I’ve been following Maureen Cracknell on Facebook and am interested in her Sew-Along program. It’s going to be difficult to keep up with a new block every week for 25 weeks, but I’d like to try to do a few of them. Her fabric choices are often modern and colors that I don’t usually use but are appealing when all put together. I’m sure I want to use fabric from my stash, but not sure yet which ones. Tonight is the first block reveal, so let’s see how it looks. Feel free to follow along with me!
I made a few of these blocks and I like my fabric choices, but I ran out of time to keep up with the pace of one block a week, so it’ll become another UFO!
This year, I made two quilts for high school graduates. Lauren, a long time family friend, is going from Glencoe HS to Oregon State. Katie, our oldest niece, is going from North Medford HS to Southern Oregon. Both girls have played soccer in high school and are really great people. They do have different personalities though, which I wanted to reflect in the different quilts.
For Lauren, I chose to use a package of coordinating fat quarter pieces that I bought on Craftsy. The modern, fresh colors reminded me of her, even though they’re not her favorite color (purple).
After seeing the patterns from Sam Hunter at a quilt guild, I bought the “faster fourteen” one and put together the 14 fat quarters that I thought would look best. Here’s Sam’s version that she uses on the pattern’s cover.
Sam Hunter explaining her quilt
sample of Faster Fourteen
Sharon at Sharon’s Quilt Attic quilted it for me. She used a new long arm machine that is connected to a computer and we chose a design that reminded me of waves. It was mesmerizing to watch the quilting happen automatically, evenly paced and quickly completed. She recommended a bright color thread so it’s “less boring” and I do love how the orange pops and draws out the Oregon State colors for Lauren.
I finished sewing on the binding and mom finished the hand sewing to close the binding and finish the quilt. This top went together in just one day and I love the look of the final product, even though the fabric turned out to be a little busy. It’s definitely a pattern I’ll use again!
in progress
binding on
done!
For Katie, I chose batik fabrics. For her 16th birthday party, Katie had used squares of blue and purple batik fabric from Joann’s for bandannas for the dueling teams of friends and family participating in her birthday “Olympics”. I asked people to give me their bandannas with the hope of making something for Katie someday. Then last summer, I won some free yardage at the Quilter’s Corner Store as part of the Row by Row Experience. Deb helped me pick out coordinating fabrics. I think it suits Katie’s mature, calm, friendly nature to have a colorful quilt that doesn’t look like the normal bright kid friendly colors I usually use, but rather something more for a young adult.
The pattern is Vice Versa from Karla Alexander. She is a talented quilt designer and teacher based in Salem, Oregon. I decided that I want to use this pattern to make a graduation quilt for each of Aaron’s nieces & nephews, but change the fabric to fit their interests or favorite colors. It’ll be fun to figure out what to do for the others next in line!
AnnMarie from our guild quilted it for me. I’ve always admired her work which is also often modern with unique color palettes and straight line quilting. For this project, I asked for some leaf designs to mimic the leaves in the pattern and to remind Katie of her Oregon roots.
Here’s how both quilts looked the day the girls received them, and pics of the girls too! So proud of their accomplishments and life path so far, and looking forward to seeing what next adventures are coming up for both of them.
Each month, the guild hosts a Sewing Saturday where we come together to work on projects. Once a year, the projects are all to make charity quilts. This year, we teamed up in pairs to complete a Scrabble Patch pattern with the help of designer Karla Alexander. She gave each of us help with our Scrabble Patch and also a copy of any pattern we wanted for later. I picked the tumbling blocks (seen below).
sample of finished quilt
another easy pattern
our workspace
My teammate, Ruth, met up with me at Sharon’s Attic Quilt Shop to cut up our pieces (mostly from Ruth’s stash) ahead of time, so when we arrived that morning, we started right away designing our quilt.
our fabric
starting points
blocks to try
one version
rearranged a little
ready for borders
Other people used sports fabric, Hawaiian, floral, and many other color palettes. I took some pictures in black and white to see the contrast and how it helped with designing.
ours in BW
darker fabrics
florals
Hawaiian print
Karla’s tumbling blocks
ready for quilting
At the end of the day, we had finished our top except for adding the borders, which Ruth did at home and then together we sandwiched the quilt (using spray adhesive) while enjoying the company of others in my Piece and Quiet group. I used a straight line quilting pattern on it and Ruth completed the binding. It looks great and is ready to donate to a community organization!
I really enjoy it when people find out I sew and ask “I’ve seen ____ on pinterest/etsy/boutique/store, and I wonder if you could make me one like that.” It stretches me to learn new patterns, work with new fabrics, and personalize something for them.
This summer, my aunt Mary asked me if I could duplicate some owl ipad covers that she saw on Etsy. They were listed for $38 but looked pretty simple in design, and using felt which is an affordable and easy to sew fabric. She already uses a protective cover for her ipad, so this just a cover for her kindergarten students to enjoy. I used an online tutorial and help from my mom to adapt the design.
Cute, right! And the owl body and accent color could be different. I could add other detail or try other animals/designs for embellishment. The loop at the top connects with velcro around the back so that kids can secure the ipad in the case easily.
My aunt also had purchased (from a local bazaar) some potato bags for making baked potatoes in the microwave, but the fabric eventually burned. I followed the pattern on the “Tator Batting” and hopefully my version will be safer! 🙂
Let me know if you’d like me to make a special order for you. Maybe you see another product I made that you’d like in a particular color/fabric scheme, or you see something online that you’d like me to try to make for you….sometimes I procrastinate on finishing such challenges though, I want them to be right, but it takes me awhile to get started. I’ll work on that though since the end results have so far been successful (i.e. doorknob latch, duvet cover, yoga bag, and these two things).
Here’s a quilt that a parent at ISB made for a teacher. Good idea to use this block for signatures and messages woven into the quilt!
