Wip Wednesday - The Butterflies Continue

I did a post here about my butterfly quilt that I'm working on.  It is for the Michael Miller fabric challenge for the Modern Quilt Guild.  The deadline is July 25th so I'm furiously working on finishing it.  I know exactly how I want to quilt it.

Take a look at what I have so far:

The painters tape on the floor outlines the size of the quilt top.  It's going to be about 43 inches by 53 inches. 

I'm done with 4 and 1/2 butterflies and still have 1 and 1/2 to go.  I'm getting pretty fast at making them though so I'd like to finish them this week. 

The space between the butterflies will be filled in with Kona White or a Michael Miller white Mirror Ball Dot which I love.

These butterflies are paper pieced and each one has 97 pieces.  I'm really loving this so far.

And of course, being a quilter, I'm also working on a separate project at the same time.  It's a secret project because it's for someones birthday.  I'm running late with it as her birthday has passed but that's ok.  I think she's going to love it.  Here is a small piece of it's awesomeness:

My secret WIP

**Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.**

Butterfly Pattern - Paper Piecing - How to Separate Pattern Sections

Wow!  I can't believe that I've gotten so many nice posts about my butterflies.  Thank you all so much for your nice comments.  You've really made my day.

Several people have asked where I got the pattern.  It came from a book called 365 Foundation Quilt Blocks by Linda Causee.  I can't remember if I bought this book used from Half Price Books or if I got it new from Amazon.

 You can see that I have lots of pages marked with sticky notes.  How long will it take me to get through those plus all the other things on my to do list?  Lol

This author has lots of books out on paper piecing or foundation piecing (same thing).  Some of the patterns in the book above are really easy and some are harder - like the butterfly.  Well, not harder really, just more time consuming.

Here is my butterfly:

As you can see, all the parts are shown together.  It has 5 sections and you have to make a copy of the pattern you want and then cut each section apart.  Then I taped the sections to a piece of computer paper.

And then I drew the 1/4 inch seam allowances around each piece.  I have to draw my seam allowances or I will forget about them or mess them up in some way.

Once you have that done, you can make copies in any size you want.

It's not any harder to do the small patterns than it is to do the big ones.  It just uses little bitty pieces of fabric.  I save all my scraps from the larger butterflies to use on the smaller ones.  Some of the pieces are tiny but I wanted a detailed butterfly.  There are patterns out there with less detailed ones.

I've taken several paper piecing classes so that I could learn different ways of paper piecing.  I want to be able to do the easiest one - :)
I think my way is the easiest that I've seen so far although I didn't make it up or anything.  I learned in a class at a local quilt shop and she used a Carol Doak pattern of a heart to teach the class.  Our teacher was great and gave us lots of tips.  Ironically, she was not a quilter.  She just loved paper piecing and used her blocks in other ways.  She had a tiny pin on the day of the class - it was about 1.5 inches square of the American flag.  It was incredible how tiny it was.

Would anyone be interested in a paper piecing tutorial?  I think I'll try to get one going this week.

Saturday SewJo - My Big WIP

Hi all!

I mentioned in my last post, 3 WEEKS ago, that I'm doing the Modern Quilt Guild fabric challenge.  I have been diligently working on my project for all of those weeks plus and even though I can see the fruits of my labor it still feels like I'm spinning my wheels.

I'm doing a paper piecing project that involves butterflies.  Butterflies with lots of pieces.  97 to be exact - per butterfly.  Each butterfly has 5 sections.

Anywho, here are some peaks at my finished works and my in progress ones too.  I'm hoping to get some work done this weekend but I don't seem to be able to accurately guess how much sewing time I'm going to have. LOL

I've been working on this project so much that I don't know if I'll finish my goal this month for ALYOF.  Ugg!

**Personal note - My rheumatologist increased the dosage for my chemotherapy drug that I'm taking for my Lupus and it has made me completely exhausted.  I mean sleep all day exhausted, have trouble staying awake on the 7 minute drive to my house after taking my son to school, exhausted.  Hence, my lack of blogging.  I have tons of stuff to share including a couple of tutorials but I just need the time - while I'm awake - to write it all down.  Good news though, I managed to stay awake most of this past week and went to the pool to exercise 3 times - YAY!

Happy Memorial Day Weekend everyone!  And if you are in the military (or married to someone who is) or are a veteran, thank you so much for your service.  That includes military spouses and families who are also serving right along with their soldiers.

**Linking up to SewJo at My Go-Go Life!

Heart and Soul Quilt

I have a fabulous quilt finish today.  It's one I've been working on for several weeks and finally finished a few days ago.

I'm calling it my Heart and Soul quilt.

One day while perusing my facebook feed, I saw this heart quilt block pattern that was being shared by Aurifil.  It was their designer block of the month by Katy Jones of Monkey Do.  The block is called Heart and Soul.  I immediately fell in love and had to make it.  So I stopped everything and started cutting up squares.
**The full pattern download is at the end of the interview post.**

I could see the finished quilt in my head hanging on the dining room wall.  I knew I wanted it to be a rainbow of colors.  So I just grouped squares together based on the color wheel.

