A flowery finish, finally!

Completed Flower Garden baby quilt

It's time to wrap up Q3 of the Finish-a-long and I've completed one project out of the list of seven that I posted on my blog in July. I'm not surprised I only finished one project, but I am happy to report that progress has also been made on my Madrona Road baby quilt and I hope to finish it before the VMQG's UFO Challenge wrap up on October 20th.

 I quilted this 40"x40" quilt in a spiral pattern at a summer VMQG sew-in. It was finished in 3.5 hours! This was my second time quilting a spiral and I have to say I love the look of them.

 I went overboard with floral prints on the back and used large pieces of Heather Bailey and Erin McMorris fabric. I sewed the binding on by hand at two quilting events: a few stitches at the PNW MQG meet up sew-out at Trout Lake Park (I got distracted by chatting and hardly accomplished anything!) and the rest at the Guild Gathering, a meeting of local guild leaders that is held twice a year.

As this was my longest standing WIP, I'm very happy to have it completed. My goal is to cut down on my UFOs to allow myself room for new projects without feeling guilty about the projects I've abandoned. Wish me luck!

Finish Along Q3 Goals

Although my participation in the Finish Along has been erratic, I think it's a wonderful idea and a great way to stay motivated to finish up those long-standing WIPs! I've amassed quite a few in the past several years, so I'm staying motivated by linking up to the Q3 Finish Along with The Littlest Thistle. Do you want to participate and have a chance at winning some great prizes? Sign ups for Q3 are open until July 14th.

For a double dose of motivation, I signed up all the following projects for the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild's UFO Challenge that wraps up in October. I'm not kidding myself and saying that all of these projects will be done in time, but I'm hedging my bets and adding them all to the list. 

1) Flower Garden baby quilt, started in Fall 2009 (which makes it my oldest UFO!) when I bought the "Modern Baby Quilts" pattern from Elizabeth Hartman on Etsy. Lots of HTF prints here, including Erin McMorris's Wildwood, Heather Bailey's Pop Garden, and my first-ever Pearl Bracelets by Lizzy House.

2) Madrona Road LOVE. Another baby quilt, made using Kelly of kelbysews' LOVE Mini Quilt tutorial on Sew Mama Sew. I just need to decide what I'm doing for the other side and the quilting. It's small, so once I get going, it shouldn't take long! Started Spring 2013.

3) Perfect Circles baby quilt. Started in a July 2013 workshop with Cheryl Arkison. I love where this is going, but don't believe anyone who tells you these circles take just six minutes!

4) Neutrals with a pop of colour: My blocks from the Fab Bee members have been supplemented by several blocks from friends. I have 19/20 blocks now and am nearly ready to piece the top. I'm keeping this one for sure! Started May 2013.

5) Red & Aqua Bee quilt: Started in early 2011, these blocks were made by members of my very first online bee. It was meant as a baby quilt for Ellie, but now that she's three, I think I might need to add to it and make it a big girl bed quilt!

6) Little Folks Patchwork: I won some fabric in early 2010 and decided I'd make a quilt just like Ashley's (Film in the Fridge) beautiful patchwork quilt that I'd fallen in love with. The squares are cut, I just need to assemble them!

7) Habitat Challenge: I got as far as completing the quilt top in November 2012 and haven't finished it. The top measures 42"x42".

Cosmic Kites - a half rectangle triangle baby quilt

I'm happy to share Cosmic Kites, my latest finish, my project for The Modern Quilt Guild's Michael Miller Petal Pinwheels Challenge, and my first ever half rectangle triangle quilt. Right off the bat, I want to thank Latifah Saafir and state that I followed her great tutorial on the Modern Quilt Guild's blog all the way from cutting fabric, to assembling my blocks, to the final layout. Latifah's quilt is called Kite Tails and I agreed with her that the diamond shapes looked like kites. I quilted stars into the centres of my kites to mimic the shapes in the grey Star Jacks print, hence the name Cosmic Kites.

Detail of eight-pointed star quilting. It took me several tries to figure out how to draw an eight-pointed star continuously, but once I figured out the trick of skipping two points and aiming for the third point, it was great!

I'd never tried half rectangle triangles (HRTs) and I thought this challenge was a good chance to give them a try! I found them trickier than HSTs and more fussy to trim because you don't just line everything up on a 45 degree angle and cut. There's marking and careful alignment involved. However, they give a great graphic effect, so I may just try them again!

