Machine Quilted Text: A Finished Mini Quilt

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I was really excited to try out adding text to my quilt by way of Creative Quilting with Your Walking Foot. Adding text to your quilt is one of the last things Jacquie teaches in her class.

I decided to test my skill with a mini quilt. Naturally, I chose the word "create". I chose a simple font (Jacquie says a simple font is important for this technique) from my word processing software and increased the font size. I printed it on card stock so that it would be easier to work with and hold up long enough for me to complete marking the letters on my quilt top.

I applied a little bit of glue stick to the back of each letter to keep it still while I was marking around it. I used a blue water soluble pen to trace around each letter.

Then I started matchstick quilting around each letter. The blue tape is a registration line so that my quilting lines don't start leaning to the left or right. I always have a straight line point of reference.

And here are the first three letters all quilted and pretty. Then I saw the word "ate" and had to stop and get a snack. Ha.

All finished!! Let's go over the size of this project. The blue background was cut 8 1/2 inches x 14 1/2 inches. The border is 4 inch strips. The top and bottom are 4 inches x 14 1/2 inches. The side strips are 4 inches x 15 1/2 inches. After quilting and squaring up, this project finishes at 21 inches x 15 inches. The letters are 2 inches tall.

Here's how it looks from the back. For the border, I simply followed the grid design on the fabric.

If I had it to do all over again, there are a few things I would do differently.

• Use bigger letters! These letters are two inches tall. That is tiny when it comes to quilting around them. I am happy with the result but it was tricky quilting inside the "e" and "a".
• I would practice starts and stops. I used the technique of setting my stitch length to zero, stitching a few stitches, then setting it to the quilting stitch length. While this worked, there are spots that look a little knotty. 
• I wanted a thread that contrasted with the background, and this one does, but I think I will try a darker than background thread next time. That is more of a personal preference.

This mini quilt will hang right beside my sewing machine to remind me to always be creative. I have really enjoyed the Creative Quilting with Your Walking Foot class and know the techniques I learned there will show up over and over again in my quilting. If you are looking for a machine quilting class, you should consider this one.

Linking up with Scraptastic Tuesday at She Can Quilt, Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story, and Work in Progress Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. Also linking up to Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Kaffe Fasset Mini Quilt: A Quilt Swap

I've never participated in a quilt swap before but one of the quilt shops I keep up with, Intown Quilters in Decatur, GA, is hosting a Kaffe Fassett mini quilt challenge and swap. This is all in conjunction with Kaffe's upcoming birthday and it sounded like great fun.

I knew right away that I wanted to make some sort of wild raw edge applique flower.

Then I was gifted with these lovely flowers and my color inspiration was found.

The final dimensions for the quilt have to be somewhere between 12 inches x 12 inches and 24 inches x 24 inches. I taped together four pieces of standard card stock and settled on something around the 18 inch mark. The flower was quickly sketched and I started wondering if it was going to look like a flower or some sort of single celled microscopic thing but moved forward anyway.

It can get a little messy in the sewing room when you are looking for just the right combination of fabric for a project.

This set ended up as the winning combination. I probably took seven or eight different pictures of what I thought was the "final" set, then would walk away for a while and come back to make one adjustment or another.

I did not have a big enough piece of anything Kaffe for a suitable background so I constructed one from a couple of different prints. That center square will be fully covered up by the flower so it really did not matter what went there.

To cut out each layer of the flower, I simply lay the cut out cardstock template on top of the fabric, pinned it down, and cut it out with scissors. It did not have to be perfect so it was a quick and easy way to get it done. This is after the first layer was complete and the template was cut down to the next layer.

After two layers.

Three layers.

Four layers.

Five layers.

Six layers. And I decided I really did not like that center. That is easy enough to fix.

Much better with just five layers. I'm glad I fussy cut that center. This is all laid out as a dry run. Nothing has been stitched at this point.

To hold each layer of fabric in place for stitching, I lightly sprayed the back of each layer with some 505 temporary adhesive spray. It worked great and avoided the stiffness that using fusible webbing can sometimes create. I worked from the outside in and stitched approximately one half inch from the edge. Again, this did not have to be perfect. I was a little nervous about those center layers since they would be stitched through so many layers of fabric (five layers of fabric, batting, and backing for the center) but it stitched very easily.

The only quilting is some free motion leaves at each corner and a few curls to add some interest. I got a little over confident and went straight to stitching with an olive thread and a completely inappropriate leaf design. So after five minutes of stitching and an hour of unstitching, I did a little bit of drawing and switched over to a lime green thread before starting again. Much better.

I used scraps from the flower layers for the binding.

I think the colors are pretty true to their inspiration. All of the pictures up to this point are before washing and drying the quilt.

Here is how it looks after washing. Just the results I was hoping for!

If I have any regrets about this project, it is that I did not try harder on the back. I just went with whatever I had that would not require piecing. It is still pretty, just not a great complement to the front.

