FITF: Film in the Fridge | modern quilts, clothing, fabric, and photos

a welcome (and a giveaway!)

Posted on January 11, 2012

Today I’d love to welcome a new sponsor and share with you another great online shop! I do a lot of fabric shopping online, and I love to have a variety of shops to visit. I’ve had fun browsing (and shopping!) at Lauren’s shop, Sew Modern.

I actually had a chance to meet Lauren in person at an L.A. Modern Quilt Guild meeting a couple years ago. Since meeting, she’s opened this wonderful shop in Los Angeles and from what I’ve seen of it in photos, it looks absolutely gorgeous!

(photo borrowed from Lauren’s blog) Look at all that fabric goodness! And that wall of solids!!

Lauren carries all the great new fabric lines, and in fact, it’s where I shopped recently to pick up some of those Melody Miller typewriters (a few of you were asking!) (oops, looks like they’re sold out now!), as well as a couple of the great new circle prints from Laurie Wisbrun’s Modern Whimsy line.

And today, Lauren has a giveaway for you! A jelly roll of this great new line, Half Moon Modern. If you haven’t seen these prints yet, go take a peek! Lots of great basics in wonderful colors, and a perfect addition to any fabric stash!
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To enter, please just leave a comment here. If you want, you could let me know what you have planned for your next project – I just finished a quilt top, so it’s time for a new project! (I should be working on quilt backs, but that’s not as much fun!) Please only leave one comment per person. I’ll select a winner Friday morning.

I hope you’ll take a little peek at Lauren’s shop, and if you feel the itch to start shopping, Lauren’s provided a coupon for 10% off your purchase until Tuesday, January 16th – just use coupon code FITF10

Comments are now closed. I will select and announce a winner shortly!

Posted in Giveaway! | Tagged Fabric, Giveaway!, half moon modern, sew modern | 581 Comments

love letters

Posted on January 9, 2012

Thank you so much for the nice comments on my January flowers quilt! There were a few questions about the wavy quilting lines – if you want to try something similar, I’m happy to say that it was pretty easy! I used my walking foot and just gently moved the quilt from side to side while sewing. You’ll notice that some of my lines don’t go all the way across the quilt – periodically I’d stop sewing in the middle of a line, put the needle down, turn the quilt and continue sewing back in the other direction. Hope this helps – let me know if there are other questions!

And now, speaking of Melody Miller, and her gorgeous new Ruby Star Shining line… one of the prints I was immediately drawn to is the typewriter print. I love them in all three colorways, and have spent a bit of time pulling out fabrics to pair with them.

The typewriters are wonderful for fussy cutting. If you decide to do so, you can cut them into approximately 6″ squares without losing any surrounding typewriters. You can bet that there will be at least one patchwork square quilt in my future (it would be silly not to, right?!)

I’m not yet sure what these will all become, but it’s been fun pulling out fabrics and making stacks!

Now, which one to start with first?!

Posted in Fabric | Tagged fabric stacks, fussy cut, melody miller, ruby star shining, typewriters | 28 Comments

January flowers…

Posted on January 5, 2012

Thanks for all your lovely comments on my last post! I had fun looking back at the things I made in 2011, but now I’ve already started looking ahead and working on some new projects for 2012. For my first quilt of 2012, I decided to go with January flowers – specifically these awesome retro vintagey florals which are part of Melody Miller’s latest line, Ruby Star Shining.

I started by pairing them with a few other solids and prints from my stash – some Art Gallery solids, a bit of Essex linen, and even a little voile. Sometimes I start out knowing what type of pattern I want to use, and other times I start by just pulling out fabrics and then deciding on a pattern. I went with the latter this time, so after deciding on my fabrics, I browsed though my quilting Pinterest board.

Once I saw this quilt by Denyse Schmidt on my pinboard, I knew these fabrics would be perfect. I usually like to switch up a design a bit, but I love this one just as it is, so I went with it. I’m not sure how Denyse put her quilt together, but I decided to go with foundation piecing for mine – it’s certainly not necessary, but I just find it easier to know what area I need to cover when I can use the paper as a guide. I used the floral Melody Miller print for the center of each block, then a couple of the lighter prints, ending with the darker purples.

Unfortunately, as much as I loved the quilt top when it was finished, I’m not totally happy with how the quilting came out – I went with wavy, intersecting horizontal lines, which I like. I just had some trouble finding a thread color that would work on both the very dark purples as well as the lighter cream colors. [This has always been a dilemma for me – I’m not much for light thread on dark fabrics, or for dark thread on light fabrics – so what to do when you’re using both light and dark?!] Anyway, I did have to rip out quite a bit of stitching, then settled (though not totally happily) on this variegated thread for the purple sections, with cream thread for the lighter floral sections. It’s ok, but still not my favorite!