Here is blue/purple:  (I even used some of my Michael Miller Mirror Ball fabric that I've been hoarding)

Here is red and pink:

Different shades of green from aqua to lime to dark green.  I thought it looked cool:

And yellow with oranges:
(notice how I don't have a perfect point at the end of my heart?  No one's perfect, right?)

Here is the lovely back.  I've had this great swirly multicolored fabric for some time and could never figure out what to do with it.  So, since it basically had the same colors as the quilt front, I thought I'd use it for the back.  I did more improvisational piecing with this one and I love how it came out.

The "LOVE" letters are paper pieced following a tutorial that I had found on Sew Mama Sew by Kelly from kelbysews.  In her tutorial, she made them into an adorable mini quilt which I have had on my to do list for some time.   So, I just decided "why not kill 2 birds with 1 stone" and added them to the bottom of my hearts.  She sells the whole wonky paper pieced alphabet in her etsy shop.  If you haven't tried paper piecing but have been wanting to, her letters are easy and cute.

Up close of my cool swirly fabric from the back:

I bound the quilt with a text print called Scribble Notes in black from the Architextures line by Robert Kaufman.  I really like this fabric and I think I should have bought more.

I quilted it with organic straight lines going horizontally.

The fabric used in the hearts was from my stash and the back ground fabric for each block is white tonal fabric also from my stash - I know you can't tell in the pictures.  I used the same white tonal fabrics for the background of the love letters.  The remaining white background fabric as well as the white fabric used on the back are Kona Cotton in white.
I can't remember who made the colorful swirly fabric I used on the back but I think it might be from Michael Miller.

The quilt measures 31" by 34".
I love it and I'm excited to hang it on my dining room wall.  I plan to hand sew ribbon loops to the top and thought I'd try those 3M products that are removable hooks.  Anyone ever tried those?  Did they work ok?

I'd love to hear your comments about my projects.  Any feedback is appreciated.

Also, please follow me on bloglovin or here on this blog.  My Pinterest link is at the top left - I pin lots of great quilts and quilt ideas as well as recipes and such. 

**Linking up to Sew Cute Tuesday @ Better off Thread and Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story

Modern Quilting

Modern Quilting - the new quilting movement.

I've read a lot of magazine articles, blog posts, etc. lately about modern quilting and all the different types of modern quilting.  There is much debate over what modern quilting means and its subcategories.

I'm not going to go into all of that.  I'm just going to say that the modern quilting movement is what got me interested in quilting.  I've been around quilting all my life, my mother quilted for a time.  My first quilting project ever was a Christmas tree skirt that I made 20ish years ago when my husband and I got married.  I hand cut (with scissors) all the pieces and then hand sewed and hand quilted it.   Have I ever mentioned how much I HATE hand sewing?  Well, I do.  I can take it in small doses and I mean very small.  But more than I few stitches makes me frustrated and angry.  I'm still surprised that I ever finished that tree skirt.

But I'm absolutely in love with modern quilting.  The colorful fabrics, modern designs, geometric shapes, the rule of "there are no rules".  I read an article recently stating that you should learn the traditional way of quilting and then do what you want.  I love that!

Don't get me wrong.  I love old quilts and old quilt patterns and I have a great respect for all quilters because I know how much love and time they put into their quilts.  Especially hand sewn ones - yikes!

The magazine shown above is one of my favorite quilting magazines.  Here is my very favorite:

It has lots of pointers for beginners and really great articles.

And now for some quilt blocks. 
I have been remiss in showing my quilt blocks for the BOM's I'm doing so I thought I'd just show them in big lumps instead of one each month.

Here are my blocks for the Lucky Stars paper piecing online BOM.  These are for January - April and the practice block.  I haven't completed the May or June blocks yet.

 My favorite.  I'd like to make a mini quilt with this one.

This was the practice block.  It looks like a ninja star to me and is my second favorite so far.

I'm about half way through quilting the quilt from the last blog post and I'll get pics up asap.

Hope you're enjoying the warm summer weather.
PS - the birds left their nest.

Completed X Pillow

In this post, I showed pictures of the X pillow that I was working on.  It is a paper pieced quilting project which I love.  The post linked above shows the 16 blocks sewn into 4 larger blocks to make the 4 X's on the pillow.

 

Then, I sewed on a cream border because I wanted the pillow to eventually fit a 24x24 pillow form.

I don't think I did it exactly right because I got too much puckering.  I've since been reading about how to attach borders and sashing so I think I can do better next time.

 

After adding the cream, the block still wasn't big enough so I added a bright green border.  I did this one better and I don't think there was any puckering with it.

 

I then added piping that I made using the same fabric as I had planned to use for the backing.  It is one of the Summer House prints by Moda which is the main fabric line I used in this pillow.