I brought my blocks to a recent Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild all-day sew-in and finished piecing them by lunchtime.

I worked surprisingly hard all afternoon and evening and got the quilt basted and quilted by the time I packed up around 8:30pm. I heard plenty of expressions of disbelief in reference to my unexpected productivity that day! (I'm know for chatting and not getting much done at VMQG sew-ins!).

I posted the previous picture to Instagram (that's where you can find me all the time these days, my blog isn't nearly as active) and Debbie Jeske (A Quilter's Table) emailed to let me know she'd like to feature this quilt in her July Quilting Trends column on Sew, Mama, Sew! I was thrilled! That gave me the incentive to get this quilt bound quickly and I think the Ta Dot print in Apple green brings out the green in the Petal Pinwheels line. Thank you, Debbie!

I backed the quilt with an Erin McMorris Leaf Dot print that I'd been saving since I spotted it in a remnants bin at a LQS in Langley that has since closed.

I loved zipping along and sewing up these straight lines (no marking involved) with my Janome 7700. I used Aurifil 2024 in 28wt and the lines have beautiful definition.

This quilt will be shared at the upcoming annual VMQG outdoor meeting (don't wanna miss the group photo!) and then gifted to a new little second cousin who was born the day I was quilting it!

Have you given HRTs a try?

Farmer's Wife Sampler blocks

Hello to all my new followers who found my blog through Blogathon Canada! If you read my profile on the Sew Sisters site, you may have seen that I'm a self-described incurable procrastinator. Case in point: I received this great fabric from fellow British Columbian Barb in July and have only started making her blocks now! Back in the summer, I arranged a private swap with Barb because she's working on a Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt and needed a few extra blocks and I'm still looking for blocks for my Fab Bee neutrals quilt (whoops, just realized I haven't blogged about that one!). 

I received a package of orange, grey and blue fabric and set to neatly cutting it up (after I located a copy of the book through an interlibrary loan! Note to Vancouverites: the Vancouver Public Library now has a copy of this book due to my request for purchase. You're welcome!). I was so proud of myself for neatly organizing all the fabric I'd need for each block into carefully labelled baggies. And there they sat for four months, patiently waiting for me to finish my even-more-overdue Fab Bee blocks and my quilts for the Northwest Quilting Expo.

Now that I've started making the blocks, I don't want to stop! They're just 6.5" unfinished and they're so cute! So far I've made my first snowball block:

And a HST-filled beauty called Whirlpool. I think I must be a slow piecer cause even with the pre-cut fabric, it took me an hour and twenty-five minutes to sew up this block. I had fun doing it!

Added bonus: my rotary cutter and box of pins match the fabric!

One of my first quilts was a sampler that I made at a course at The Cloth Shop in North Vancouver. Have you made a sampler quilt? 

Rainbow Girl in Blogger's Quilt Festival

Welcome to my blog! If you're visiting through Blogger's Quilt Festival, thanks for stopping by! I really did mean to post this quilt as soon as the ROGBIV Quilts category linky opened up last week, but I got caught up in making a Totoro Halloween costume for my daughter so I'm posting on the last possible day, of course! If you know me, you won't be surprised!

I finished "Rainbow Girl", a colour wheel quilt from Joelle Hoverson's pattern in "Last-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts", back in September so that it could be in the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild's special exhibit at the Northwest Quilting Expo. I wrote a lengthy recap post about this quilt at that point, so I'll keep this fairly short.

Label of "Rainbow Girl"

I named this quilt "Rainbow Girl" because that was the nickname my Grade One teacher gave me after I painted rainbow after rainbow in her classroom. I'm happy to say I still keep in touch with Mrs. Smith and have printed out a photo of this quilt to send her in the mail (yes, the old-fashioned kind with a stamp and everything!).

I took my quilt to Vancouver's beautiful Stanley Park for an outdoor photo shoot.

As soon as I heard that they'd painted rainbow crosswalks in Davie Village, I knew I had to take my quilt there for a picture!

Enjoy the festival and have fun visiting this online quilt show! You can vote for your favourite quilts in fifteen different categories including my category, ROYGBIV quilts.

Rainbow Girl: WIP no more!

Back in July, I wrote up my list of Q3 Finish-a-Long goals, with high hopes that I would complete all three of my works in progress by the end of September deadline. Here's finish three out of three. Yes, you read that right, I completed all of my goals for this quarter!

