Modern Amish Sampler

A very last-minute submission of my Modern Amish Sampler to The Blogger's Fall Quilt Festival in the home machine quilt category.  This is a quilt that I planned to make for several years to hang over my sister's fireplace -- finally finishing it in the Spring of this year.

Modern-Amish Sampler

back side

Some Details:
It started with a fabric bundle from Cherrywood Fabrics and a pattern called Marmalade & Jam purchased at a quilt show.  I used my own color scheme and ended up having to add various other fabrics to complete the quilt.  I used wool batting, which is why the quilt is so densely quilted.  I had no idea how "puffy" my stitching looked so I kept on adding thread until I right to me.

The back is improv-pieced with log cabin blocks k (my own design).

Quilt is faced instead of bound.

I use a Babylock domestic sewing machine for all of my quilts for both piecing and quilting.  I prefer to free-motion quilt organic-type shapes instead of using templates or pre-marking my quilt tops.  The open feather design featured here is one of my favorite designs to quilt. 

Quilting detail -- before binding

Free motion quilting in progress

One of my favorite spots

"Modeling" the finished top

Cherrywood fabric bundles

Pattern & fabrics

******************

One final picture showing the quilt hanging over my sister's fireplace!

Modern Amish Quilt

Thanks for stopping by!

Claudia

Easy Curves Wall Quilt

Hello everyone!  I'm back from the dead just in time for Halloween and reviving the blog so I can enter my newest quilt in the Blogger's Quilt Festival over at Amy's Creative Side in the wall quilt category.

Easy Curves Quilt

I had so much fun making this quilt.

in progress

 In September I took a class through my guild, the SFQG (San Francisco Quilt Guild ) to learn how to piece "easy curves".  The technique involves taking 2 strips of fabric about 6" wide (selvage to selvage), stacking them FACE UP, securing with pins and then free cutting curves with a rotary cutter. Swap the top and bottom fabric pieces and the curves are sewn together without pins.  It's not too terribly difficult but some of my strips ended up so out of kilter that I couldn't square them up. I cut some of the worst ones into pieces and put together the quilt improvisationally.  I think the cut up strips add interest to the overall design.

The back:

Easy Curves Quilt

I quilted different free-motion quilting patterns in each strip.  I used two different Sulky rayon threads:  variegated grey/white and variegated teal.

Thanks for visiting Armchairquilter and I hope to see you here again in the future.  I will probably only be blogging occasionally so you can be alerted of updates via Bloglovin'.  And don't forget to check out all of the wonderful quilts @ Amy's Creative Side.

----Claudia

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--Claudia

Quilting progress and hexies

I've been working on free motion quilting on my Liberty Fields quilt (pattern by Material Obsession):

And it's hard going! I usually love FMQ but this quilt is large and because the blocks are on point and I wanted to stabilize it by stitching in the ditch around each block, it's been a biitch getting the quilt thru my machine.  I'm now on to quilting swirly shapes on the white background fabric and my darning foot keeps on getting caught up on the applique and embroidery AND I'm also outlining the star shapes, freehand, which isn't so easy.

Hmmm, I wonder why this particular quilt seems like so much trouble?  Hopefully all of the hard work will pay off in the end.  I'm not even halfway through, but with a 3 day weekend right around the corner, I hope to make some significant progress to share with y'all soon.

My flickr friend Melinda (Quirky Granola Girl) has inspired me to make some new hexagons.  On Sunday, I pulled my old hexagon project out and before long I had these:

and by this morning, my pile had grown considerably.

Fun, huh?  Definitely addictive.

'Bye 2012, Bring on 2013

Looking back at 2012, it wasn't a hugely productive year in quilts for me.  Most of the year was spent piecing my Farmer's Wife Quilt.  I guess one could say this was a good year for perseverance more than anything.  Here is the completed top in all it's glory:

Now all I need to do is win the lottery so I can afford to by about 9-10 yards of backing fabric!

