This little baby quilt is made up out of fun prints from the most recent line from Monaluna, Taali. This is another color combo I might not have considered, but I love it! I think it’s bright and cheery, and wonderfully appropriate for either a boy or girl (and who can resist those cute sheep?!)

I went smaller in size on this one, in the hopes that the smaller size will mean I’ll actually get a chance to quilt it! (I have quite the stack going of quilts that need quilting… so many in fact that I finally decided to send one out to be quilted. It’ll be the first time I’ve sent one to be quilted, so I’m kind of excited!) Anyway, yesterday I managed to finish the backing, so now I’ll just be waiting for a long nap from Max to get a start on the quilting!

Sparkle Punch quilt along
Swoon Along
Made in Cherry quilt along

Anyway… the winner, as selected by good old random.org is #83, Sarah, who plans to make a quilt for her mom inspired by the sunrise on her drive to work. Congrats Sarah!

I couldn’t get this combo out of my head, and just knew I wanted to see it as patchwork. These are 6″ squares, and came together so quickly!

I wanted the typewriter print to be the focus, so I added in lots of solids, as well as several other basics, including those gorgeous (and super soft, I might add!) circles from Laurie Wisbrun’s new Modern Whimsy line. I’m quite happy with this one, and especially love that Melody’s great print inspired this fun color combo!

At night I’ve still been doing a bit of knitting. It seems I’ve graduated from the straight scarves of my past to cowls. As with scarves, I just keep making more. At some point I hope to try a sweater, but until then, there may just be a couple more cowls in my future. It’s Vermont, after all! This is the Dovetail cowl, and you can find details over here on Ravelry.

And of course I had to get Max to model it again. He wasn’t so psyched about this one – I only got him to sit still by bribing him with puffs, which he then couldn’t get to his mouth what with this big cowl in the way! Luckily he’s a pretty good sport!

I’m really excited to have finished up this quilt! As I may have mentioned last time, this is the first quilt I’ve made that’s made up entirely of solids. And I wonder now why I waited so long!

This quilt got its start many, many months ago. At that time, I had just finished my Flying Farfalle quilt, and wanted to make a second similar quilt. Instead of using white for the main solid, I went with Kona Coal and paired it with lots of Kona scraps. To make the colors pop, I outlined them with a tiny bit of white.

I intended to lay it out the same way as the Flying Farfalle quilt, but then Morgan started playing with the layout while it was up on the design wall and turned it into this instead. I love the imperfect little colored diamonds (or kites!) it creates.

I kept the backing pretty simple, using lots more Kona Coal, along with just a couple tiny strips of colored solids. I knew I wanted to use a dark gray thread for quilting, and I don’t love the look of a dark thread on lighter colored fabrics, so I figured I’d keep the backing mostly gray to avoid that.

It took a while to decide how to quilt it – again, mainly because I wanted to avoid the look of the dark thread going through the white and lighter colored fabrics. Finally I came up with this big zig zag quilting pattern which goes through each block, but avoids the colored diamonds. I did a double line zig zag horizonally through the quilt, and I love how it looks.

And yes, Max now has yet another new quilt! I realize this is really thinking in advance (and I’m sure there will be many other quilts before this), but I think this might make a great quilt when he moves to a toddler bed. But for now, we’ll use it as another playmat!

Anyway, you might remember this quilt top from a week or two ago. As I mentioned at that time, these blocks were actually sitting around for a while. I unearthed them during a bit of cleaning, and was happy to have done so since it made for a fun little quilt. And since I had already done all the work of making the blocks a few months ago, it was a nice fast project! (love that!)

I hadn’t yet had a chance to make a quilt that mixed up all the colors of Laurie Wisbrun’s Tufted Tweets line. I just love the bold bright colors in this line and I think they look fabulous together. And I’m especially loving it paired with the Kona medium gray with a little touch of white.

The backing is pretty simple – just one large strip of one of my favorite prints, the Avian Therapy in orchid. I echoed the design from the front by bordering the printed fabric with a thin stripe of white and then bordered that in the gray.

It took me a while to decide on the quilting – I knew I wanted to go with straight lines, and I knew I wanted it to be something that would give a bit of interest to those larger open gray squares. In the end I went with concentric squares in the open gray sections and I used straight lines about a 1/2″ apart through the printed sections. I used a cream colored thread so the quilting would be noticeable through the gray sections, but not so much in the printed sections so as not to take away from the fun prints. I used a washable marker to draw on all the quilting lines ahead of time.

