Note: I sewed the straight lines by eye, but you could certainly opt to draw all the lines out ahead of time if you're worried about keeping your lines straight. ]

Once you complete the first column, you’ll repeat this process to make the other half of the hexagons (as shown above in purple). The quilting will start in the same place, and you can decide if you want to sew on top of the line you previously made, or if you want to sew alongside that line. (I opted to try to sew very close to the existing line).

Continue quilting and soon you’ll see a great pattern of elongated hexagons emerge!

Any questions? Leave them in the comments and I’ll answer there. And of course, I’d love to see it if you decide to try this quilting design, so be sure to add them to my Flickr group!

Well, I must say, Heather Ross definitely has a winner with this upcoming line, Briar Rose (available this July)! It’s been a long time since we’ve had the chance to get Heather Ross fabrics on quilting cotton, and this certainly does not disappoint!

It’s produced by Windham Fabrics, and from what I can tell from these 5″ charms, it’s printed on a really nice basecloth which will be wonderful for both quilting and clothing.

I was so pleased to receive a charm pack from Windham Fabrics, and wasted no time getting it sewn up into a little quilt. As I mentioned previously, my goal was to try to use the charm squares to make a decent sized quilt, so to that end, I added in a bunch of Michael Miller Cotton Couture solids in coordinating colors.

A desperate plea provided me with an extra piece of that great strawberry print, which I used for the majority of the backing, adding in a patchwork strip of leftover solids on either side. I even snuck in a little bit of the selvage which has a cute little strawberry on it (no photo, unfortunately!)

As I was thinking about how to quilt it, I remembered a pillow I had seen recently which was printed with an elongated hexagon/honeycomb design. I kept thinking how it would be fun to try to quilt a similar design, and what better quilt than this one with its honeycomb bee print? The photo above shows the quilt before washing, where you can sort of see that I drew out a grid and several various marking lines with washable marker to help keep everything in line.

It’s a straight line design, which requires a bit of starting, stopping and pivoting, so maybe not the fastest quilting, but certainly fun, and I’m really pleased with the final look. I could put together a little diagram if you’d like to see how it was quilted.

I’m really excited to see the new baby laying on this fun quilt, but before then, you might be able to catch a little glimpse of it at Quilt Market if you’re going!

We have been having some gorgeous Spring weather here, which is awesome for spending time outside, but not as awesome for getting much sewing done. Lately it seems I spend more time thinking about all the things I want to/need to sew, rather than actually getting any of them done. That hasn’t stopped me from picking up a few new fabrics though…

I have a great love for unique hand printed fabrics, and these from Leslie Keating of Maze & Vale have been on my list of favorites for some time. These are printed in Australia (as are many of my other favorite hand printed fabrics!), which means higher shipping costs to get them to my door, but as it turns out, well worth it!

The basecloth used for these cotton prints is so soft and lovely, and the colors used for these prints are absolutely beautiful. I couldn’t pick a favorite, so several found their way into my cart… like the little leaves (litterfall) in gray, the xox in red, and stormy weather in a muted bluish green.

Or how about verses in mustard or gathering in charcoal? Even now I’m unable to pick a favorite, but I’m excited to add them to a quilt sometime down the road. I do hope that will be someday soon, but it seems my next order of business is selecting a paint color for the nursery (and then a name for the little one soon to be inhabiting that room!)…

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I’d also like to welcome a new addition to my sponsors, CustomLabels4U.com. Beth has you covered for all your label needs – satin labels, fabric labels, even woven labels! The timing is good too, as I’m down to the last few labels I’ve been using to label my quilts. I’m excited at the possibility of getting some woven labels this time around (I’ve looked around in the past and have been discouraged by the price and the minimum order size – happily these labels have a much better price tag, and don’t require you to buy 600!). I will certainly let you know how they are when I get some!

Still loving this combo of low volume prints paired with vibrantly colored prints! This is a remake of my Flying Farfalle quilt I made years ago, and I think it’s fun to see the two different looks.

I love how the vibrant butterflies pop on the low volume backgrounds, especially from afar, and I love how those background fabrics provide lots of extra interest and depth to the quilt.

I kept the quilting simple – two straight lines running diagonally through the blocks and through each ‘butterfly’.

The backing is mostly a lovely soft cotton couture pink solid, along with a strip of those low volume leftovers and it’s bound with a Lizzy House jewel print in pink.

This one will be another that will be for sale in June during Nido’s artist pop up!