 

Here's the back:

I also used a chevron cotton duck print that I had in gray to make a companion pillow.  I didn't add a piping to it and you can really tell the difference.  The piping really makes the pillow look "finished".  I may take the gray chevron pillow apart and add piping.

By the way, this is what the sofa looked like before these pillows. 

This is my newly remodeled living room that we finished last fall.  My husband and son had to help me finish painting it and the dining room because I just couldn't physically do it.  Then I got the new sofa, rug and coffee table.  Isn't this table HUGE?  It didn't look so big in the store.  When they delivered it, I called my husband and told him we would have to take it back because it was too big but he was all, "wait till I get home.  It's probably not as big as you think".  So, he and my son LOVED it.  I couldn't believe it.  They hate the sofa but love the table. 

Anyhoo, those 2 pillows that came with the sofa are pretty but the problem with them is that they are feather pillows.  Which means they collapse when you use them as pillows. (I HATE feather pillows)  Also, the feathers just come out - right out of the fabric.  There is no zipper or closure so that I could remove the feathers and insert a pillow form.  So my only choice was just to get rid of them.

One WIP done and a million more to go.  What have you finished lately?

 

How are my works in progress going?

It's a semi warm (68 degrees) and rainy day here today.  Perfect sewing weather or napping weather.  I'm trying really hard to stay awake though.

I've been trying to spend some time working on items for my etsy shop.  In particular, eye pillows.  They sell really well this time of year and all year long really.  I spent 2 days cutting 60 rectangles.

 

This is about half of the stack.  I've already started listing them in my shop.

I've also been working on some of my WIP's.

I finished my January block for the Lucky Stars BOM.  I decided to make the 6 inch squares because I wanted to use a charm pack that I already had.  It's Eat Your Fruits and Veggies from Moda. 

 I like the way it turned out.  Although, I did make a mistake which I didn't even notice until I started taking pictures of it.  Can you see it? 
I meant to alternate the star points of the blue fabric so that the cherry fabric was on opposite points but somehow it didn't turn out that way.  And I was being really careful too.  Oh well.

 

I've gotten all my half square triangles made for my Saturday Sampler BOM.  I just need to finish trimming them and sew them into the square.

And finally, this is how far I've gotten on my paper pieced pillow.

I've got a white border going on but it's not big enough.  I need it to fit a 24x24 inch pillow form and I think it's about 18x18 now.  So, I ordered some solid green fabric and also one of the damask prints that's in the pillow.  I think I'm going to make a border with the green and then use the damask for the back.  Also, I'm thinking about doing a cording but I'm not sure.  I'll keep you posted.

Hope everyone is having a great week!

Works in Progress

Today I thought I'd share some of my works in progress (WIP's). 

I'm trying to keep a list of everything that I'm working on so that I can stay organized and actually work on each project in the hopes of one day finishing it.  Isn't that sad?  Hey, don't judge me.  You know that you have WIP's too :)

So, here goes:

1.  Lucky Star BOM - so far, I've printed the pattern and decided which fabric to use.  This is the original fabric that I was going to use and I was going to make the 12 inch blocks:

 But I've since changed my mind about the fabric.  I'm going to use a charm pack that I have - Eat Your Fruits and Veggies by Moda - and make the smaller 6 inch squares.  But that's as far as I've gotten on that project.

2.  Saturday Sampler BOM - no progress.

3.  Quilted Wall Hanging for my son - I have this book of really cool paper pieced blocks.  They've basically taken quilt patterns that have been around forever and skewed them just a little.  This block is called Toppling Log Cabin.  It's the only block I've finished so far.  Isn't it cool?

 

                                    
 
4.  X Pillow - I originally found this paper pieced pillow on Pinterest. 

It was pinned by Fashioned by Meg and I thought it was wonderful.  So bright and I love the piecing.  I tried to find where the pattern came from but all I have is this - "X Marks the Spot by Kim Noblin - BlockCentral.com" - which was on the top of the downloadable pattern.  You can download the pattern from the blog post on Fashioned by Meg above.

I decided to use a charm pack I had been saving called Summer House by Moda.  I LOVE the colors in this pack.  But I wanted to punch up the colors a bit, so I added yellows and oranges from my fabric stack. 

 There are 4 paper pieced squared per block.  First you complete each small square and then you sew them together in the order you want to make your X.  Getting the seams to line up is a bit of a challenge and you can tell mine aren't perfect. 

Here is where I'm at right now.  I have all the X blocks completed and I'm ready to sew the white strips between each block.

 

 

Ignore my lint.  I didn't realize there was so much until I took the pics.  This is going to make a 24x24 inch pillow, by the way.  I'm still trying to decide on the backing fabric. 

5.  Table skirts for the tables in my sewing room.  - No progress except that the fabric is setting on my cutting table.

6.  I have one more project that I've started but I'm going to save it for a later blog post.  It's really good too. :)

Okay, that's it for today.  See you next time - same bat time, same bat channel.