So sorry it's been so quiet on my blog as of yet.  I'm always completely overwhelmed with the onset of the holidays.  It's a very busy period at work as well in addition to the usual holiday stuff.  I took 2 weeks off work to coincide with the kids' school break and once we were over the Christmas "hump", I've had a wonderful time relaxing and doing not a lot of anything (i.e., catching up on Downton Abbey and Breaking Bad).  I've also spent some time sewing.  I finished an old WIP that started off as a Flickr sewing bee.

I quilted with an all over meander in the background, an orange peel design and pebbles quilting on the stars and a natural open feather pattern in the borders.

I'm not sure why this photo looks so blurry, but you can see the original image on flickr.  I had fun experimenting with different free motion stitches.  I used Superior Threads Brights for the green border and a polyester embroidery thread for the rest of the quilt.

This is what happens when I go fabric shopping with my daughter.  She HAD to have the mustache print fabric and I suggested we make a case for the ipad.  The tutorial is from One Shabby Chick.  It's an easy project and came together quickly.

Wishing all of my readers a happy and healthy New Year!  Happy sewing!!!

Finishing up the Farmer's Wife

Just a quick post to say that I'm still here ... and still farming.  This weekend, I added the final borders on my FWQ.  It's now officially a completed top (squeal!!!) and too big to photograph in the house.

FWQ @ Armchair Quilter

Here it is sans final borders, which are 6" strips out of the blue yarn dye - same as sashing fabric.  The quilt measures 106.5 x 96 or so.  I will have to find my notes to be sure.  I was a bit surprised it turned out so large, considerably larger than the measurements for the queen-sized quilt in the book.  I wonder if anyone else encountered this issue?

Even though I was super careful with starching and handling, I had some issues with the bias pieces on the edges of the quilt.  The sides measured 1 inch wider at the ends of the long sides vs. the measurement through the center of the quilt and an half an inch variance on the crosswise edges.  I cut my borders for the average length, calculating the difference between the center and end measurements and easing with pins.  Hope that makes sense?  Anyway, I'm hoping the quilt lies flatter and I won't have any issues quilting this behemoth. 

FWQ @ Armchair Quilter

FWQ @ Armchair Quilter

I'll be back later this week with some outside "vanity" shots.

*******
Claudia
Armchair Quilter

Sashing Away

I've had to limit both my sewing and online computer time due to some back/shoulder/arm issues.  It's challenging, but slowly the FW quilt grows ...

It's about halfway sashed and I'm hoping to finish it up this weekend!!


Even though we don't experience much in the way of the changing leaves of Fall in the City, I love this time of year! The light is softer and the fog stays away (well, at least half the time).



Bento Box quilt




City Hall, San Francisco

-- Claudia



A "mini" mixer

Making a mini quilt feels satisfying considering my limited attention span these days (not to mention lack of sewing time).  We'll just forget all of those WIPs languishing in my sewing area.

Mini Mixer
11.5" x 11.5"

I needed to whip up something super quick for my friend's birthday.  Initially, I thought I'd make her some potholders; and I found this really neat paper pieced pattern but soon realized it would come out too large for a potholder.  I was severely pressed for time, otherwise, I would've resized it smaller.  As it was, I modified the pattern a bit and if I had more time, there are a few more things I'd change ... oh well, next time!

Here's the pattern and initial pieced block:

Pattern from href

="http://www.littlemushroomcap.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">www.littlemushroomcap.blogspot.com

Inspired by this href

="http://www.flickr.com/photos/whynotquilt/6086272140/">www.flickr.com/photos/whynotquilt/6086272140/

This has been a difficult last couple of weeks.  I've been dealing with back issues so I'm trying to limit both my sewing and computer time.  But I've been chipping away at some small things.  

Some progress on a hand applique (carry along) project:

Our hens are growing!  This is our "red".

I hope to share some progress on my Farmer's Wife quilt soon!  Here's a snapshot from our little "urban farm"!

111 Farmer's Blocks ... DONE!

Well, Hello there!