(My awesome helpers!)

What started out as a little experiment happily turned into a favorite new little quilt! I wanted to use some lovely Nani Iro double gauze fabrics, and decided to challenge myself to use up some Nani Iro scraps left over from a couple clothing projects – the burgundy floral and the pink gingham.

I paired those two prints with some aqua voile left over from another shirt I had made and added in a few other aqua solids in order to have enough for the background.

I turned to my Quilts of Gee’s Bend book for some inspiration and came across a wonderful quilt by Annie Mae Young (you can see a photo of it in my previous post about this quilt).

As I mentioned in that post, I even decided to hand quilt it – a first for me! I opted for a simple solid backing in Cotton Couture Stone, and used Quilter’s Dream Request batting (their lowest loft, and quite nice for hand quilting!). I drew out a simple crosshatch pattern and spent several evenings on the couch hand quilting. I’m certainly a novice in that area, so don’t look too closely at those stitches!, but I was surprised to find that I really enjoyed spending the time sewing this one by hand. And I do love how those stitches look! I used an aqua pearl cotton, which was part of an Anna Maria Horner box collection.

(Max tested it out for me, but really it’s destined for the baby!)

I was a bit apprehensive about throwing it in the wash, but it came out with all the stitching still in place (yay!), and it’s truly the softest quilt I’ve ever made. The double gauze, voile, lightweight batting, and hand stitching makes a great combo!

This new line, Briar Rose, by Heather Ross for Windham Fabrics is one I’m super excited about, so it was wonderful to receive a surprise charm pack of these prints. I think it only sat overnight before I had dropped everything else to tear into the charm pack.

Heather’s fabrics are absolutely gorgeous! Just look at these prints – those strawberries… I’m in love! Briar Rose is inspired by summer, and indeed it feels so cheerful and bright and transports me right back to my childhood -  sunny days in the berry patch, fields of wildflowers, and picking clover (though all the clover was picked and admired while I was supposed to be playing soccer…)

Did I mention those strawberries? I’m quite certain that I’ll be needing to make a crib sheet out of one of the strawberry prints for the new baby!

I pulled out a bunch of coordinating Michael Miller Cotton Couture solids and started pairing the charms with corresponding solids. My usual goal when I have just one charm pack to work with is to see how large a quilt top I can make, while still featuring the charm squares. Initially I thought I’d add in a bunch of white and use the bright solids as accents, but after seeing the charms along with the solids I decided I liked the idea of the quilt being made up of all these juicy solids.

Then I had to decide how to use the charms – I started thinking about a couple older quilts I had made, coincidentally also out of Heather Ross’s fabrics, and decided to surround each charm with a brightly colored solid. I cut all the blocks down to 8″ square, and was going to sew them all together as is, but ultimately felt it needed a little something more.

So who says that the blocks all have to line up nicely? I added in strips of the solids randomly in between the horizontal rows of blocks and then sewed the rows together. I suppose if you like everything square and straight and all lined up (like my brother! oh wow, I’m linking back to all the old quilts in this post!), this wouldn’t be the quilt for you, but I think it’s pretty fun and I’m excited to use it as a colorful play mat for the new baby.

If you’ve been reading for a while, you might remember my Flying Farfalle quilt, which I made using small scraps of Anna Maria Horner’s Little Folks. It’s a fun and quick quilt to make, and uses up (and showcases!) tiny little scraps. Nova recently made a gorgeous one using Liberty of London scraps and after seeing it, I couldn’t get the idea of remaking that quilt out of my mind. My low volume prints were still out, and I had a bunch of brightly colored scraps left over from my Marcelle plus quilt, so it seemed a perfect match.

You can find an image of this block, called the Exquisite block, in Gwen Marston’s Liberated Quiltmaking II book. I don’t think (I can’t remember, and to be honest, I can’t bear the thought of getting off the couch to run upstairs to check!) there are specific instructions for making the block, but Jacquie and Katie also devote a portion of their book, Quilting Modern, to the stitch and flip technique, which you could use to make these blocks. I couldn’t remember what size blocks I made originally, so I went with 5″ x 7″ rectangles for this one (which look to be a bit larger than those in the Flying Farfalle quilt).

I like how different both versions are. I think I’ll always be drawn to the stark white which really makes those triangle pieces pop, but now I also quite like the fact that this one uses so many additional fabrics – more to admire when you’re laying under it!

(book links are Amazon affiliate links)