Maria Sangria Monday

A little change of pace this week: Mama S AKA Maria Sangria is guest posting today, rather than my usual post tomorrow.  She’s sharing her first two quilts:

Hello fellow quilters!  I am rozsamaria’s mother.  Rozsamaria got me started in quilting a couple of years ago.  I made two quilts with her help and the help of some lovely ladies from Empire Quilt guild.  The first quilt I made was a small dog themed quilt for my husband.  I did a combination of machine and hand quilting.  I machine quilted straight lines going across the quilt and around the border that goes around the middle of the quilt.  I hand quilted dog bones in the corners.  My husband loves dogs and he loved this quilt.

After that I started a baby quilt even though no one in the family was expecting.  My niece was already married and my son Ryan was getting married soon.  I figured whoever had a baby first would get the quilt.  My niece won.  She had a baby girl in March.  I love this fabric and the quilt turned out so adorable!  Of course, my niece loves the quilt too.  I did all hand quilting on this quilt.  I quilted around each block and around the animal in each block.  On the outside border I hand quilted around many of the animals.  I used red thread and the quilting shows up nicely.

In my next guest blog, I’ll share with you my two projects that I completed this summer.

 

 

 

“Shades of Love in Blue” – Part III

Hi habibis! Today we’re finishing up with part III of love in shades of blue, the wedding present I made for my friend E and her husband J. I should add that I shipped it to them a few weeks ago (only a month late!) and they loved it. It makes me feel so good when I’ve made something for someone special and tried to tailor it to them and they love it. Best part of giving presents!

Anyway, the quilting. I started from the center of my design and did each diamond differently, using threads that blended into the shade of the diamond. For the center most dark diamond I did lines crisscrossing through the center in dark blue thread.  That seems to have given it almost a butterfly effect – my mother commented on that.

For the next ring (still dark blue) I did straight line quilting, four lines around the inner edge of the ring and one line around the outer edge.  The third ring (medium blue) is three lines around the inner edge and two lines around the outer edge.

For the next ring – dark blue again – I quilted along the seams, crisscrossing to make diamonds across the HSTs.

The outer sections of the quilt are all the light blue fabric.  I continued crisscrossing in most of the sections.  The light blue sections aren’t all symmetrical because my design is intentionally off-center, so I had more space on one corner than all the others, so in that section I also hand quilted their names.

Here’s the finished quilt:

Here are some shots of the back.  I love how the quilting looks!

August Bee Block

Hi habibis! I hope you all had a great weekend.  I spent Friday night and Saturday with my family. We had gorgeous weather and a lot of fun! Sunday I had a quiet day with Z.  I got my August bee block in the mail this weekend, on its way to Carla of Granny Maud’s Girl in Australia.  (I love her work, don’t you?)

Carla is planning a new quilt for her bedroom and she wanted lovely washed out cool, beachy colors for it – creams, greys, blues, greens, purples, maybe a little yellow. Nothing saturated.  She asked for a 16-patch with randomly-placed pinwheels. I followed her instructions closely and I was extra careful about my seam allowance after last month’s too-small blocks.

Here’s my finished block!

Cute, right?  I also sent along an extra piece of the yellow in the bottom left corner, with little dots of green, blue, and purple in it, in case Carla liked it, since it fit her color scheme.

Carla asked us if we ever decided to get a tattoo, what would it be and where would we get it?  This one stumped me.  I’ve always thought I wouldn’t get a tattoo because I can’t think of anything that I’d want put on my body permanently – tastes change over time and how do I know I would still want it in twenty, thirty, forty years?  I have to be honest; I can’t think of anything.  Sorry, Carla!  I’ve got five ear piercings, two in each lobe and one at the top of my ear, and I guess that’s as adventurous as I get.

“Shades of Love in Blue” – Part II

Hello habibis!  Today I want to share with you the pieced top and back for the “Shades of Love in Blue” quilt I made as a wedding present for my friend E.

Last week I showed you my HSTs.  Here’s my layout before I did the piecing:

I played with my layout a bit, but not much, and then I sewed them in rows and then row by row to make the top. It’s ten blocks by ten.

