Winter Pillow Shams

My beautiful winter quilt is on my bed accompanied by two ugly beige pillow sham. Days after days it bothered my mind, but what could I do with them? Hide them in my closet or throw them away? Nop, let's cover them up instead!!

 

This is one of my "ugly" pillow shams.

The leftover fabric is already cut into 2" strips. One colour is missing, but that okay. Anything will be better then what I've on my bed now.

 

 My pillow shams measured 24" x 24 ". Last-minute sewing project before Christmas. Yep, fast and easy is the key here, so I  flipped through the pages of  Pillow  Pop by Heather Bostic for a cute pattern that would match my winter quilt.

This one will work for sure. Unfortunately, I had to modify the pattern a bit as the dimension is slightly smaller.

  The result differed from the original; nevertheless, I liked it. A  zipper was sewed at the back of the sham case for tightness. 

The pillow sham cases were sewed it the same way, but because I laid them in different way they look so different. Love it!! 

There are a bit of fabric left. Yeah, enough to make a few doll quilts.

Project 13: Place Mat Set

With only four fat-quarters, you can make this easy Take Four Placemat Set.

 Alternating two light colours with two dark ones. A winter theme colour is great for this time of the year.

Cut a second time.

shuffled according to pattern direction. 

I took some of my smaller pieces of batting I had left from other projects and glued them together using the Heat Press Batting Together.

 The stippling was not exactly the effect I wanted, so I ripped it all off and quilted all my placemats with a stitch-in-the-ditch. 

Much better:)

You can either finish the placemats with or without the binding. 

Project 10: Balck Purse

At times it's good to sew something else besides a quilt. Like a purse or a pillowcase or stuff animal. Anything that is accomplishable in fun to sew in a short time. Our mind and body need a rest from those long projects that requires more hours and planning.

This reversible purse was sewn in a day. The zippers are very easy to sew.

Same purse with a different lining.

The purse is in two pieces, allowing the bottom bag to be reversed.

Full of little pockets inside of the bag to tuck your cell, a good size wallet, and necessary little things.

Versatile wave by Susan Rooney Patterns

Quilter4Him

Project 5:Building Blocks

Finally, I got back to my Building Blocks Quilt Along project. It has been months since I free-motioned one of those blocks. When I started again, I felt inadequately rusty at times and frustrated, but I kept at it all day one Saturday and some more in the evening. With each block, I've learned different patterns, skills, and techniques. Leah Day is so fun to watch too, so engaging. She encouraged not to lingered on our mistakes or imperfections. I'm not a perfectionist, but at times, I really wanted to rip off all those ugly imperfections. It was hard not to do it.

The Supreme Slider is a wonderful tool. It reduced the friction or drag under the fabric. Also, a good pair of Machingers helps you to control your movement.

 Sadly I have ripped my Supreme Slider twice in the last year and it breaks my heart. The rip is just behind the foot. As you see I've tapped the Supreme Slider to my sewing table. Even with a small project you can end-up ripping as you sew it up with your fabric. So be watchful if you've one.

 Block #6
The zigzags, wiggly lines, and echo shells were not difficult designs, but the swirls and circles were certainly harder. My lack of free-motion practice didn't help either.

  Block #7: More lines, stars, spirals, stippling with echoes, and of course the evil circles. I'm seeing a lot of defects. Can I rip it apart?

 Block #8: Those were easy for me as I'm accustomed to wiggly spiral, stippling, and straight lines. Again more practice with those circles, but I'm getting the hang of it.

The designs were drawn on the blocks before I free-motioned each one individually. The blocks have an extra inch at the edge of each block and eventually, it will be squared.

In total there are 12 block patterns, an 42 different free-motion designs. I'm almost there, so it time for me to quilt more.

UPDATE: November 10, 2015

Block # 9. After another full day working on my free-motioned quilting, I was all done.

 

 

Time to square the 42 blocks.

One of the many ways to connect the blocks together is using the Quilt-as-you-Go technique.

Here all my blocks are connected by their width and now needed to connect lengthwise.

I'm satisfied with the results, knowing there are mistakes and imperfections in my quilt. That's what makes it unique I guess.

Your can find this Building Blocks Quilt Pattern created by Leah Day at:
http://www.freemotionquilting.blogspot.ca/p/blog-page.html


 Quilter4Him

Project 11: Hello Crazy Quilt!

I always wanted to make a crazy quilt, but couldn't get myself in doing it. All those beautiful hand-sewing stitches that go into it keep me away. So when the opportunity to try a simple version of a crazy quilt with our "share group", I jump with a heartbeat and hope with would be fun and easy.  And it was!!

