Sew What's New

I'm taking this afternoon to do a little inventory of my sewing room and see what I "need" to be working on. Besides the pile of quilt tops in a bin (I'll get to each one eventually), the active-stage projects I have are

• The Christmas tree top I finished last week. I need to quilt it which I plan to do today by machine.
• The black-and-white-cats blocks. I need a total of 28 and I have around 18 now. It would be nice to get three done today, which I can do from a single fat quarter.
• I have two block-of-the-month projects- Christmas Figs and the French General Celebration Sampler. Strictly speaking the French General is kit so I don't have to do it month by month but that's been working for me. I do my Christmas Figs blocks as soon as I get the fabric and then do a French General block and then I feel like I've accomplished something.

I've been working on Christmas Figs since the program started in July. I signed up for it with the Quilt Spot, my LQS, because I wanted to get to know people at the store and start to become part of their quilting community, but as soon as I signed up they announced they were closing. They do this and other BOM programs online and I get my little package in the mail but it's not the same and that aspect of it has been a little disappointing. But the quilt itself is fun. 

Joanna Figueroa's book is filled with traditional pieced and appliqued blocks and the end result will be a stunning quilt. You can get it lots of places. 

I have a Christmas-quilt-kit I want to make this year too but I might wait a little longer into the season to get started. What are you up to today?

Fall Purse!

I made this purse for fall about a month or so ago; it's the Lazy Girl Designs Claire pattern.

I love the bag; I wanted something I could sling over my shoulder that would hold a book and my reading glasses along with my other day to day essentials- wallet, phone, etc. The fabric I just fell in love with when I saw my friend post a photo on her Facebook page. It's straphanging cats!! I mean how do you not love straphanging cats when you live in NYC?

I will say that although I found the pattern somewhat confusing, I'm very happy with the end result. I made it as instructed except that I added a recessed zipper at the top. As a city dweller I'm not comfortable with open-top purses!

It's been a great fall companion and I'd make another for a different season.

Not Too Early!

This is a wall-hanging size quilt top I finished a couple of weeks ago. It was fun to put together and use up a bunch of red and green scraps. I have so many green scraps right now for some reason.

Anyway this is about 30 x 38 so too small for a lap/throw quilt (unless it's a baby quilt- the minimum size for my guild to accept baby quilts for charity is 30x30) but it will be a fun decoration for the house.

It was easy enough to put together that I'd consider making more for gifts but probably not this season.

The pattern came from Frivolous Necessity on Etsy and is simply called Modern Patchwork Christmas Tree.

Garden Quilting

I made this quilt for my friend's birthday; it is based on Deborah Fisher's "Garden" pattern but I constructed it quilt-as-you-go style.

I had fun experimenting with quilt-as-you-go; I learned this specific technique from a quilt artist I worked for briefly. It allowed me to machine-quilt the quilt in sections rather than trying to wrestle the whole thing through the machine.

I would not say that this technique was necessarily faster, and it chewed through thread at an incredible rate, but overall I thought it made for an easier finish and the way the quilt is designed, with the yellow strips connecting the rows, made it a good choice for a quilt-as-you-go project.

Now I've made two "Garden" quilts and while I'm not in a rush to make a third, I do love this quilt as a scrap-buster. Every one you make will be unique and they make great cuddle-on-the-sofa quilts since they are not fussy. The first one I made was hand-quilted and is one of my favorite casual quilts.

The pattern appears in Deborah's book Quilt Giving and you can find out more about Deborah and her work at Fish Museum and Circus, her website.

Cats in the Garden

A recent finish.

I call it "Cats in the Garden." The pattern is Pins & Paws from Missouri Star Quilt Company, a free tutorial. I had a collection of 26 10-inch squares left over from a Keepsake Quilting set from about 10 years ago and made a 25-square quilt from it and some scraps. The sashing is an Anna Maria Horner print I like and the binding was a half yard cut from my stash. The backing is scrappy.