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Inside Out Penguin Quilt - Finished!

After having been operating slower than normal in the past two months thanks to the end of the school year and vacation and business travel, I managed to finish my project from Bonnie Hunter’s Blue Ridge Beauty workshop within a week.  It’s worth noting that her pattern is written for a queen size quilt, and my mine is lap-sized, with only 56 blocks.

I’ve named my version “Inside Out Penguin” because my color choices reminded me of the grade school joke “What’s black and white and re(a)d all over?” While “a newspaper” is a milder answer, I could only think of the inside-out black and white animal answer. Welcome to my 9 year old brain!


In picking out my scraps, I ended up including about 5 different Star Wars prints, on top of all of the other random fabrics included from the scrap bins.  As a result, there are a couple Death Stars lurking about in the quilt.

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WIP Wednesday: The Force is With Me

I have been making a conscious effort to practice what I preach and PAM some things in the sewing room.  As Lynn and I hurtle towards our pattern launch on July 16 (at Red Hen Fabrics at Marietta, GA - come by or visit The Stitch website to check them out), we’re also doing legitimate things like register for EIN numbers and other small business things. One note about that:

It’s delightful, is what I’m saying.

But in between business things, I’ve been making progress on quilts! Here is my Bonnie Hunter quilt under the needle, complete with Star Wars fabric on the border.

I put the finishing stitches on the binding for the quilt last night, and moved on to making a class sample Aeroplane bag, since I’m teaching a workshop (!!!!) on it at Red Hen as well. on July 23rd.  More details to come if you’re interested in signing up - we’re working out class times and supply lists and it should be up on their calendar this weekend, I think.  I should wrap up my Aeroplane bag tonight, and then move on to a final sample for one of our 3 patterns being launched. Whew.

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Sunday Stash - Black and White and A Little Bit of Red All Over

As expected, another slow week when it comes to the stash (only finished usage was the Tiny Tuffet), but there is progress ahead!  I’ve got my Bonnie Hunter Blue Ridge Beauty class project sandwiched and ready to quilt, and another quilt nearly ready to sandwich. Here’s the completed center for my version of Bonnie’s pattern; there are borders on it now, but it’s still a lap size.

I’ve also got to book it and make another sample from the upcoming pattern line from The Stitch! Very exciting- check it out online or in person at Red Hen Fabrics July 16th to see the first three!

  • Used this Week: 0.25 yard
    • 0.25 yd for the Tiny Tuffet
  • Used Year to Date: 179.75 yards
  • Added this Week: 0 yard
    • Woohoo!
  • Net Used YTD: 84.25 yards
  • YTD Used for Charity: 58.75 yards (33% of total used)

See more stash reports at Patchwork Times!

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WIP Wednesday: State of the Cutting Table

You guys, I feel like I’m an organized person, and yet here is the current state of my cutting table, filled with current projects.

Lest you think I suffer fully from The Smug with UFOs based on the last episode of The Stitch, here’s what i have from top right (all of which are WIPs, not UFOs!):

  • Scraps from Sparkling Gems (the orange & blue fabric and the purple box)
  • Random leftover units (teal HSTs parts)
  • Upholstery fabric scraps to turn into a bag
  • A surprise quilt for a friend (in the big purple bin with the white paper on top)
  • Parts for a second Carry All Caddy to donate to ECQG for the auction next year.
  • The Cat Lady fabric for a quilt for Good Mews (the pile falling over)
  • 2 charm packs and coordinating fabrics for a tabletopper pattern

In the second row are various bins with other projects in the works, including some pants to shorten for my kids. Time to get sewing!

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Starstruck Wallhanging - Finished!

Whenever my husband asks what I’d like for whatever upcoming holiday or celebration, I’ve stuck pretty closely to the same answer the past few years: “Clean bathrooms.” Alas, my mom does not have a standard wish I can so easily fulfill, so she’s getting an early Christmas present for Mother’s Day this year.

She saw this little quilted mat I made for the neighborhood swap and asked for something similar to hang up in their house, so when she didn’t have a ready answer for Mother’s Day gift giving, I decided to whip this up for her.

You can see a bit more of the detail of the quilting on the tree-top star in this picture:

I really like the mixture of the textures here, and will really only do quilting this dense on a wallhanging because it does make it rather stiff!