I proudly present to you.... Rainbow Girl! 

This quilt has been a labour of love and I'm so excited to see it finally finished! I started selecting fabrics for the colour wheel back in Spring of 2010 and finally stitched on the label in September 2013. Three and a half years is quite a long time to make one quilt, but if I'd finished it earlier than July 2013, I wouldn't have been able to get this awesome picture with the newly-painted rainbow crosswalk in Davie Village in downtown Vancouver. It was meant to be!

I was inspired to name this quilt "Rainbow Girl" because that was the nickname my wonderful Grade One teacher Muriel Smith gave me after I painted many rainbows in her class. She once told me that a rainbow I had painted for her hung in her classroom from the year I was in her class until she retired!

I basted this quilt back in November 2012 and was eager to finish it, but anxious about ruining all my hard work with the quilting. My old Singer wasn't up to the task, but this February I brought home a new Janome 7700 and it just loved all the straight line quilting on this project! I entered "Rainbow Girl" into the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild's special exhibit at the Northwest Quilting Expo and that deadline was the perfect impetus to get this project finished once and for all!

Amy Dame braved the mean border guards to get our quilts down to Portland, Oregon (yay, Amy!) and Bill Volckening wrote up a great review of our exhibit including a photo of my quilt. Thanks, Bill!

I've written a number of posts sharing my progress on this quilt, so this will just be a few details on the final steps as well as some glamour shots.

I quilted it as recommended in the pattern, with intersecting straight lines that remind me of the spokes of a bicycle. Because all the lines met in the middle, I decided on a thinner 50wt thread (Aurifil 2021 Natural White). Believe me, I was scared to see what would happen when all those lines came together, but it worked out beautifully!

 When adding the oodles of boring white binding, I kept the binding neatly rolled around the leg of my extension table.

This was the first time in my nearly twenty years of quilting that I joined my binding rather than tucking in one end! I used the Perfect Binding Tutorial by Julie of Jaybird Quilts and it was clear and useful! I love the way you can't tell where you started sewing on your binding. Note to self: when joining the two ends, leave a dog ear on each side before you sew your seam and the strips will line up when you press the seam.

Another first, when I hand stitched the binding, I loaded up six needles at a time so I wouldn't have to break my rhythm when sewing. Loved it! (cute pincushion is a gift from Amy).

I wanted the label to be special after all the work I'd put into this quilt, so I chain stitched a rainbow. I had never chain stitched before, but the Easiest Chain Stitch tutorial on Sublime Stitching made it simple.

Photo by Michelle McLatchy

 And now for a few more beauty shots!

At Beaver Lake in Stanley Park

At Show and Tell at the Vancouver MQG meeting, Photo by Michelle McLatchy

Quilt Stats
Name: Rainbow Girl
Size: 56"x56"
Pattern: Color Wheel Quilt from Last-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson
Fabrics: Tons of Kona white, plus 52 scraps of a rainbow of colours, some from my stash, some swapped with friends (especially Barb), and some purchased for this project
Batting: Warm & White (thanks again to Krista for catching me before I used Warm & Natural for this bright white project!)
Quilting thread: Aurifil #2021 50wt
Timeline: Started in March 2010 (before the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild even had its first meeting!), basted in November 2012, completed in September 2013.
Total project time: 3.5 years!

Previous posts about Rainbow Girl:
July 3, 2010: Rainbow Girl
November 23, 2011: WIP Wednesday
August 22, 2012: WIP Wednesday
November 19, 2012: Blogathon Canada 2012
July 8, 2013: 2013 Finish-a-Long: Quarter 3 Goals

Q3 Finish-a-Long post #2 - baby quilt

Back in July, I wrote up my list of Q3 Finish-a-Long goals, with high hopes that I would complete all three of my works in progress by the end of September deadline. Here's finish two out of three. I have to give a huge thanks to Leanne for hosting the motivational FAL, without her inspiration (and deadlines!), I doubt I'd have a finished quilt right now!

This simple little patchwork baby quilt was made with love for my cousin's new baby boy. I used the same Kate Spain zoo fabric that I'd used for Ellie's quilt back in 2011. I added a mix of coordinating tone on tone prints and Kona solids. I kept it simple, cutting five inch squares of each fabric, and adding a few pieced blocks here and there. I made my first ever hour glass blocks (yay!) using Rita of Red Pepper Quilts' tutorial. I also pieced a few half-square triangles and striped blocks to add interest. When planning the layout, I arranged the blocks randomly and tried to balance out the colours in a way that was pleasing to the eye.

