Teacher Gift: Class Signature Quilt

I've been so bad about posting all my quilt finishes recently.  I don't want to forget this signature quilt, because I love this idea for a teacher appreciation gift!  The customer convinced all the parents in her child's kindergarten class go in together for a gift.  Rather than everyone buying a small (and often rather useless) gift, they all went in together on these awesome quilts!  The customer picket out and bought the frog fabric.  Then she secretly had all the kids in her child's kindergarten class sign it in two different places with a fabric maker, then sent it to me. 

To assemble the quilt, all I did was add borders with corner squares.  I wanted the focus to stay on the center panel and the adorable 5-year-old signatures, so I kept the piecing simple and used solids for the border.  After basting, I added teacher's name and the year with fusible web.  Then I appliqued with a zig-zag stitch. 

I outline-quilted the border and corner squares.  I also highlighted all the signatures with quilted boxes.  Then I decided it needed more quilting, so I outlined some of the fun frogs, too.

I love how the outlined signatures turned out! The back really shows off the effect of the random-box quilting:

I also made a similar wall-hanging sized quilt for the teacher's aid the same way as the larger quilt.  I just added hanging tabs, and did a turn-out and topstitch finish on the edges rather than binding. 

Great Grandma's Bow-tie Quilt--Finished!

Drumroll please....ta-da!  I finally finished this baby quilt using my great-grandma's quilt blocks!  It may have taken me months and months to get started , and I had to let go of my perfectionism, and I had to teach myself how to hand-quilt, but it's finally finished! 

I love, love, love this quilt. I love the fabrics and the fabric choices Great-grandma made, and how different they are from ones I would normally choose.  It's not a matchy-matchy quilt.  I was even able to find a large piece of fabric in her stash, which I used for the backing and binding. 
 
I love how the hand-quilting looks great with these blocks, it really makes this quilt and helps create a vintage scrap-quilt look.  I decided that this quilt was already busy enough without complicated quilting (and, I admit, this was only my second quilt doing hand-quilting, so I didn't want to try anything too ambitious).  I just did simple outline stitching about 1/4" from all the seams.  

So far, BT loves it, too ;)

-Lily

Buddy's Finished Quilt

Welcome, everyone from Blogger's Quilt Festival!  If you've never stopped by before, I'm Lily, a mommy with two young sons who loves quilting (and all things handmade).  I made this twin-sized quilt for my 3-year-old son, Buddy.  He loves being tucked in every night under this special quilt that Mommy made just for him, which warms my mommy heart :)

Many of the pinwheel blocks were made by friends at a local quilting group and given to me when Buddy was just a tiny baby.  There would have been enough blocks for a baby quilt, but I already had several of those.  Instead, I decided to make a twin-sized quilt for when he eventually grew into a big-boy bed. 

I loved these pinwheel blocks made with 1930s reproduction fabrics, but I wanted to make the quilt look a little more modern.  I also wanted it manly enough that my son could use it for years to come, which is why I alternated the pinwheels with solid blue blocks.  The result was even better that I pictured:  a very modern-looking graphic quilt, with pops of color from the 1930s prints.

For the quilting, I found a cross quilting pattern in a pattern book at the library.  (Side note:  I returned the book and now can't remember the book or the name of the pattern.  If anyone knows, please share!)  I love how this pattern was so easy to quilt on my home machine, since it only used straight lines.

 

I decided to make the borders and binding with the same blue as the center blocks, to continue the simple, two-color feel of this quilt.  I also used a simple blue backing that really showed off the quilting.

Many thanks to Amy over at Amy's Creative Side, this is my 2nd Blogger's Quilt Festival, and it's so fun and inspiring to see the many awesome quilts linked up!

-Lily

Mistake Quilt...or, Compounding problems through sheer stubbornness

I refer to this as my "Mistake Quilt."   I didn't make a tiny, almost-invisible mistake.  I make plenty of those on all my quilts, that's part of their handmade charm.  No, for this quilt I made mistake after mistake, compounding the problems at each step.  And did I stop at any point?  No, I kept forging ahead, thinking that somehow willpower and stubbornness would fix it.

 My dear husband says it still looks nice but I suspect he's just being a super-nice husband Or maybe he just does not have my refined sense of quilt style, ha! 

Here's a partial list of the problems with this quilt:

1. Using minky fabric in piecing.  I hadn't used minky much before this project, and it was so hard to cut and piece accurately.  Plus, I forgot that I wouldn't be able to iron the seams flat.  Inside this quilt is a mess of disordered seams, yike!

2.  Not using fabrics I loved.  Some of the fabric was super-cheap clearance, and others were ones I had in my stash, and then there's the minky...looking back, I think, why, why, why??

