Yearly Archives: 2016

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My friend Wendy was hosting the Disney Mug Rug Swap on Instagram and I just couldn't resist joining in. Easy peasy: Buy a mug, make a mug rug, include one extra. My partner listed a variety of Disney interests and I dialed in on Finding Dory, especially after I found this adorable mug.

I immediately visualized an improv pieced ocean for Dory (and friends?) and eventually decided on purchasing a little bit of yardage of Finding Dory fabric by Camelot from Fat Quarter Shop. I started by shopping my stash for an ocean fabric pull.

Then I went for it with my first improv curved piecing. It all went together pretty well. The batik (second from top in the finished piece) was a little tricky, since it doesn't have as much stretch to it. I simply overlapped the fabrics I was piecing and freehand rotary cut a curve through both at the same time, then I eased them together with a 1/4" seam allowance as I machine pieced them together.

Generally I press my seams open when piecing, but this is one of those times that pressing open didn't make sense. I pressed to the blue on my first seam, so I just continued pressing up on all my seams. Here's the finished piece, front and back, before I trimmed it down.

At this point it was more placemat sized than mug rug sized, so I had to trim it down. I decided on vertical so I could arrange my characters in a way that they mug wouldn't cover them up. I trimmed down to just over 8" x 11".

My next step was to add the characters. I used fusible web to attach Dory, Nemo and Hank, then stitched around the edge of each.

Then I went to town quilting. I used my walking foot and quilted smooth curves to complement my piecing using a variety of blue threads (all 50 wt. Aurifil).

I was able to find a piece of remnant binding (from Finally) that was large enough to avoid a scrappy binding and worked with my color palette. I think this quilt would have been lovely with a faced binding, but I just didn't have the time to learn a new skill at this stage of the process. :-)

I opted to back the quilt with the licensed fabric, but I placed it in the horizontal direction. I liked the repeat better that way, and this gives Lisa options for a vertical or horizontal mug rug.

For my extra, I opted to make a large Open Wide Zippered Pouch (free tutorial by Noodlehead). (Shown in first picture.)

 

Lisa and I happened to be assigned each other for the swap. Here's the super generous package she sent me. She chose a nifty mug that has an electric mug warmer to go with it and made me a bag and a keychain. Plus she decorated the tote box and sent a Mickey Mouse raglan t-shirt pattern plus a bunch of other little goodies. So sweet of her!

 

Thanks for visiting! I'm linking up to TGIFF, Finish it Up Friday, and Needle and Thread Thursday.

Linking up to the Q4 Finishes Link-Up. See my Q4 list here.

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I started my Swoon project long ago. It was born out of a fabric pull that I cultivated slowly, over the course of a couple months. While purple is my favorite color, this combination of lime, teal and navy has been my favorite color palette for the past year and a half. I used my scraps from the Swoon project to make my Sew My Stash Mini swap package. Then in February, I used my scraps from this palette to start my Creative HST project at QuiltCon. It wasn't until this post that I noticed that my first rosette of my La Passacaglia project is in my favorite palette, too!

Creative HSTs

I made a fair amount of progress on my creative HST project.

I chopped up my slab and pieced my half square triangles only to realize that my first 92 blocks had the strips going the opposite direction in the initial HSTs.

Thankfully the scrappy look is forgiving enough that the finished blocks play nicely together. I now have 148 finished blocks. There's a lot of trimming in my future. Then I'll throw them up on the design wall and get to piecing the quilt top. I have a couple ideas for how I want to quilt it, but I'm open to suggestions on that front.

 

La Passacaglia

My hand piecing is creeping along slowly. I got the third star attached to the next ring of the first rosette.

 

Swaps

I have three open swaps at the moment. I'll be shipping the Heather Ross Mini Swap package next week. This fabric pull is destined for a swap extra.

The other two swaps don't have deadlines until early 2017. I made my inspiration mosaic for the Hazel Mania Mini Swap and I'm looking forward to getting started on my plan for my partner. The other swap is the Modern Quilt Guild Swap. No plan on that one yet.

Makers are tagged on Instagram.

 

Pattern Writing & Blog Changes

I've finally taken the leap to dedicate time on my calendar to work on pattern writing and some changes I want to make to my blog. My first pattern will be a free pattern for my baby quilt Hummingbirds. (Pattern title TBD.)

 

Thank you for visiting! I'm linking up to Midweek Makers and Needle and Thread Thursday.

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After finishing her first quilt, Rainbow Swift 2, my daughter decided that she would make a doll quilt as a gift for a friend. I think she was inspired by the fact that my son's second quilt, Rainbow Swift, was a doll quilt that he made to her.

While on our family vacations to Portland and Southern California this summer, she chose some fabric to start her own stash. For this project, she picked solely from her stash. Her first choice was to use the cat fabric for the backing. Then she chose the "stripes" of fabric for the front of her quilt.

She opted for simple lines of quilting (similar to her brother's quilting on Rainbow Swift, but going perpendicular to the stripes of fabric) and wanted to add the quilting of her handprint like we did on her first quilt. I traced her hand and free motion quilted that part.

She hand wrote her label. (First name removed in pic.)

I keep remnant binding pieces to use on small projects and for scrappy bindings. She initially chose two pieces of binding from my remnants, but when I was making additional purple binding for my own project I offered to make enough extra purple so hers would be all one fabric and she liked that option. Last weekend we were finally able to finish up the quilt by attaching the binding. Now to deliver it to Ellie!

Thank you for visiting!

Linking up to the Q4 Finishes Link-Up. See my Q4 list here.