I quilted in an organic crosshatch pattern, meaning that I didn't mark a single line on this quilt! It was so much fun watching the pattern emerge! I used a taupe Aurifil thread (2314) from a new box of 28wt threads I got over the summer. 

For the backing, I used exactly one yard of Amy Butler's full moon dot that I had in my stash. Actually, this entire project used fabric from my stash, the Kona charcoal binding was leftover from my first set of potholders for the VMQG-FVMQG swap, and even the batting was scraps from another project.

I thought Baby E deserved a personalized quilt, so I fused this six inch tall letter E to the backing and blanket stitched around the edges before basting the quilt. 

This was a fun project and I'm looking forward to giving it to our little cousin sometime before he turns six months old. It finished at 35"x42", so even though he's not a newborn anymore, it's plenty big for him to use it for years to come.

Road trip to Portland!

Tomorrow morning, I'm meeting up with Amy, Sonja, and Constance, and road tripping down to Portland, Oregon for the second annual Pacific Northwest Modern Quilt Guild Meetup! Four days of sewing, socializing, classes, fabric shopping, and more (and did I mention, this is all child-free?!). I can't wait!

It's been almost exactly six months since the awesomeness that was QuiltCon and I'm looking forward to re-connecting with friends I met there! I also can't wait to meet new soon-to-be friends. I always have something to talk about with fellow modern quilters, so my usual introverted self isn't too worried about the large group! Plus, I met a bunch of these folks in Seattle last year at the first meetup between the Vancouver, Seattle and Portland MQGs. I had so much fun at that event (just check my flickr set!) and I can't wait to attend my second meetup!

If you don't know me yet and you've just found my blog, here's a picture of me with the tote I'm working on for the tote bag swap:

And here are a few facts about me:

1) I'm a SAHM to two delightful girls (ages 6.5 and 2.5)

2) I married my high school sweetheart, who I met in math class because we were both math geeks

3) Hip hop is one of my favourite musical genres (especially stuff that's easy to sing along with like "Inner Ninja" by Classified who I just learned is from Nova Scotia!)

4) I'm from Vancouver Island, British Columbia, a gorgeous island off the West Coast of BC. Therefore, I take the ferry a lot to visit family who still live on the island. I moved to the lower mainland (that's what we call the southwest corner of BC that includes Vancouver and surrounding cities) in 1995 to go to university.

5) I'm a biology geek with a BSc in Ecology. I'm also a substitute teacher so I get thrown into random classrooms to teach subjects as diverse as organic chemistry, tap dance, and Punjabi!

6) I'm the founder and president of the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild. I love my guild!

2013 Finish-a-Long: Quarter 3 Goals

I've been tempted by the call of the Finish-a-Long for months now, and this time I'm going to finally share some of my goals in public. If you know me, you know I don't get many projects finished each year, but there are a few that I really want to finish in the next couple of months, so it seems like a perfect time to join in with Leanne of She Can Quilt and the Finish-a-Long crew!

Here's my list of projects to finish in Q3:

1) Patchwork baby quilt (started May 10th, 2013)
The baby this is meant for has just turned two months old and I'm optimistic I can get this basted, quilted, and given to him soon! His second cousins can't wait to meet him!

2) Rainbow Girl
I started collecting fabric for this colour wheel quilt in 2010 and I pieced the top last summer. I basted it in November 2012 and just have to quilt it!

3) Memories of QuiltCon
I pieced this mini quilt top at a Lizzy House workshop at QuiltCon in February 2013. My neighbour Courtney, managed to design, piece, quilt, and bind her mini quilt in the same time I took to create this top! It won't take too long to quilt this tiny little quilt, I just need to make it happen! All of the fabrics I used for this quilt were from a bundle I purchased in Seattle at last year's meet up of the Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland Modern Quilt Guilds. Thanks to Keli of Drygoods Design for creating this great palette!

I have many more WIPs that I could list, but I'm going to try to remain grounded in reality and stick with this list of three. I have some late bee blocks and a couple of swaps to do over the summer, so I won't just be focusing on finishing my own quilts. If I can finish just three quilts by the end of September, I'd be delighted!

What are you working on this summer?