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WIP Whoopsday: A True Mystery Quilt

This is what the Brain Cloud from Joe vs The Volcano must be like.  I packaged up these bit into 6 groups of similar pieces, obviously to make 6 different quilt blocks of the same design. Except, in looking at these pieces, there enough for 28 “units” to go into a block.

Following my logic, I’d end up with 24 HSTs and 4 white 3.5″ squares. 28 units does not a square block make.

Then I looked at one of the other 5 sets and saw there was another set of 4-3.5″ squares in the colorway, which means A) my brown set got skimped on and B) I still can’t make a square block with 32 units.

BUT WAIT! I vaguely remembered being inspired by Jaye’s Carpenter’s Wheel blocks and thinking that design would be good for HSTs. But according to that block design, I’m short 4 background HSTs for each block in my kit, which means my run of being #BadAtMath is still going. Hmm.

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Dirty Chicken (At Long Last) - Finished!

Well, I finished this quilt over a month ago, but because it’s such hard work to drag the camera upstairs after taking photos and then to plug the cord into the computer, clearly it’s taken a month for me to gather the strength to make all those connections.

HA! Nope. Just forgot about it. Oh well.  But we have had two picnics on it in the backyard since I finished it.

Neither of these involved chicken, however, despite the name and the poultry ledger background fabric. I believe one was pizza and the other was hamburgers. Fred got in on the hamburger picnic after getting the short end of the stick for pizza (pork isn’t good for dogs, so no pepperoni for pups around here).

I did get a comment on Instagram that people love that I use my quilts. There are some that I hold precious and don’t fling out into the yard (*ahem* Harry Potter Bookshelf), but for the most part, I know I can always make more quilts, so why not use them? And they make me happy to look at, whereas I find quilts in my house that I loved and finished and put up and they aren’t making anyone happy that way.

Getting back on track, this was a Bonnie Hunter pattern, the Allietare! Mystery Quilt.  The beauty of scrap quilts is that all sorts of fun fabrics make their way in, and you end up with a Smug Giraffe next to Star Wars.

I did my border a tad different than the pattern. I used 6 1/2″ wide strips of the back fabrics from the center to make a scrappy border, and I didn’t scallop the edge.

I think you can see my quilting here - each big square got a swirl in the middle of it, and I meandered to travel from center to center.  The borders got straight line quilting in either orange or teal thread to make it more interesting.

We’ve got this one queued up to got to family movie night at the school next week, along with a couple other quilts since it usually ends up colder than we think for an April evening!

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Donation Quilt Round-Up

I’ve finally gotten quilts photographed, which seems to not happen as often as necessary because either it’s raining or it’s too sunny out. I suppose while it’s always Quilt Season at my house, it’s not always Quilt Photography Season.

First, a smaller quilt inspired by a leftover Lorax panel:

I paired it with coordinating 3.5 and 5″ squares from my scrap stash to build out the top.

Next up is my Gyleen Fitzgerald mystery quilt.  My quilt is smaller than her finished size since I wanted to keep it to the right proportions for donation.  It’s very bright and scrappy (a recurring theme for my donation quilts) and most especially PINK:

The back of this one uses the method I describe in episode 107 of The Stitch - taking a length of fabric and inserting a row of 10″ squares to made it wide enough:

And here’s the latest quilt inspired by the floral print in the larger blocks, with 3.5″ squares to frame them:

These three will make their way to new homes in the next month or so!

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WIP Wednesday - Scraprepping

This week I’m back to making seekrit blocks for the East Cobb raffle quilt, but I have been doing some smaller quilts as leaders and enders.  I had a very bright floral print that I cut up into 6 1/2″ squares, and then framed on two sides with 3 1/2″ from my scrap stash to make the block. So I was scrapping and prepping, and maybe that’s scraprepping?

I ended up with 30 of those blocks to make this top, which photographs weird thanks to the confluence of my skylight, my angle in taking the photo, and the fact that I’m a better quilter than a photographer!

The top and back are done and now in the pile-up of things to be quilted.  That pile-up is down to 3, now, though, so it’s not too bad! This one will be up next to finish, I think, followed by another pattern Lynn and I designed.

I also need to be prepping things for my two classes on Friday - I’m taking Hoopless Hand Quilting with Sharon Schamber and the Glow Sticks quilt from Cristy Fincher, both at the Atlanta Sewing & Quilt Expo. Very exciting!