As Alissa just mentioned, this is the type of quilting that I wish I could do on larger quilts, but unfortunately, I agree with Alissa – I just don’t find it doable on my regular size sewing machine. So for now I take the opportunity to do more straight line quilting on baby-sized or smaller quilts.

This quilt measures about 40″ square and I think this would make a great playmat or a really fun wall hanging. It’s listed in the shop!

I showed you a few of these goldfish blocks recently and now I’m happy to show you the quilts they ended up in!

This Heather Ross goldfish fabric lends itself so well to fussy cutting, and I knew I wanted to use them as the centers of each block. So I cut them up into single goldfish and pairs of goldfish, framed each with a thin border and then surrounded that with other fun prints and solids.

Originally I wasn’t sure about adding the Kona Stone into the mix, but after using it in the twin strip quilts, I loved it so much that I wanted to use it in these twin quilts as well. I ended up using the same design I used for my munki martians quilt and my munki in the middle twin quilts (I must have a thing for twin quilts!), framing each individual block with white and sashing them in the Kona Stone. I love how the blocks pop off the neutral background.

I kept the backs pretty simple – more Kona Stone with a little pieced section to add a bit of fun -

I quilted it on the diagonal with double straight lines and since I loved them so much, used the same stripey bindings as on the previous quilts.

They each measure 33 1/2″ x 36 1/2″ and are listed in the shop!

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Oh, and of course (it goes without saying!) thanks so much for all the nice comments about my new table! I’ve been using it for a few days now and I must say that having this much space on a tabletop is fun, though I have to keep reminding myself that just because the space is there doesn’t mean I should fill it up!

To answer a few questions – the blue wall color in the den is Overcast by Glidden. The butterfly and crab framed paper art in this post was made following this tutorial. I don’t yet have a chair to use while sewing at the new table, but I’m thinking I’ll probably get a couple backless stools so that I can put them under the table when not in use. And speaking of sewing, my main machine is a Pfaff Expressions 2036. I also have a Pfaff Grand Quilter which I keep upstairs. Answers to other FAQs can be found in the FAQ discussion thread over in the FITF flickr group. (Did I get them all?!)

There are many reasons why I love this quilt… Laurie’s gorgeous fabrics, the spring colors, and this fun wonky design! This quilt was inspired by a pillow I saw in a Crate and Barrel magazine a while back. I love the look of the wonky rectangles, but knew that the rectangles on the pillow were appliqued, which is not my forte. So instead I came up with a way to get a similar look without having to applique the rectangles.

What pleases me most about it is that it turned out almost exactly as I had pictured in my mind. (It’s always fun when that happens, right?!)

I also love it when one quilt inspires another for me. Laurie and I both liked this quilt so much that when it came time to create a quilt out of her newest fabrics for Robert Kaufman, I went back to this quilt and changed up the design a bit to create a new version. (You can take a peek at the quilts this quilt inspired over here. There will also be a free pattern for that quilt soon to be available through Robert Kaufman.)

Thanks so much for stopping by! Have fun browsing all the other fabulous quilts through the festival!

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The original post about this quilt can be found here.

I love how each one is just slightly different, depending on which prints and solids are selected. I’ll be really sad when I run out of these older Echino prints, though I do love the new line – how about you?

Here are the latest versions –

a boyish one in blue, green, red and mustard

pretty in pink (and aqua!)

and purple panthers and pigs…

The boyish red/green/mustard one is already spoken for, but the other two are listed in the shop!

I finally finished up my wonky string quilt and I’m so in love. I can’t even tell you how much I love it. So very much.

I made 11″ string blocks using a lime green solid for the center strings. To change it up a bit, I made these strings slightly wonky, sort of along the lines of Denyse Schmidt’s Any Way You Slice It quilt (I just added ‘wonk’ to my strings when sewing them to the paper, though Denyse has a pattern available in her book).  All the fabrics aside from the center strings are voile fabrics from Anna Maria Horner’s Little Folks line. I think almost all of the patterns from the line are represented (I can think of one I’m missing…but maybe there are others? I’m not sure…).

