Bloggers' Quilt Festival! Funhouse Quilt

It's Bloggers' Quilt Festival again!  I can't believe the time has passed so quickly since the last one.  My entry this time is my "Funhouse Quilt."

This quilt has an awesome history.  When I very first started quilting, my mother-in-law lent me a book called The It's Okay If You Sit On My Quilt Book (here is the updated version of the book I read).  In a nutshell, this book teaches you how to look at a block or quilt and figure out how it's constructed...and then do it easier.  So what did I do?  I found a really cool looking block that was in the book...and then did it harder!  I was messing around with EQ5 and drew it up and then found myself rotary cutting funky angles and sewing seven million set-in seams (without knowing they were set-in seams or that set-in seams were supposed to be hard).  This was also before I really grasped the concept of a 1/4" seam.  I just sewed with the fabric aligned with the edge of the presser-foot.  This wouldn't have been a problem at all...except for a few things.  The tedium of putting this baby together was getting to me, so I put it in a drawer and took a little break (read: 4 years).

Meanwhile, I got rid of the sewing machine I had been using and started using a different one.  Can you see where this is going?  Yes...when I got done, I had a bunch of different sizes of finished blocks...(because I'm not a perfect quilter, I didn't even have two different sizes, I had a range of sizes...some around 10.5 inches, some around 10.25 inches, some around 10.75 inches).  Yikes!  So I had to use the little trick I developed on this quilt, where I measured and then marked each side of each block with a colored pin according to its' dimensions (big, medium, or small) and then tried my best to match them up.  When it was all done, it made my eyes do weird things (lots of not-square squares and things mess with my head...kind of like a funhouse mirror)---and THAT is why it's called the Funhouse Quilt.

When I got it all done late last summer, I begged my amazing sister to quilt it for me.  Luckily, she took pity on my poor pregnant-and-nesting soul and quilted it for me.  I'm thrilled with what she came up with. The backing is dark blue minky and the quilting looks as good on the back as it does on the front.

 

 Swirls and flowers...SO cute!

A few weeks before my baby was due, I got a lovely package in the mail from my sister with this quilt (and a few others and some super-fun birthday surprises) inside.  I got to work and machine-sewed the binding on to quilt and then decided to hand-finish it.  I'll probably never get rid of this quilt because I worked on it while I was sort of in labor with my baby.  I say sort of because I woke up to pressure waves (contractions) and went out in to the living room to sit on my birth ball and zone out (I do Hypnobabies).  But NOTHING was happening, so I started sewing the binding.  I did that for a few hours, had a conversation with my husband about buying some equipment, then went back to bed. Later that day, we had our new addition.  Don't worry, between nursing the baby and wrangling the older kids it only took me two and a half more months to finish getting the binding all the way done.  To celebrate, we decided to go to the park and take some pictures!

Hope you're enjoying the quilt festival!!!

 

I'm at it again!

I think making quilts for Project Linus might be an addiction.  Even when I don't really intend to do it, I end up doing it anyway.  This time, I was acting out of guilt.  See, a long time ago, someone donated some AWESOME blue and turquoise fabric to our local Project Linus chapter.  This fabric was passed along to me to turn in to something amazing.  I've been looking at it trying to decide what to do with it for, um, probably 4 years now.

Then, while browsing the last Bloggers' Quilt Festival photos, I found the perfect pattern.  It's a paper piecing pattern by Sassafrass Lane Designs called Lombard Street.  The problem was, it was such a huge pain in the tail and looked SO good when I got done that I didn't want to give it away.  Instead, I just decided to trade a yard of QSQ fabric from my stash and make another (smaller) paper-pieced quilt to donate.  So this is what some lucky kiddo is getting.

The one with the awesome blue and turquoise fabric is still waiting to be quilted and bound.  I'm planning to put cuddle fleece on it like I did with this one.  I just ordered more 505 Spray Adhesive (very important, see below).

I decided to do a scrappy binding and (even though I'm historically not a huge fan of scrappy bindings) I think it turned out pretty well.  I sewed around the outsides of all the triangles with my sewing machine.  There's no batting in this quilt...just minky on the back, so it's light and summery.

And then, with the leftovers from the triangle quilt, I made this:

See how fabric-sheary and bubbly it looks?  Yeah, THAT is what happens when you use cuddle fleece on the back of a quilt and don't use spray adhesive to stick the layers together first.  Ohhh well.  Live and learn.

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Out of hiding...

I'm coming out of blogger hiding again for the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  Sad that it takes the remote chance of willing a prize to get me to post, huh?.  But in my defense, I have been busy since the last festival...being pregnant, having the flu while pregnant, having a ruptured eardrum, recovering, having a baby, nursing said baby...I also quilted like CRAZY to get some UFOs done and sent to my amazing sister to quilt on her long-arm.  Now I just need to get them bound and photographed so I can show them off properly.

Between all the winter illness and the arrival of our new little cutie (whom I am now feeding while typing this one-handed), I got a lovely little package in the mail...a bunch of my quilts, beautifully quilted and ready to be bound.  I made this quilt to test a pattern for my sister.  In return, she agreed to quilt it for me (she did all the others out of pure sisterly love and awesomeness).  I backed this quilt with minky and was THRILLED with how it turned out.  I gave it to one of my sisters-in-law as a baby present but it was super hard not to keep it for myself!
 

And there you have it.  I tried really hard to get good photos of the quilting but, alas, my photography skills and camera were not up to the challenge.

Enjoy the festival!