I'm back from a little break.  We took off the last week of the kids' summer vacation to embark on an almost 1,000 mile road trip through Northern California.  We visited a couple of colleges my son is interested in attending next year and saw a play at the Ashland Shakespeare festival in So. Oregon.  All in all, it was a good trip.

I prepped a little hand applique project to take along with me on the trip (pictured above), but I didn't make much progress.  However, I just finished block #111 on my Farmer's Sampler his weekend!  I'm SO excited and in a little disbelief that I made all of those blocks.  I have a couple of minor piecing "mistakes" to fix, but I don't intend on remaking any of the blocks.  This project has been a journey, and I want to look at my quilt in the years to come and enjoy the full span of blocks from beginning to end, even with some of the "funky" fabric choices and less than perfect piecing.

Pretty cool, huh?  I bought the sashing fabric at Beverley's this morning.  I have a fat quarter of a yellow print I'd love to use for the cornerstones but I only have the 1 FQ and I haven't been able to identify the print.  I wasn't able to find something similar at Beverly's so I'm not sure what I'm going to do.  I will try to find something this week.  We'll see.

Here's a few pictures of my goofy kiddos from our trip:

Fresh Crop of Blocks

I've been madly farming away.

Over the last couple of weeks, I managed to sew blocks #76 Sawtooth, through #89 Steps to the Altar.  That's 13 blocks completed!  And only 22 to go.  Yay!!

My new mantra is A Block a Day until my FWQ is complete.  I really want to finish this up so I can move on to work more intensively on other projects and explore some different avenues in quilting such as art/landscape quilts.

Farmer's Wife Sampler - various blocks

I didn't take individual pictures of all of these blocks and I will just show groupings and feature a couple of individual blocks from here on out.  It's really time consuming to photograph each and every block, retouch, upload to flickr and then to the blog.  *phew*  Photographing ones work is really useful though, as I have just noticed that I have a piece flipped on my Squash Blossom block.  LOL

Here are a few of my recent faves:



#80 Single Wedding Star

 

#83 Spider Web


Lately, I've been struggling with finding fabrics without reusing the fabrics I've already used several times over, and so I reached out to my fellow quilt blogger friend, Beth, aka Smazoochie  who generously agreed to send me some fabric scraps.  Well, she really saved the day!  Her packaged arrived yesterday and I immediate set to work on this one:



#89 Steps to the Altar

 I hope everyone is enjoying their Summer!  We are enjoying the great outdoors on the weekends and our cute little chicks (farming of a different sort).  I can't wait for eggs!!!

Kayaking at Shoreline Regional Park



Our chicks at about 2 weeks old



Summer ... in Full Swing

My kids are the 3rd and 4th from left

The kids are off school and occupied with their summer activities, and even though I have to work, I'm enjoying the somewhat relaxed schedule and especially the homework-free evenings.  We haven't gone on a vacation yet (that's still in the planning stages) but we managed to get away to Santa Cruz for a day to celebrate my youngest 12th birthday.

I've been chipping away at my FWQ and but needed a change of pace, so I decided to put together a simple picnic quilt top.

I raided my large stash of mainly Alexander Henry fabrics.  It's kind of strange because I tend to buy most of my quilting fabrics in fat quarters, but over the years, I've amassed a large amount of yardage of AH prints (1 yard or more).  So when I decided I needed the satisfaction of putting together a simple quilt with large pieces (blocks are cut to 18" with simple sashing), I naturally turned to my AH prints.  I used Essex cotton/linen blend for the sashing.  It's the first time I've used Essex, and I love the hand and texture of this fabric.  I purchased the Essex from my local Beverly's which recently has stocked a really nice selection of Kona solids, Kauffman muslin (very high quality), and some other quality choices by other manufacturers.  I almost overlooked the Essex as it was mysteriously stocked next to the baby flannels.

I'm quilting it already... about a third of the way done.

And these are my latest FWQ blocks:

#72 Railroad 

#73 Rainbow Flowers

#74 Ribbons

#75 Rosebud

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer.