New Flickr Group!

One of my lovely customers this weekend, Paige, asked about sending me photos of quilts she made from my patterns.  I had meant to set up a Flickr group for just this purpose, but it hadn't yet made it to the top of the to-do list.

So, now it has!  If you have made any quilts or other items from any of my patterns or made a quilt inspired by one of mine, I'd love to have you add it to the group.  It is so exciting for me to see another quilter start with an idea of mine and make it their own.  Whether you follow the pattern to the letter or just use one of my quilts as a jumping off point, your personality and fabric choices are so much fun to see.

Paige had another idea that made me smack my forehead and say "Now why didn't I think of that before?" which was to have a discount deal for a purchase of multiple patterns.  So, now in my Etsy shop, you can buy three patterns of your choice for $24.

If you have any ideas to share, I'm always happy to hear them!

Habitat Blocks

Even before we finished our Robert Kaufman No Prints Allowed challenge, Free Spirit offered modern quilt guilds an opportunity to get free Jay McCarroll Habitat fabric.  Being in the midst of the RK challenge, we weren't quite ready for another one at the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild.  But, of course, not being crazy, we wanted to take advantage of the free fabric!

After some discussion, we decided to make a charity quilt.  We each took some fat quarters with a promise to add some solids of our own and bring back as many 12" blocks as we could make from what we took.

I took two fat quarters and made the blocks shown here.  It was a lot of fun.  I don't usually make just one block at a time where I can do anything I want.

The first block I made was the large star block (upper left).  I've been thinking of making a quilt with star blocks in it for a while so I decided to try this one out. I like the pinwheel effect, but it didn't strike me as very "modern" so I made another smaller one so I could add fabric around the edges to make it wonky (lower right).  I was surprised at how much fabric wonkiness requires :)

The triangle block (upper right) was next.  This is a trial run for the last block I owe in the Mid Mod Bee.  The fabric design hides all my crazy little seams nicely.

My final block is the cross block (lower left) inspired by Carol's quilt and the many other cross quilts I've seen around the past year or so.  I may play around with this block idea to see what I can come up with if I make more of them.

It will be fun to see what everyone else did and how many blocks we end up with.

Shop Hop Report

We had a great time on our custom shop hop yesterday.  Even some pretty serious rain and lightning didn't slow us down.  Our first stop was Sew Unique Threads in Battle Creek.  What a wonderful quilt shop!  Lots of great modern fabrics and lines we all loved.  Most of us just about broke our budgets at this first store, but nobody was complaining.

Next we went to Bernina Sewing Center in Kalamazoo.  A more traditional fabric selection, but nice.  The ladies at Bernina pointed us to Field's Fabrics just down the road.  I had been to a Fields Fabrics in Holland, MI before, but didn't realize there was one in Kalamazoo too.  Apparently, there are seven of them in western Michigan.  Field's is the first fabric store I have been to in ages that had clothing fabric nice enough to make me want to go back to my garment sewing roots.  We had also planned to go to Quilts at the Marshall House in Marshall, but it was too late by the time we left Field's.

So, here is what I got!  Clockwise from the top left green fabric:  Both the green and the white on the left are a check fabric from Origins by Basic Grey (Moda), the charm pack is Jovial by Basic Grey; the white underneath it is also from the Jovial line, a white "grunge" type; next some soft teals - Grunge by Basic Grey (Moda), Natures Elements and Floral Elements by Art Gallery, a teal dot from Natural Effects by Michele D'Amore (Marcus); Bahama Blue and Pink Kona cottons; the uneven black, white and dark grey stripe is Dilly Dally by Me and My Sister (Moda), the even black and white stripe is from Sis Boom by Jennifer Paganelli (Westminster) and finally, a fat quarter of Lotus by Amy Butler!   Whew!

The white grunge, the teals and the Konas are all for in progress projects - the rest is stash buying or because I just couldn't resist :)  Now I need to take a break from the fabric buying and get to some serious sewing!

Custom Shop Hop

A few members of the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild and I are looking forward to our own customized shop hop on Saturday.  Last May, Andrea from Brighton Modern Quilters (and Creative Quilt Kits in Brighton) and I met Sue, the owner of Sew Unique Threads at a quilt show.  Sue was a vendor and looked like she had lots of stuff that modern quilters like so we decided to make a mini shop hop of our own.

Sew Unique Threads in Battle Creek will be our first stop and we may also stop at Bernina Sewing Center in Kalamazoo and Quilts at the Marshall House in Marshall.  I will be looking for some fabric to go with the Daisy Janie Shades of Grey I cut up the other day.  It should be a fun day!

Remember these?

I'm starting a new project today using these lovely Daisy Jane Shades of Grey organic fabrics!  The Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild has a sew-in today and I am so looking forward to cutting into these.