I know I’ve said it before, but I’m so over the moon with the voile fabrics in a quilt. The resulting quilt is buttery soft and I want to just live my whole life surrounded by this quilt. Ok, a little crazy, but kind of true. (Perhaps I should just bite the bullet and make myself some clothes out of these fabrics instead…)

I had some minor snafus with this one – nothing serious, just a few things that made this take a bit longer than I expected.  I had a little trouble with the backing — I ended up with a solid in a gold color, which is weird, since gold wouldn’t be my first pick. I made a pieced backing, got the quilt all pinned and then realized that I really disliked the gold more than I first thought. In fact, I disliked it so much that I ended up taking the whole thing apart so I could remake the backing.

Then I couldn’t decide how to quilt it, so it sat for a bit while I stared at it and considered various options. I knew I wanted to do a minimal amount of straight line quilting to keep it as soft as possible. I finally decided to go with straight lines on the diagonal, but made them wonky to keep with the wonky aspect of the front.

I bound it in the same green as the center strings (though not before I mistakenly made, and attached, a green binding that actually didn’t match!). But ah, it’s done, and I’ve already forgotten about those issues. In fact, I’m ready to make another! (and another and another!)

Somebody stop me. Seriously.

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Notes:

Tutorial for string blocks

Previous posts about this quilt can be found here and here.

Finished size: approximately 62″ x 72″

Other Little Folks quilts I’ve made – Playground patchwork & Moonlight in the Trees

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Little Folks fabrics can still be found at Pink Chalk Fabrics, Hawthorne Threads, and Fabricworm. (It seems that some prints are on backorder, but apparently should be due back in in early May.)

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I know you all already know how much I love Laurie Wisbrun’s wonderful fabric designs. I’ve had the opportunity to make a couple of quilts for Laurie in the past, and I was absolutely thrilled when she asked me to make a quilt out of her newest fabric line, Tufted Tweets. You’ve seen previews of the new line, right? (check that link if you haven’t — it’s gorgeous!) It’s being produced by Robert Kaufman and will be arriving in stores in the next couple of weeks. I’m particularly taken with this line, since it includes the birdies on chairs print, which is one of Laurie’s original prints that I absolutely fell in love with. Chairs on fabric? Love it! Sofas on fabric? Love that too! And especially in these bold and fun colors!

So anyway, after just admiring the fabrics for a while, I set to work trying to come up with a design to feature them. Laurie really liked the Postcards quilt, so I did a little spin on that one, this time going for longer vertical strips of wonky rectangles.

I made two versions – a crib sized quilt using the sorbet colorway, paired with some great solids in yellows, oranges and browns -

and the back…

and a larger throw, with the two remaining colorways, orchid and grass, paired with solids in shades of greens, blues, purples and grays -

and the back…

I’m absolutely thrilled to tell you that the larger quilt is headed for Quilt Market! (If any of you will be attending and might be able to snag me a photo, that would be much appreciated!). A huge thank you once again to Laurie for letting me create another fun quilt, and another huge thank you to the folks at Robert Kaufman for providing the fabrics, coordinating everything, and posting these quilts on their site. I couldn’t be happier to see them there!

The second fun piece of news is that a pattern is currently being written for this quilt and will soon be available as a free download through the Robert Kaufman site. (On their site it goes by the name ‘Unfurnished’, though I’ve thought of it as ‘Stacked Seating’ for so long that I can’t seem to make the switch!). I will be sure to let you know when it’s available! Available for download here!

And the last piece of fun news is fun for you. Do you love this fabric? Would you like to win some? Robert Kaufman has generously donated some of Laurie’s new Tufted Tweets fabric and Laurie is giving it away over on her blog. Head over here to enter for a chance to win some fantastic fabric!

The inspiration for this little quilt is from my favorite picture frames. I love the oversized matting with the little tiny picture in the center. We have one in our kitchen and every time I look at it I see a quilt. In fact, I was considering going with this idea for my month for the Bee Imaginative quilting bee (which is why these fabrics will look very familiar to my bee members!). At the last minute I went with something else, but decided to finish up this quilt as a little sample.

I made two tiny wonky log cabin blocks and two wonky striped blocks (though I think it would be fun to make one where each center block was a different block style, scaled down to a mini size). Each of these little blocks were surrounded by a sea of white and then framed with a solid (or a solid/print combo, as is the case for that one block!)

My big dilemma was how to quilt it. Since there’s so much solid white space, I wanted the quilting to add some interest. I decided to go with straight lines surrounding the center blocks. I think it fills the white space nicely, and I love the patterns where the lines cross.

The back is simple – some white and some purple, with one little extra block for interest. It measures about 30″ square. I don’t have a plan for this one yet – it might end up on one of our walls, or it might show up in the shop!