We had to take our black and white scraps, which I didn't have enough. Can you believe that! True to my words, I stayed home and dug into my stash of fabric. With a grin on my face, I found Hello at the bottom of one of my bins. A layered-cake in a tone of light beige/ blacks by Robert Kaufman. Beautiful tones of fabric with a different patterns. Just in case I didn't have enough, I brought additional fabric that went well with it.

Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of my fabric before I cut them in strips.  Something to remember next time. But here a simpler of it.

With only one layer-cake, I came short of fabrics and added my additional fabric and it was enough to make my 12 blocks, which the pattern required.

You can find this simple version of the crazy quilt in the book: Quilting in Black & White by Leisure Arts. It's a very simple pattern and easy to do.

 With darker and lighter fabrics sewed together, you can alternate the block.

For my decorative thread, I used the Essential Threads 100% cotton by Connecting Threads. Gold for my darker fabric and a dark grey for my lighter blocks.

 The centred piece was pinned in the center of the muslin square. The strips of different sized are sewed around it.

   I am not sure what will be the colours for around the blocks

 Not sure when this project will be completed. I hope it's not another UFO. I'll keep you updated when I worked more on it. For now, let go of quilt!

Updated: November 23, 2015

  For the block's sashing, I opted for the black & beige combo.  My final step is planning the free-motion quilting on this one.  For the blocks that have a larger center, it would be nice to have some decorative threat. Because the blocks are already heavily embroidery with decorative stitches, I'm wondering if I should quilt it with a very simple quilting pattern. We'll see.

Quilter4Him

Quilt as you Go

Have you ever wondered what to do with your leftover scraps or smaller pieces of fabrics for that matter? As we all know our pile of scraps can grow overnight. Really it does!! *laugh* If you're like me, you cannot help yourselves but feel guilty for scraps that are wasted in a basket. If that's the case, then maybe the only solution is to be more aggressive and sew them into blocks. This is one alternative I'm suggesting: A Quilt as you Go.

 Our guild facilitated a workshop on how to make a simple Quilt as you Go. We used pre-cuts blocks and spread them over two tables and sorted them out by themes or colours. We decided to used our guild fabric to make community quilts with them this time, but you can use yours as well. Everyone choose 20 blocks and the pattern differed too. There are varieties of ways to sew your top. Mine has animals/horses that as one direction pattern, so my main block was set straight in the middle and not in an angle as others did.

I centred my block and sandwiched it with batting and backing. Because they were all the same size, I cut the length of my strips of 9" by the width by 2 1/2".

Each block was individually Quilted as you Go. Then I re-squared them because they shifted slightly. My blocks alternated in two colours and set them in rows of 4 x 5.

  To sew the blocks together, I needed strips of 1" strips, which will be used for the back and strips
of  2", which will be used for the front.  The 2" strips were pressed in half.  The block and the strips are all aligned and sewed together with a perfect 1/4" seam allowance; otherwise, the seams won't butt together when you opened it flat.

 This is what it would look in the back.

   I used the same size 2" strips for the binding, but I found it to tight at some places when I quilted the binding in the front. In the beginning, I left about 12" of binding loose and did the same with the end, leaving a gap to facilitate the sewing of the two separated pieces of binding together.

 This is how I make my corners. I stopped 1/4" from the edge, tack, and sewed right out.

 Then turned the binding to my right, forming a perfect 90-degree angle.

 And come back, refolding the binding over that 90-degree angle. All nicely flat. Turn your quilt and continued sewing the binding. I did that for all the corners.

I laid the binding flat on top of each other and tugged gently making sure it tight and not loose, then pinned right in the crease of the binding. Anywhere in that middle of the overlapping binding is fine.

   After that I took the third pin and passed it through the fold of the binding, making sure the other two pins aligned.

   When my two pieces were aligned, it formed a perfect 90-degree angle. From one corner to the other, I marked it. (In this picture I marked it the wrong way. It should be from the right to left corner.) Do not cut the extra until you made sure your binding isn't twisted or sewed on the wrong diagonal.

 After I checked, I cut the extra binding to a 1/4 seam allowance.

 A trick Leah Day said to do, which I tried and was wonderful, is to hand-sew you corners in place before sewing the binding with the machine. As I mentioned earlier, my 2" binding was very small and really appreciated the fact I didn't have to deal with the corners.

 This is the finish Quilt as you Go

My dog couldn't wait to try it out. To bad it's for a community organization :)