3.  Making my own pattern.  Now, this isn't always a mistake.  I love making up my own patterns, and usually it works.  But, when trying new things, you win some, you lose some.  On top of the other problems with this quilt, this pattern wasn't a keeper.

4.  Not listening to myself.  After I put together a few blocks, I was really iffy about this quilt coming together.  I should have cut my losses and started a project I loved.

5.  Letting it sit in the closet for three years.  After finishing the top, I thought it was the ugliest quilt I'd ever made.  Rather than just donating it and forgetting all about it, I put it in my closet.  Then, every time I searched through my stash I let it gnaw at me how ugly it was and how I should really finish this project. (I hate stacks of unfinished quilts hanging around).

6.  Not basting.  I've been practicing my hand-quilting skills because I want to hand-quilt two quilts I'm making with my great grandma's quilt blocks.  Digging through the closet one day, I ran into this quilt (again) and thought it would be a great practice quilt.  I wanted to get straight to quilting, so of course I didn't have time to baste properly.  But, now I've had so many problems with the backing bunching up while I'm trying to quilt.  Note to self:  don't skip vital steps!

7.  Hand-quilting minky fabric.  That dratted minky, coming back to bite me again!  Apparently it's awful trying to hand-quilt through minky, I don't recommend it.

The good news is, I only have a few more lines of quilting to add, and then I'll be finished with this quilt!  The bad news is, what am I going to do with it??  I don't want to keep it, it's just a reminder of all the problems I've had with it.  I think I'll donate it, and a baby girl can enjoy it regardless of how many mistakes I made :)
-Lily

Linked up at some of the great blogs on my sidebar!

Hanging Kitchen Towels Tutorial

I love hanging towels in my kitchen, they look so much nicer than just shoving a towel through the stove handle.  Plus, my one-year-old thinks it's a really fun game to pull the towels off, and then Mommy puts them back up, then he pulls them down...all day.

I've seen a couple different versions of hanging hand towels recently--some with buttons, crochet loops, and other options, but I wanted to make some that could tie on and make a cute little bow.

These are cute, practical, and simple to make, so they would make perfect Christmas presents.  I made these for me, but I'll probably be making a few more sets as we head into the holidays.

What you need: for 2 hanging towels

• 1 kitchen towel
• 2 pieces of main fabric, 6.5 x 9"
• 2 pieces of batting, 6 x 8"
• For the ties, 4 pieces of bias tape, 18" each (or cut 1.5 x 18" strips and see straight-grain "bias tape" tutorial)

Let's get sewing:
1. Cut your towel in half so you have 2 pieces, 13 x 16" each.

2.  On the raw edge, make a large pleat in the center of the towel, so that the top of the towel measures 6" across.  Lay the pleat flat and pin.  Baste 1/8" from the edge to secure the pleat.

3.  On main fabric piece, press under short edges 1/2".  Fold in half, short ends together.  On the fold, mark 1" in from both sides.  Cut from the mark to the bottom edge.  Repeat on the other side.  You should have a trapezoid.

4.  Cut your batting the same way you cut your fabric in step 3.  Open your trapezoids and center the batting on the wrong side.

5.  Fold the batting and trapezoid over the pleated towel edge.  Sew 1/4" from the edge.  I used a triple-stitch to make it secure, since the towel hangs on this seam.  Make sure to catch the front and back of your fabric.

6. Quilt the fabric panel.  Here's a close-up of a finished towel so you can see one of the quilting patterns I did.  One set has concentric trapezoids, and the other has parallel lines about 1/2" apart.

 7.  Open your bias tape (or straight-grain tape, like I used.)  Press both short ends in 1/2".  Lay the open tape on the back of the main fabric.  Align the pressed short end with the top of the towel and align the raw edge to the main panel raw edge.  Baste the raw edges together 1/4" from edge.

8.  Now, fold the tape over  to the front of the main fabric.  Pin the tape in place.  Sew 1/8" from the edge, attaching the tape along the fabric edge, then continue along the tape to form the tie.

 You should now have a towel that looks like this!  Repeat steps 2-8 to make your 2nd towel.

-Lily

Link party some of the great blogs on my sidebar.

Half-Square Triangle Tutorial: Two at a Time

 I made this pillow for my Etsy shop and thought I'd share how I make half-square triangles two-at-a-time.  I used to cut my fabric into triangles and then sew them together into squares = terrible mess!!  All my squares were wonky (in an ugly way) and none of my points matched correctly.  Then a quilting friend taught me this easy way to make two at a time, and the finished squares look so much nicer.

