a new quilt for a big-girl bed

First of all, I just wanted to thank you all for the kind comments on my Scrap Hoover quilt. It is getting tons of love at our house.

My newest finish (I finished it weeks ago, alas the lazy-blogger syndrome is still in effect) is the first quilt I've ever made that will go on an actual bed. Lucy has been in her own big-girl bed for a few months now and loving it.  Of course I had to mark the occasion with a special quilt just for her. When I saw Amber's Crazy Nine Patch, I fell in love and knew it would be the perfect pattern.

This was such a fun and satisfying top to piece. The tutorial can be found on Elizabeth's blog - easy breezy. I just chose lots of prints from my stash in bright, sunny colors that coordinated with the sheet set I bought for the bed and matched my girl's spunky personality.  For the quilting I used a flower design from Angela Walter's awesome book. 

The backing is a plaid from the DS Quilts collection, and the binding is a sweet Aunt Grace lavender dot.

Lucy and all of her friends love the quilt.

I'm posting and running today! Gotta get on that travel-handmade Sewing Summit fun - only a few weeks away!

the full monty

Enough teaser photos, already! My Scrap Hoover is finally bound and photographed! This quilt is my biggest and most proud finish yet so please bear with me during this heavily-pictured post. And as a side note, if you've never seen the film The Full Monty, you should. Anyways, back to the quilt.

I started this way back when sometime last year after I received my copy of Material Obsession 2. I fell hard straight away for Sarah Fielke's pattern Maple Leaf Rag and knew it would be mandatory for  my overflowing scrap bucket.

This was a very long-term project, but the piecing was so much fun it kept it interesting. Every time I worked on it I loved digging up new combinations. It's essentially a spiderweb pattern with crazy-pieced background pieces as opposed to the usual solid negative space. The beauty of this is that you can use every tiny, weirdly shaped scrap in your bin. Something about finding a home for trash-bin worthy miniscule scrap of a favorite fabric was quite thrilling.

Lucy approves of the quilt too.

I will say that the piecing of this top is most imperfect, but adds to the charm I think. Lots of bulky seams made accuracy difficult so I just had to squelch my inner perfectionist on this one.

The most special thing about this quilt for me is that it has because it's a made from all scraps of previous projects it has become a journal of everything I've done up to this point in my sewing career. I love seeing the bits and bobs left over from Lucy and Olivia's baby quilts, or a small piece of a fabric I no longer have in my stash.

The backing is one of my favorite prints from Anna Maria Horner's Loulouthi line called Summer Totem. And that drop-dead gorgeous quilting? I can't take credit for that. This was done by none other than the fabulously-talented Angela Walters. Angela's work is even more stunning in person and makes me aspire to be a better FMQer.

Finally the weather has cooled down enough so I could finish hand-sewing the binding down. This is another AMH print I'd been hoarding from her Chocolate Lollipop range.

So that's it! I hope this quilt will become a family heirloom to be loved by my children and grand-children. 

I hope you all are enjoying these last few days of summer. I'm a little excited for fall and all of the wool sweaters and cozy quilts that come with it :)

works in progress.......monday

I'm going to have three big finished quilts (and a new sweater) to show you soon!

Happy Monday!

sometimes I forget to blog.

Well, it would seem that I forget to blog almost all of the time lately. Sorry for that. I love this space and sharing with you all, but I guess these little people are keeping me so busy that this is taking a backseat for now. Thanks for still popping in to see what I've been up to.

So what have I been up to? I've been squeezing in sewing when it feels right. Besides working on a quilt for Lucia's new big-girl bed, which I'll share soon, I finished this Summersville Strings quilt top. Wow, string quilts are a ton of work, and frankly this one burnt me out for awhile, but I love all the juicy, summer-y colors in this one and I promise to baste and quilt soon so I can share the whole thing! 

I also had to drag this one out of hibernation. This is my Ode to Denyse Schmidt color wheel spiderweb. I started this one over two years ago, but being a king size it just gets a little daunting and gets pushed aside again. And yes, I have no idea what I was thinking when I decided to go for a king. It's not likely my husband is going to let me use this for our bed quilt ;)

And while the sewing is a bit slow-going, I've still been knitting like crazy. I finished my Urban last month,

More details on my Ravelry page, here.

And yesterday I just finished blocking my new and most favorite knit yet, Raiun. It's the perfect basic little cardi in a lovely neutral color. It seemed to take forever, but well worth it I think.

I hope you all are enjoying your summer! I'll see you soon(ish), hopefully with my completed Scrap Hoover to show off!

be still my beating heart

Remember this quilt? My Scrap Hoover? It is back from it's spa treatment at the studio of none other than the stellar Angela Walters.

It is beautiful and I can hardly wait to show you the whole thing. But first I must bind, bind, bind. Full reveal soon.

I hope you all are well. In other happy news, it seems my sewing mojo is returning :)

reunited and it feels so good

I'm not sure what's going on with me but sewing has still been sporadic at best lately. But I'm staying busy and happy so I guess that's what counts. I do have a project to share with you, though! It's an oldie but a goodie - my newly quilted Flea Market Fancy Wonky Log Cabin quilt.

You've seen this before, right? So why am I showing it to you again? Well, this one has spent the last two years in hibernation while until I finished the very tedious job of unpicking all of the horrendous quilting. I made this quilt at the very beginning of my sewing career, before I had any idea of what I was doing. I jumped right in to my precious FMF stash and started slicing and dicing. I still love the piecing of this quilt top but when it came time to do the actual quilting it was a mess. I free-motioned it on an old cheapo Brother and let me tell you, the stitched were ugly and uneven. After I got my Bernina 44QE and quilted my first project I couldn't even stand the sight of this one, so the ripper came out. Little did I know what a job I was in for!

Anyways, I thought this would be useful information to share with any of you who have a quilt lying around that you love but detest the quilting on. Unpicking a million little stitched was not the most fun I've ever had, but the end result was worth it.

I left the binding and backing in place and just pinned every so often as the stitched came out. When I was finally all done, I FMQed the original stipple but this time with pretty, even stitches in the correct tension. After a spin in the washer and dryer, VOILA! All the little holes from the original quilting disappeared and the makeover was complete! 

This one is back in regular snuggling rotation.

In other news, someone just turned one year old! Check out the cake moustache! Olivia is getting sweeter every day.

Delancey Cardigan

If you follow me on Instagram or Flickr, chances are you've already seen my newest finished knit, but I wanted to show it off here on the blog too. It's the Delancey Cardigan, and I think it's my favorite sweater to date.

I knit this as my entry for the big MadMay madelinetosh knit-along on Ravelry. What a fun pattern to knit! The construction is really interesting so I chugged right through it. I'm so happy with the fit.

I used the DK Twist base in the colors Ink, Oceana and Ultramarine Violet. It's still cold here in Seattle so it's already getting lots of wear.

I'm very grateful for my knitting right now. I seem to have misplaced my sewing mojo so it's nice to have another productive hobby to fall back on. Knitting is portable and just so much easier to work on when my girls are awake. I miss my sewing machine but for now rolling around in my stash will just have to suffice.