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.

Thoughtful Sunday #8

Quilts and Quilt Tops For Sale - The Perfect Holiday Gift

Right up there in my list of blog pages is one that says "Ready for Purchase". If you click there, you will be zipped away to my Etsy shop, where there are lots of finished quilts and quilt tops to choose from.

If you see something you love, go ahead and purchase it. Enter BLOGFRIEND in the coupon code and receive FREE shipping (U.S. customers only) until the end of November.

Thank you so much for stopping by. I enjoy sharing all sorts of quilty goodness with you.

Matchstick Quilting a Holiday Wreath

This post contains affiliate links.

Yes, I'm taking another Craftsy class. This time it is Creative Quilting with Your Walking Foot with Jacquie Gering. I have to admit that I was skeptical about this class. I have been quilting for a long time and I wondered how there could possibly be enough material about using your walking foot to fill an entire class. I'm only half way through the class and I'm learning a lot. As always, I like to apply my new found skills to a project as soon as possible.

This quilt top has been around for a few years now. It tends to get pulled out this time of year to be considered for finishing. I have another wreath like this made in wild, bright colors and it was finished with lots of free motion quilting. I wondered how it would look with just texture added to it by way of matchstick quilting.

I love this Sulky Blendable thread against the fabric, although I'm a little worried about having enough. We'll just have to find a creative solution if it runs out before I am finished.

Jacquie does a good job of talking about how to prepare your quilt for quilting. She emphasizes how important it is to make your quilt as smooth as possible before quilting. I'm not very good about that and she has planted a seed of thought with me to pay more attention to my preparation.

She uses painters tape a lot to establish a straight line as a starting point and then a second tape line as a registration line. Most quilters tend to wander a little bit left or right while stitching and the registration lines help keep that in check. The good news for my project is that since it is pieced blocks, I can use the seam line formed by the rows of blocks as both my starting point and registration lines. I did have to use tape to keep things straight into the border.

I started quilting by stitching in the ditch of every row. Then I came back and stitched a line 1/4" from the first line. I had intended to keep going back and adding another stitching line to each set keeping them 1/4" apart, but of course I grew impatient. I wanted to see how that texture was going to look. So, I finished out one of the sets of stitching lines near the middle.

There are six rows of blocks on this quilt and I was able to get four rows completely quilted. It takes a long time to stitch all those neat little rows.

It is even pretty up close.

I decided it was all or nothing on the matchstick quilting. It runs from edge to edge. The borders get the same texture as the middle of the quilt. Now, I'm not quite sure what the technical definition for matchstick quilting is. If I was hardcore, I'd probably go back and stitch another line between each of these stitched lines. Right now, they sit at 1/4" apart and I think that is dense enough for me.

Even though there is still some quilting to go, I can tell the results of this quilting are going to be beautiful.

I highly recommend that you take this class. You will love it.

Linking up with Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts and Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

Memory Quilt Making - Two Finished Tops

These quilt tops were made from the same set of shirts.

This quilt was also made from that same set of shirts. This one was finished and delivered a couple of weeks ago. These memory quilts are for a wife and two daughters, made from the shirts of their loving husband and father. Each quilt contains eighteen different shirts. I enjoyed making the three different designs with them.

I like the contrast of big squares and small squares in this design. Those big squares were cut at 9 1/2".

I was a little nervous about putting all these plaids right next to each other, especially since some are heavy flannel while others are summer gauze. It seems to have worked out just fine. It will be a warm, cuddly quilt.

The batting, backing, and binding are all assembled and ready to go. It might be a few weeks before I get these quilted, but they are at the front of the line for big projects. They will definitely be delivered before Christmas.

 

The experience of working with different weights and textures of fabric in one quilt has been a great skill to add to my arsenal. It took a few projects for me to become confident in my memory quilt making abilities, but now I am ready to take on this sort of project on a regular basis.

As each of these quilts is completed, I'll be sharing the finish along with a tutorial for how to make the quilt top. 

Other posts about memory quilt making:

Garden Fence Memory Quilt Finish

Garden Fence Memory Quilt - Steps of Progress

Linking up with Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times and with Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt.

Thoughtful Sunday #7

Six Ideas For Fast Handmade Gifts - Let the Holiday Countdown Begin

Can you believe there are only 43 days until Christmas? And if you celebrate Hanukkah, well that starts in a mere 23 days. Yikes! I am the world's worst at waiting until about this time to decide that it is time to get started on all those handmade gifts. I have to admit I sort of thrive on the chaos of a busy making season.

If you are in need of some gift making suggestions, here are a few ideas and tutorials.

ORNAMENTS

Ornaments are often a fast gift when you want to make something for a group, like teachers or coworkers. And why stop at bells? It is so easy to search out other shapes like trees, stockings, or stars that would also be fast and easy strip pieced ornaments.

What I love most about these is that if you make a plain back for them, you can add a personalized message. Learn more about making these strip pieced bell ornaments here.

DOOR HANGERS

You can upsize any ornament to make it a door hanger. Again, a plain back leaves room for you to further personalize an already special gift. Here is a tutorial for making this bell door hanger.

MUG RUGS

I love mug rugs. Bigger than a coaster. Smaller than a quilt. You can use orphan quilt blocks or bust into your scraps. It's hard to go wrong with a mug rug. I usually gift these along with a few cookies or a small snack. They can be made with a holiday theme or in fabrics that can be used year round. Check out this tutorial for a dresden mug rug.

If you like to quilt more than piece, this initial mug rug may be more your style. Here is a tutorial for making an initial mug rug.

BANNERS AND BUNTINGS

Banners and buntings are great to add some decorative flair to any room. They are easy to enhance with extras and can be themed or not. Here is a link to how this one was made.

COASTERS

I like to think of coasters as tiny quilts. There are a million ways to make coasters, and they are another great way to use up orphan blocks and scraps. While this picture has a Valentine's theme, they can be made in any fabric. These are made from leftover charm squares. Learn how to make these here.


SMALL QUILTS

Now, before you roll your eyes over how not quick a quilt is, keep in mind it doesn't have to be a big quilt. It could be a very small quilt, so small that it becomes a table topper, or mini quilt, or wall hanging. For example, in the quilt above, if I just made three columns of blocks, and shortened it a bit, wouldn't that make a cool table runner?

When you are looking for ideas, try to dissect the bigger projects a bit to see if something small, fast, and beautiful can be made from them. Go here to see how this quilt was made.

This blue plus quilt was also a fast one to make. Learn about it here.

This list is only a small sampling of fast handmade projects to get you started. Do some quick searching and you will find thousands of ideas for handmade gifts. What fast handmade projects have you made?