The other trick is to make your half-square triangles just a little too big, then trim them down so they're all the perfect size.

Let's get sewing:
1. Start with a square that is 1 inch bigger than you want your final half-square triangles to be.  For example, I wanted 3" squares for this pillow (3.5" before piecing), so I cut 4" squares.

2.  Draw a diagonal line corner to corner on half the squares.  It usually shows up better on lighter fabrics.

3.  Match two squares, right sides together.  Sew 1/4" away along both sides of the diagonal line that you marked.  Don't sew on the diagonal line! 

 4.  Cut on the marked diagonal line.

5.  Press seams toward the darker fabric.

side note--I really need to make a new ironing board cover, this one is looking kinda ugly

6.  Use a small square ruler and your rotary cutter to square up and trim.  Align the diagonal line on the ruler with your triangle.  Here, I want my square to be 3 1/2".  I trimmed off a little on the top and side.  Then, rotate and repeat on the other two sides, and you get...

 ...perfect half-square triangles, just begging to be pieced into something beautiful!

-Lily

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Blast Off! Rocket Ship Baby Quilt

This is my first time participating in the Blogger's Quilt Festival over at Amy's Creative Side, and I'm so excited!

I decided to share a super-fun rocket ship quilt.  It's one of my favorite quilts that I've made recently, because it combines wonky piecing, applique, and an outer space theme all in one vibrant, colorful quilt.

Sorry, I don't have pics of my creative process.  I'm a blogging newbie, and I made this quilt before I started taking tutorial pics.

First, I made the wonky panels, sewing strips to a muslin base.  I used a variety of space-themed, bright fabrics from my stash.  After I put the top together, I quilted a few star shapes.  Yes, you read it right, I basted and started quilting before I attached the applique.

I hand-cut the applique and attached it by machine, leaving raw edges, which I think adds to the fun/casual feel of this quilt.  The bonus of adding the applique at this step is that the applique stitching becomes part of the quilting, and it makes a picture on the backing.  I also did some fun angled quilting on the outer borders.

 I used the same outer-space fabric for the backing and binding, and I attached it by machine (I don't do much handwork.  That's why I have three sewing machines!)

Name:  Blast Off!
Quilt Measurements 37 x 32 inches 
Quilted by me, on my home sewing machine
Best category – Home Machine Quilted, Scrap Quilt, Baby Quilt
Quilt Festival entry #207

How to Bind a Quilt by Machine

I'm almost done with Buddy's Quilt!  You can check out my quilting tutorial, and the finished quilt.  This is part two of my binding tutorials--check out Part 1, how to make binding.

When I first learned to quilt, I was taught to attach binding by machine, then fold it over and finish it by hand.  But that took way too long.  I had quilts piling up, all finished except the binding would only be partially done because I'm not much of a hand sewer.  Then I figured out how to attach binding completely by machine--yay, problem solved! 

Let's get sewing:
 I like to start about 1/3 of the way down on the right side of the quilt.

Open the binding end that you cut into a point in the last step of my first binding tutorial.   Pin about six inches of the bottom layer of the binding to the quilt top, lining up the raw edge with the quilt top edge.

Sew only the bottom layer for the first 6 inches, using a 1/4" seam allowance.

Align both binding edges with the edge of the quilt top and pin along the remainder of the first side.  Place the last pin 1/4" from the quilt top edge. 

Begin sewing where you ended the last seam--about 6" from the start of the binding.  (The yellow pin in the above picture is where I started sewing.)  Sew along the side until there is 1/4" to the quilt top edge--I sewed until the red pin in the pic below, then backstitched and cut my thread.

You can see in the picture below that I left 1/4" free after my seam.  That's important, otherwise your corner won't be nice and mitered. 

Fold binding up at a 90 degree angle to your first seam.  It should make a diagonal:

Then, fold the binding down, trapping the diagonal that you just made.  Pin binding along the whole side, making sure to start and stop 1/4" the from the quilt edge.  Sew between the pins.   Repeat this until you've attached binding to all four sides.

When you get to where you started,  overlap several inches and cut off any extra binding. 

Fold over the top layer of your starting end, encasing the raw edge at the end of the binding.  Sew over both binding ends.

Lay your quilt out flat and smooth.  Carefully trim off the extra batting and backing.  Cut along the raw edges of the quilt top and binding.

Fold over the binding to the back of the quilt and pin.  Make sure to hide the seam where you attached the binding to the front.  At the corners, fold one side on top of the other to make an attractive corner. 

 Sew 1/8" from the folded edge of the binding, all around the perimeter of the quilt.

 Here's a finished corner from the back:

And that's it--now your quilt is 100% complete!
-Lily