Luck Be a Pink Hat

This one has been a long time coming.  I had the top finished, and the back too, over a year and a half ago.  I managed to get it to the long armers shortly before or after Smilosaurus was born, I can't remember.  And it sat for nearly a year once I picked it up.  I simply had no motivation to get the binding on.  It's not like I dislike the quilt, I quite love the boldness of it all, I was simply lazy and didn't want to sew on a binding.

The motivation to finish it came because I entered it in the show over the weekend.  Nothing like a deadline to get your butt in gear!  So I found the perfect fabric, braved the bias cut, and got it done.

The center portion of the quilt is from a book called Strip Pieced Quilts by Maikke Baker.  I was at a retreat with some quilting friends in my Red Hat group, The Garnet Gals.  Yes, I know I am way too young for a red hat, but these great ladies welcomed me in and still share lots of life and quilt experience with me.  We decided to sew one afternoon and put this together from stash.  And we all liked it too much to donate it - bad us! - so we drew straws to see who got it. I won!

The borders were pieced from scraps, yet another black and white fabric, and more circles.  If you look closely in the bottom photo you will see that the purple we used had coloured circles scattered across the purple.  That's where the colour of my circles came from.

This is one of my favourite backs ever.  So simple, yet really bold.  My initial plan was to put the label in a circle in the green, but I couldn't print a small enough, yet still legible label for any kind of border on it. It still works.

It now seems that the girls can't keep their hands off any aspect of my hobby, er... obsession.  It was impossible to get a shot of this quilt without them in it.

I had this one professionally quilted by a local lady, Berny Sproule.  She used a purple thread in a swooping meander pattern to bring it all together.  

Now, don't get too googly-eyes staring at the photo!

Off to the Races

If you're here for the Sew Mama Sew giveaway, welcome. The giveaway is in the previous post. In the meantime, enjoy my latest quilt: Wednesday Night Races.

This is my Project Improv quilt. I pieced it entirely from scraps and stash, and sadly barely made a dent in my stash. The blocks are all triangles, pieced like wonky log cabins. I've said it before, it was a challenge to piece the top together and I couldn't avoid a few inset seams, but it worked out well. The whole thing squared up nicely too. (I know it doesn't seem like it in the photo, but it was a breezy day.)

The name came to me after I shared the photo of the top with the Project Improv Flickr group. A couple of people mentioned that it reminded them of flags at a marina. Back in my university days I would join some friends for the Wednesday Night Races at one of the sailing clubs in Halifax. It was an exhilerating, raucous, and slightly scary event for this Prairie gal. My friend did his best to scare the crap out of me, but I always came back. That wasn't entirely the experience with this quilt, but I liked the memory and decided to pay homage with the naming of the quilt.

The entire quilt is quilted with straight lines. I started following one triangle and went around and around it. This I repeated across the quilt with triangles of different sizes and filled in spaces with lines. Very bold. For thread I used a Mettler silk finish 100% cotton, my latest favourite for quilting, in three shades of yellow. White seemed too stark on the coloured parts, but I didn't want something too dark on the white parts. The yellow was perfect.

Sure, I could have used a multi-pieced binding, but because the quilt isn't that large (slightly larger than crib, but I can't remember the exact measurements right now) I thought a single binding would provide a bit of rest to the eye. I picked up a few pieces of Katie Jump Rope and Flea Market Fancy in a sales rack a few weeks ago and the green was perfect.

We had to take pictures in the park across the street from our house because we currently have no front steps. The Monster was quite keen on holding the quilt herself for me to take a picture. How could I say no?

Wednesday Night Races, along with this quilt, this one, and one more I have to share with you are headed to a show this weekend. My first quilt show! No, not just my quilts, let's not get too excited. But it is the first time I've shared my quilts in public, other than through the blog. If you are in the Calgary area please stop my Heritage Park Festival of Quilts for the show. They hang hundreds of quilts throughout the historic park - on buildings, fences, clotheslines, and in some of the old houses. It is quite the sight, really. I'll post some pics next week.

Key Lime Pie

From this...

To this.

I delivered the Key Lime Pie quilt to my sister on Mother's Day.  And it was already well-loved. The Monster managed to get some chocolate on it while it awaited packing for the trip.  The dangers of quilting in the dining/living room.

When I finished the quilt top and showed Hubby he commented, "Well, it's not the most exciting quilt you've ever made."  Maybe not, but it is purely me and very much my sister.  The circles, of course, are me.  The colours are perfect for her.  Besides, I believe it is good to push yourself a little outside your comfort zone.  There is still a lot of contrast, but it is definitely softer than most of my work.

I started off with half-square triangles, but quickly realized that it wouldn't give me the look I wanted.  So I trimmed the squares I'd already cut to make the triangles and went for these right angle triangles instead.  They still didn't end up how I expected.  I'd actually wanted to piece them yellow to yellow, brown to brown in order to make it more like an equilateral triangle. I did not, however, think about the directionality of the fabric.  Sometimes, the third time is the charm.

After appliqueing the circles I free-motioned quilted the whole thing, with some extra circles here and there.  And I quilted around the circles to make them pop a bit more.  With everything so similar in colour value I needed to do something more to make them stand out.

On the back was a single piece of this Amy Butler.  No label yet because it was lost somewhere in transit.  I made it and thought I brought it with me to Edmonton, but I couldn't find it anywhere there nor at home when we returned.  Next time.

Speaking of next time, I'm making another quilt with this fabric.  I can't resist, especially after seeing them all laid out next to each other here.  It can be one to work on without thinking about it once I return to work next week. 

Your Parents Are Cool Part 2

We returned from a weekend in Edmonton.  As usual, it was crazy busy with lots of driving around to get visits in.  But my mother-in-law was great to me, babysitting so I could go to my niece's school concert and have dinner out with an old girlfriend.  On Saturday we threw a baby shaker for the recipient of Your Parents Are Cool, and his parents, of course.  In there I also got to spend the afternoon with my sister-in-law and little Lucca.  And take more pictures of his quilt.
This is my favourite block.  Just as I was putting blocks together I received my prize from Sew Mama Sew and this orange puppy fabric was in it.  Considering that Indy, the retired racing greyhound, is part of the family in Lucca's house I had to include some of this.  The top fabric is actually from another baby quilt that I made two years ago.  I love including fabric with a little bit of history.
It was really hard to capture the quilting on this.  I tried tonnes of different lighting options too.  Hopefully you get the gist of it.  I travelled vertically down the quilt, creating rectangular loops - for lack of a better term.  The next line would be offset so the rectangle was in the vertical space left between two rectangles in the adjacent line of quilting.  Does that make sense?  If it doesn't and you are really curious let me know and I'll scan my sketch. 

Yes, I did say sketch there.  Quite often I will sketch out my quilting pattern.  Rarely do I mark, but I find the repetition of sketching the pattern helps me work out kinks and get in the rhythm of the actual quilting.  If I've ever taken an extended break from the quilting I will often do another sketch to warm up.

Finally, it would be mean to share a baby quilt without sharing a picture of the little man.  Here is our nephew, Lucca, enjoying his quilt.  His mom was wondering last week just which of his half dozen homemade blankets would become his blankie.  I vote for mine.