I had elaborate plans for a pieced back using the extra blue squares I’d cut and several blue fat quarters, but that seemed like too much work. I pieced some of the extra squares together in one long strip and then I used blue yardage for the rest. I’m pretty sure I bought it from Michael’s.  Does the top right corner look like a different shade of blue?  It might be, but it doesn’t matter.

I didn’t make a scrappy binding – I wanted to frame the quilt, not as something busier. I used a similar shade of blue from my stash.  I don’t have a picture of the binding, as far as I can tell, but you’ll see it when I show the finished quilt.

The whole quilt came from my stash. I thought doing an all-blue quilt would be a stash buster, but I was wrong! I have a LOT of blue.

Here it is, all sandwiched:

I love the design. I wanted something a little more modern for this quilt, and I love seeing people’s concentric diamonds. I set it off-center and used more solids, even though it’s still very scrappy. I auditioned all of my blue fabrics and picked only the prettiest prints within the specific shades I wanted.

Next week, the quilting!

Throwback Tuesday: Beatles Pillow

I know it’s Throwback Thursday, but I don’t post on Thursdays, so Throwback Tuesday it is.

I made this pillow for my uncle who loves the Beatles.  I don’t remember when I made it; I actually don’t remember making it at all, but I know I did because I still use those fabrics.  My aunt has it on display at their mountain house and my mom took a picture last time they were up there and sent it to me, so I decided to post about it.

Cute, right? As I mentioned, I have no memory of this, so I don’t know what I based the design off of.  I obviously did a lot of fussy cutting.  You may recognize the fabric from these coasters, and I also made a Christmas ornament from the fabric at some point, but I don’t know if I posted about that.

WIP Wednesday: Hexie doll quilt

Hi habibis!  My hexie doll quilt is definitely a WIP.  I make a little bit of progress every week.  I’m in the final stages of the planned embroidery – filling in some of the leaves with satin stitch.  When that’s done, I’ll layer it and get to quilting!

“Shades of Love in Blue” – Part I

Hello habibis!  I can finally show you my project that was supposed to be done by the end of June.  (In the end, it was only a month late.)  It’s a wedding quilt for my friend E and her husband J.

I’d toyed with the idea of using half square triangles to make concentric diamonds, and then I decided to make the diamonds off-center.  I settled on blues.  E and J met at dental school, and one of their school colors was blue, so everything is shades of blue (hence the name).

I wanted ten rows of ten, so I made 100 HSTs (plus a few extras).  In this picture you can see some of them, with my design in the background.

Here are the light/light pairs:

I decided to make this my center:

The layout is: dark center, medium for the second diamond, dark for the third diamond, and light to fill out the rest, so I had to do a lot of math and make sure I had the right number of dark/medium and dark/light pairs.

I think tomorrow we’ll have a WIP Wednesday post, and next week I’ll share with you the whole pieced top and the back.

 

Sunday Stash (on Wednesday)

Habibis, do you ever have a vision for a quilt and then search your stash and realize you don’t have anything that will work?  This doesn’t happen to me too much, because as we’ve discussed I have a not-inconsiderable stash, but I have a quilt I want to make and I need grey fabric for it.  I realized I don’t buy grey fabric, so I went to my local quilt shop and bought only the fabrics I wanted for the quilt, nothing more.  I did buy one that I was iffy about even in the store, and in retrospect I think it’s not the right shade for what I want, but I can always donate it to my guild’s charity committee. (Moral of the story – if you’re not sure it’ll work, don’t buy it!)  Here’s a quick sneak peek; you won’t be seeing these again for a while.

July Stash Report

Habibis, I believe this is the first month this year where my incoming has been greater than my outgoing.  I’ll rectify that in the coming months, so I’m not too concerned, but here are my numbers:

outgoing: .25 yards (my July Stash Bee blocks)

incoming: 2.5 yards (fabric purchased for an upcoming project – stop by tomorrow for a belated Sunday Stash!)

So my total for the month is -2.25 yards, and my total for the year is now 114.35 yards.