The quilt I'm planning to make is a version of a much earlier quilt.  I'll need to do some shopping for the fabrics to go with the greys as I don't have the right colors in my stash.  I'll be sure to show you what I get!

On another note, I realized I talked a bit last year about my older daughter's college search, but I don't recall ever letting you know what happened!  I'm sure you have all been on the edges of your seats :)

Michelle is going to the University of Chicago!  She is very excited and we have been having some fun shopping for all the things she'll need.  Chicago uses a quarter system, so school doesn't start until late September.  They get almost a month off in December but then go thru mid June.

My younger daughter, Heather, will be a junior in high school this year, so we'll be starting the whole search process all over again soon :)  It is so exciting to see them continue to develop into such lovely young women.

I finished a quilt!

If sewing has been a little light around here, finishing something has been even more elusive!  Yesterday, I finished this quilt for Cheryl's Quilts Recover.  Unfortunately, it is past her deadline, but I'm sure she will be able to use it somewhere :)  My first post about this quilt is here.

The blocks in this quilt are big - about 20".  (A block is made up of two diamond shapes in each of the four colors.)  I know that in order to get certain sized half square triangles, you have to cut squares at whatever inches plus something with eighths of an inch.  If precision is required, I can figure this out.  Since this quilt did not need to be a specific size, it didn't really matter if the blocks came out a few eighths of an inch bigger or not - as long as they were all the same size.  So, I used 6" strips - which gave HST's of approximately 5".  With 4 HST's across each block and the final layout having three blocks across by four blocks long, the quilt is a generous 60" x 80".

When it came to quilting, the speedy part of me just wanted to do a diagonal all over.  But the part of me that doesn't really like black thread on white or light colors (or vice versa) prevailed.  I quilted inside each non- black "diamond" shape with light grey thread and then inside each large black diamond with black thread.  If you want to see this a little better, click on the photo to enlarge it.

What next?  Finish up a UFO or start a new project? :)  What would you do?

We had a relaxing weekend

at this lovely place near Elk Rapids, MI!  My younger daughter took this photo at dusk.  So peaceful!

More fabric!

I know I have said this here before, but when people ask about how I buy fabric, I usually say that I tend not to buy fabric just because I like it.  I prefer to buy fabric for which I have a plan.

While this is still true, I've been doing a lot of buying because it is pretty lately!  I bought the Marcia Derse fabrics not too long ago and recently succumbed to the lure of the Shades of Grey organic fabric by Daisy Janie and a fat quarter bundle of Basic Grey's Moda Grunge.

I got this Color Stack of grey and the Grunge from Pink Chalk Fabrics.  The Color Stack includes all the Shades of Grey fabric except one and adds two solids.  I have admired this line for a long time - ever since I first saw it.  However, my brain has been busy with other projects and I haven't taken the time to think about what I might do with so many lovely grey fabrics.  So, I put off buying any.  It recently occurred to me that I might not be able to get any of these fabrics later, so I'd better get them now.  So I did :)

The fat quarter bundle of Grunge fabrics was inspired by some paintings I saw recently at the annual Ann Arbor Art Fair.  The paintings had a similar texture to the Grunge so I got some of those too.

I wonder if I am buying more fabric than usual because I am sewing less than usual?  Life on the home front and work outside the home front have both been very busy this summer, so I've been sewing less than I like to.  I always hope to get more sewing time in, but, realistically, with my younger daughter going back to high school in the next month and my older daughter going off to college, it isn't likely I'll have time on my hands any time soon.

This is all wonderfully right on one level.  I'm lucky to have such wonderful daughters doing exciting things.  On another level, I do miss the sewing!  I hope you all hang around until I can get back on track again.

Fun!

Look at the great table runners my students made at our Quilting Unlimited class on Sunday!  From left to right, they are Amy, Anne, Dawn and Liz.  There was a fifth student signed up for the class but she had a last minute scheduling conflict and wasn't able to make it.

These four ladies came up with such different takes on Celebration!  Amy used a bright pink batik for her background, a purply/bluish mottle for her bias and a lighter pink for her border.  Anne chose a dark blue snowman batik for her background, a light blue snowflake print for her bias and a turquoise metallic print for her border.  Dawn chose Christmas fabrics - a red tone on tone for her background, a cream pine cone print for her bias and a cream and green holly print for her border.  Liz chose a pale green background, an orange and white print for her bias and a coordinating yellow and white print for her border.  Liz also added a small inner border of the same orange and white print as her bias.  It doesn't show up well in this photo, but looked terrific in real life (and she mitred her border)!

One of the things I love best about quilting is that we can all start with the same idea and then make it our own.  Thanks, ladies, for being such great students!