I made this label for it, which I will print and hand stitch to the back before sending it off to the shop. It is nice they are allowing out of towners to participate. I won't receive a mini quilt back until after the first of the year. The shop will be displaying all of them throughout December. Maybe I will be able to make a special trip to see the display. The shop is about an hour and a half from home.

Here it is on the back deck, out in the bright sunshine. Fall has set in solidly here in Georgia, so the bright colors really stand out among all the brown, gold, and green of fall.

Thanks, Intown Quilters, for giving me a reason to play with my Kaffe stash. I hope the recipient of this little quilt loves it as much as I do.

Other posts about mini-quilts:
Faith, Family, and Friends
Scrappy Blue Kaffe Quilt 
Shadow Blocks Mini: A Finished Quilt 

Linking up with Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times and Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt. Also linking up with Design Board Monday at Bits 'n Bobs and Work In Progress Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. More link ups... Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, and Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts.

Shadow Blocks Mini - A Finished Quilt

This weekend's project was a fun mini quilt featuring Kaffe Fassett prints.

The idea was to make each print appear to have a shadow or to be floating on the background.

Here is the top before quilting. To help the shadow recede more, the darker fabric around each block is heavily quilted while the rest of the quilt is more lightly quilted.

The quilting gives the back a lot of texture.

Each block finishes at 3" square. The focus prints finish at 2 1/2" square. Overall, this mini quilt finishes at 17 1/2" x 21 1/2".

The binding is a neutral print and includes both the background and shadow color.

The binding is machine stitched.

I love how it looks hanging on the wall. It would also make a great table topper.

This was a fun project to make. I will be posting a tutorial for how to make this quilt later this week.

This quilt is available for purchase.

Simmer - A Finished Quilt

The first hint of cooler temperatures was in the air this past weekend so it was the perfect time to finish this quilt full of yummy fall colors. A few weeks ago, I posted about these blocks. This quilt stalled after the blocks were made. I had to set them aside to think about a layout and even if I liked them enough to keep going. Individually, most of the blocks were great, but all together, they became a jumbled mess.

Hello sashing. They just needed a little something to separate them from each other. There is a funny story about the sashing fabric. A fellow quilter was cleaning out and invited me over to assist in reducing her stash. There was a box in the corner with the label "ugly fabric". My reaction surprised me. I was almost offended that any fabric would be relegated to a box with such a label. This stack of neutral solids is part of what was in that box, which I of course had to rescue. They aren't glamorous but they certainly are not ugly and served to be quite useful in this project.

The majority of the fabric in this quilt is by Kaffe Fassett.

There wasn't enough of any single color for the back so these four one yard cuts worked nicely with their similar colors. This fabric was also pulled from the "ugly fabric" box.

Wavy quilting lines cover the blocks both horizontally and vertically. I love the grid that is formed.

A spiral was quilted on each cornerstone. The spirals on the edges and corners spill off the sides of the quilt. This is one corner before binding.

Here's a better look at the quilting from the front.

Each block is just a little over 14". The quilt finishes at 67" square.

The binding is a solid rusty color that is the same as one of the backing fabrics.

This project was the perfect start to this fall quilting season.

This quilt is available for purchase in my Etsy store.

Linking up to finish it up Friday over at crazy mom quilts and My Journey Back's Fabulous Fall Party.

A Quilt That Needs to Simmer

One of the blogs I read regularly is Exuberant Color. She is an awesome quilt maker with a great eye for color and design. By way of Pinterest, I happened to run across this post of hers from 2011 with a tutorial for making a quick quilt top. I pinned it and moved on. A week or two later, as part of my sewing room clean out effort, I came upon this lovely set of fabric.

I immediately remembered that tutorial and decided to try it with these. What I didn't realize is that most of them were too small to get all the pieces I needed for the blocks. That sent me back to the stash to find a few more friends to join these.

This is the final stack. Enough for sixteen blocks.

These blocks. 

Kind of boring if you just stop here. The next step is to cut up the blocks.

And then shuffle them and sew them back together.

I love the block. And then I put them all together.

I didn't like them so much anymore. I arranged and rearranged, but no matter what I did, they just look like a jumbled mess.

I put them away for a day, then tried again. It was no better. One thing I really don't like is the random blobs of light fabric. I think I should have been a little less random in my shuffling and sewing. For now, I've made a pile of blocks I really like and a pile of blocks that I'm not super fond of. I think there will be some unsewing going on soon. Once I get happy with the blocks, then I think I'm going to try a layout with some sashing between each block. There is really no place for the eye to rest and it just makes me tired to look at it as it is.

I'm sure there is something wonderful lurking in there, but for now, this one is going away for a few days. I need to give my eyes a rest before taking the next step. Sometimes a quilt comes easy, and sometimes it has to simmer for a while.