Tumbling blocks with aqua and linen

Yet another tumbling blocks pillow, but this one will live in my house.

After the last pillow talk swap, the boys in the house were really loving the tumbling blocks design - they like everything that looks 3-D, so I decided to make another one.

This time I chose natural linen and aqua colors because they fit in well with the living room sofa and coordinate with the other existing pillows. I also used a gray linen and lots of different prints of aqua fabric.

I used 2" 60 degree triangles this time, so my blocks are a bit bigger. I also got to try out my new free motion quilting design which I've been practicing for the ORBC FMQ QAL ~ translation: Old Red Barn Company Free-motion Quilting Quilt-along led by Debbie Brown. ha! That's a mouthful! Here's a close-up...

And on a completely different note: I made key lime cupcakes using a recipe recommended by Emily of Crazy Old Lady quilts - I made cupcakes instead of a cake because we are on a cupcake kick at our house. OMG! So Yummy!! I modified the recipe by adding some lime zest to both the batter and the frosting oh and I used regular white cake mix because my store didn't carry lemon. Delish!! Try it out!

Happy Sewing and Baking!

Summertime!

Summer! It's officially here! And it calls for a new beach tote, don't you think?Well, yeah! And all things beachy and water-related and well, you know, summery!

I really love large-scale prints, and I thought this new Loulouthi print from Anna Maria Horner would be perfect for summer.

I used the laminate version for the outside of the bag to help keep it from getting soiled/wet. I don't think I've sewn a bag with laminate before and I will say it was a bit of a challenge but more on that later. I used the multi-tasker tote pattern for this bag which I have made many times and it's the perfect all purpose tote-about and a great size for just about everything. Plus it whips up super fast, what's not to love?

So I guess if you are going to sew laminate you really need to get one of those teflon coated feet or roller foot to help the foot glide over the plastic. I don't have one of those feet, so I made do by placing a sheet of paper over the seam and sewing on that to help it glide which worked pretty well. The paper rips off easily afterwards, but I really should've used something more like tissue rather than standard computer paper. Some of my top stitching is a bit wonky where the paper pulled the stitches a bit - so I'm not going to show you any close-ups. It's a pool bag so I'm gonna roll with it - drink another margarita and forget all about my wonky stitching. It's summertime right? ~ no stress allowed!

Happy Sewing!

PTS 5

It's that time again in Flickr-land, time for the ever popular Pillow Talk Swap, round 5.

This is a quickie round without the full compliment of usual cohorts, but quite fun nevertheless. Partners were given out a few weeks ago and I've just finished up my pillow for this round. I hope my partner likes it! My partner is a bit more of a traditional quilter from what I can tell, so I hope that this choice reflects their tastes. I chose to go with english paper-piecing of 60 degree diamonds into these tumbling block shapes.

The Y chromosomes in my house both liked it but then again, they are always eyeballing things with Escher-esque overtones, so that was no surprise.

Lots of bright colors which my partner seems to prefer and paired with starkly contrasting black and white. I used some of Carolyn Gavin's Spring street line as the border/back and added some gathers to give it more texture.

Off to other parts of the union she goes....where will she surface next?...

Happy Sewing!

Free-motion QAL

Are you interested in learning more about free-motion quilting? Well, I certainly need some more practice in this area, so I joined the Stop, drop and roll QAL hosted by Old Red Barn Co and Debbie Brown quilts. Won't you join us?

My progress so far...

I put together this quilt top,

but so far we are just practicing with scrap sandwiches..

What the final quilt will be is a mystery even to me!

Stay tuned and Happy Sewing!

Birthday Celebration ~ Sale on Fabric!

June is my Birthday Month at Trillium Design. So in celebration, I am offering 20% off in the shoppe for the remainder of the month. Enter the code BIRTHDAY20 in the coupon box when you checkout and you will get 20% off your total purchase price. Lots of great and hard to find goodies in the shop, so please check it out. I'm closing the shop after the sale for the remainder of the summer, so get your fabric while you can. Let's go fabric shopping! Just click on the shoppe logo:



And afterwards, let's go eat some cake! Happy Sewing!

Rogue River rapids

Quite a few months ago, actually I think it was before xmas, I purchased an Accuquilt Go Baby cutter. This little cutter is useful for cutting out quilt block pieces and applique shapes. I purchased it with an eye to using it for cutting out circles and other shapes that are more difficult to cut out quickly. I confess I didn't really buy it for quilting of all things, but I did buy the drunkard's path die to go with it.

I finally had the chance to pull this baby out of the closet and give it a spin this past weekend and rapidly produced hundreds and hundreds of curved block pieces. Hmmm, now to piece them all. That might be the Go Baby's biggest drawback! You can cut out many block pieces quite quickly and get yourself into big trouble in no time.


Now I have this quilt design all ready to go

and lots and lots and LOTS! of curved seams to sew

- can you see where this went wrong?

Yeah, curved seams although not impossible, are more time-consuming to sew and require a bit more care shall we say? So I have been slogging away all week at piecing these little quarter circle blocks and have now pieced around 3/4 of the 280 blocks needed. Yup 280.

I would say that if you have the money to purchase the full-sized Accuquilt cutter, then do so, because you could then at least purchase dies for larger blocks and therefore not have to sew quite so many of them. For example the larger cutter has a drunkard's path block that is 7" finished, or double the size of the go baby's die. The smaller curved pieces are also harder to piece because the curve is much tighter. Something to keep in mind for anyone who is thinking of going in this direction.

A quickie test layout of the progress.

The drunkards path die for the go baby produces a 3.5" finished quarter block, so it will take quite a few to get up to a lap quilt size. But I'm working away at it and cutting out the pieces is a breeze. It wastes less fabric then I would've thought because those cutters are laid out with minimum waste on the die and because you can accordion fold the fabric to cut multiple layers at a time. I also discovered that you can use charm squares (5" squares) and if you lay them carefully on the die, they can be used to cut out the two halves of the drunkard's path block with virtually no waste.

I'll post more on the progress of this quilt later on...

Happy Sewing