Tag Archives: finished quilt

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I'm so excited for season 15 of Project QUILTING to be underway.

I pieced my improv bird house and then pivoted to people houses for my improv piecing demo at Northern California Quilt Council this past week. Here's what my design wall looked like last weekend.

I cut out nine more houses during my demos that are stacked up waiting to be sewn. I'm excited to get those together and watch the neighborhood on my design wall grow. I finished my bird house into a mini quilt by adding a fused appliqué circle and free motion quilting.

My quilt is approximately 9" x 8" and is finished with a faced binding. Since I didn't have a bird on the front I chose an Alison Glass print with birds and bees for the back.

Thanks for visiting! I'm linking up on Kim's blog for the Project QUILTING Bird House challenge. Congratulations to everyone else who participated in the challenge this week. Next challenge drops on January 21st.

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This week the Project QUILTING challenge is Sew Not a Square. Specifically, the quilt could not be a square or have any squares in it's composition. "use no square shapes in doing it"

I was out of town until Monday evening on my trip to QuiltCon and came down with symptoms and tested positive for Covid on Tuesday evening {whomp whomp} so I've been isolating from my family. I've also had limited energy as you can imagine. I still wanted to participate in this week's challenge so I grabbed a few supplies from my studio to bring into isolation.

When starting a quilt challenge with just a day left until the deadline, it is wise to think of how to get it done. Here were my rules for myself.

▪️Work very small.
▪️Limit options.
▪️Don’t overthink it.

I knew it would all be hand stitched. And I decided I would make it round. I began by cutting out a small circle from my batting (not sure why I didn't trim after the piecing). Then I pieced my smallest, irregular scraps using pearl cotton thread.

Once I was done stitching the quilt top I trimmed the backing fabric, and then the quilt top, to match the batting circle.

Once it was all trimmed, I cut strips of fabric a bit wider than 1/4" on a bias and stretched the strips a bit to fray the edges. Then I used more pearl cotton to kind of couch my fabric strips over the raw edge of my quilt. I'm not sure what to call the stitching I used... is it a blanket stitch?

1084 days from the start of the pandemic to my first case. (I'm thankful that after a few days I'm starting to improv.) And I have never made what I have considered a Covid Quilt or Pandemic Quilt... so this is My Little Covid Quilt. It's about 2 inches in diameter.

Thanks for visiting! I'm linking up on Kim's blog for the Project QUILTING Sew Not a Square challenge.

As a longtime participant of Project QUILTING, I'm excited to be a sponsor this year. Each week as a Weekly Sponsor I have contributed a PDF pattern to one winner. I'm also a Grand Prize Sponsor. The prize is a spot in one of my self-hosted open enrollment live virtual workshops.

Happy quilting!

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Another late night Saturday start for this week's Project QUILTING challenge, A Novel Project. 67 minutes from fabric pull to finished mini mini quilt this evening. Woo hoo!

At the beginning of the week I shared other quilts I have made that were inspired by books, but I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to make for the challenge. Earlier in the week, I scrolled through my Goodreads of what I've read in the last couple years and wasn't particularly motivated by what I have read recently.

I've been inspired by Margaret Fleisher's improv book cover blocks. See a few of them in this Instagram post and hear Margaret talk about her book cover project at about 6 minutes in to this video. You can also scroll back farther in her instagram feed to see the posts of each cover in 2020.

One of my basic tenets for Project QUILTING is to work small. While I admire those who make a baby quilt, lap quilt, or larger, in a week, I know that my schedule and bandwidth do not allow for that. I usually aim for 16" square or smaller. And the later in the week I get started, the smaller my quilts tend to be. This week was emotionally and physically challenging, and while I considered options and looked for inspiration numerous times, nothing was grabbing me. This evening before I settled on my back up idea, I took one more scroll through the books I've read in the last couple years and this time the cover of 32 Yolks by Eric Ripert stood out. I really like the strong graphic nature of the cover. So I pulled some fabric and got to work.

While I could have done some improv curve piecing I wasn't in the mood for the potential fussiness of that avenue. And I really loved the frayed edge of my scrap of yellow fabric. This drove two decisions. (1) I would use fusible appliqué. And (2) my yolk wouldn't be a curve at all, instead using what I had with the frayed piece of yellow. I got out my MistyFuse and improv cut a piece of blue fabric for the lower right. (I cut this one twice before I had a shape I liked.) Then I picked at the curved edge to fray the edge of the blue fabric to complement my frayed yellow fabric. Next, I cut MistyFuse to fit my yellow and blue fabrics and appliquéd them in place. Note: the fusible was applied just inside the frayed edge so that element could be a little bit dimensional.

I used two cardstock mats to envision the trimmed composition, added minimal quilting along the inner edge of the yellow and blue fabrics, and trimmed it 1/4" larger in each direction than the finished quilt would be. Then I used my 1/4" food to topstitch 1/4" from the edge around the quilt twice, then I trimmed down to 1/8" beyond my topstitching.

My mini mini quilt, Just One Yolk, finished just under 3" x 4".

The back has my fusible "Sarah Goer Quilts" label.

And here's my finished quilt next to the cover. Thank you to Margaret for the inspiration!

Thanks for visiting! I'm linking up on Kim's blog for the Project QUILTING A Novel Project challenge.

As a longtime participant of Project QUILTING, I'm excited to be a sponsor this year. Each week as a Weekly Sponsor I have contributed a PDF pattern to one winner. I'm also a Grand Prize Sponsor. The prize is a spot in one of my self-hosted open enrollment live virtual workshops.