Fall 2011 Quilt Festival Entry -- Schnibbles Plan C

My entry this fall is a quilt that is now residing in Copenhagen, Denmark. I made it as a thank you present for our host family. These wonderful people left town to let us use their home for a month. That is amazing kindness! Even more amazing if you consider I have never met them face to face.

71.5 by 71.5 inches tall

I used the Schnibbles Plan C design by Carrie Nelson and an April Cornell fabric line with white muslin.

I tried free motion flowers all over, but learned that my quilting was too close together to really see well once it was all washed and crinkly. Shucks! Oh well, live and learn.

I miss the quilt, but I'd trade it again in a heart beat for the wonderful trip and the great adventure. Thanks Anne & Jens!

I love the Bloggers Quilt Festival! This one of my most favorite times of the year. Click on the logo to join in the fun!

Plan C finished! Renamed Plan Copenhagen

Plan Copenhagen
71.5 x 71.5 inches

Finished June 2011

I started this quilt in July 2010. The fabric had been a Christmas Gift from Santa in my stocking, but it took a few months until I figured out what I wanted to make with it. This quilt is made from a pattern in the Schnibbles book by Carrie Nelson. Love that book! The pattern went together fairly quickly. I loved the way the stars started to pop out, even before the white was added.

Here you can see the quilt beginning to come together -- this is only one or two days worth of sewing.

After piecing together the top, I took a break for a few weeks. That always seems to happen to me -- borders must get me down! But, in mid-August, I finally pieced together the piano key border and the top was finished.

It was so large, my living room floor wasn't quite big enough to get a clear picture. The quilt sat in my storage room for months! I couldn't figure out how I wanted to quilt it, so I just left it alone. Then, I had grand ideas that I would finish all my quilts that are just sitting waiting to be quilted while I recovered from foot surgery. That didn't happen! They're still downstairs waiting to be quilted.

But, in May my husband was asked to go to Denmark to take a class. A wonderful family offered up their home as a place for my husband and his colleagues to stay for a month while they took their class. I am amazed at their generosity! This quilt came to mind -- to me it just says 'Denmark'. That's also why I changed it's name to Plan Copenhagen -- just seemed to fit. :)

So, I finally had a reason to push myself to finish it. I quilted it in the first two weeks of June and it was ready to fly to Copenhagen.

I stippled it with really tiny flowers and leaves. I have to admit, the quilting was not exactly as I like it. I did it really tight together, which makes it difficult to see the design. Oh well. Live and learn.

The quilt flew in my suitcase to Denmark and now resides in this adorable little house outside of Copenhagen:

This is a picture of the summer guest house out back. We actually stayed in the basement of the big house, but the guest house just looks so Danish I had to include it here. :)

Thanks Annie & Jens -- we had an absolutely lovely time! We loved every minute in your home and in your country. Thank you for being so kind to share it with us. Hopefully this quilt will help you to remember over time how much we truly loved it! Thanks!

Twin Quilts

I made these two quilts for family this Christmas. I tried out some new quilting, but forgot to take pictures of the quilting itself -- we had to hurry and snap these pictures before they got shipped off for the holidays.

Each quilt was about 68" square. I made it using the fabric line Snippets by American Jane.

I started the centers well over a year ago. I loved them, but didn't know what to do for the borders. It took months until I found the right combination of movement without too much distraction from the center. When I started the border I had no idea how much work it would take -- there are a lot of squares in that thing! I really think it works though.

I doubled up the batting for the first time as well. It made the blankets much heavier, each one weighed about 5 pounds when finished. I really like using 100% cotton batting because it breathes so well. And, I can't deny that the crinkles from the cotton just make me smile!

But, over time the blankets get pretty thin. I'm hoping that by doubling it up, they will stay much thicker.

Overall, I was very pleased with the final result. Hopefully they will be loved by their new owners.

Mama Bear Quilt

Mama Bear Quilt

about 78" square

made with Hoffman and batik fabrics

Thanks to Amy for hosting the Blogger's Quilt Festival -- what a great event! Here's my entry this fall -- my Mama Bear Quilt.

Several years ago, my sister's life was suddenly changed forever by a brain aneurysm and a previously undetected AVM. It was devastating to our whole family to have her struggle on the brink of death. We powerless to do anything. I was thousands of miles away -- with nothing I could do to help. Some days she was so sick, she couldn't even talk on the phone.


So, I did the only thing I could think to do -- I made her a quilt. As she faced months of surgery and struggles, I packaged all my love into this quilt for her. Every cut, stitch, and seam was made with her in mind. I made it long enough to cover her from head to toe -- at that point it was the largest quilt I'd made. It took some time, but I was finally able to send it to her.


My sister made it through. Today, you'd never know she ever faced such a physical challenge. Every day I'm grateful she's here and healthy. Words cannot convey how important she is to me.


Years later, long after my sister had recovered, she had it on her daughter's bed. It reminds me now that even when we think life is at it's worst, it can always get better and brighter.

Schnibbles progress

I've been out and about on vacation with my family for the last month. In the midst of all the fun, the Plan C quilt from Schnibbles is progressing nicely. As I've been putting it together, I'm perplexed at how I'm going to quilt it.

I want to improve my free motion skills, so I think I'll try something difficult. I just haven't decided how to do that yet. The quilt has such large spacing, but I want to highlight the stars at the same time. It's such a pretty quilt, I'd like to emphasize the design with quilting that will enhance the overall picture. I'm toying with the idea of trying feathered loops, inside each square with outline quilting and repeats inside the stars, but it doesn't seem exciting enough.

More thinking to come....

Schnibbles Plan C

I recently purchased the book Schnibbles Times Two and I'm in love!

The first pattern I decided to complete was called "Plan C". I've wanted a blue and yellow quilt to snuggle with on my bed, so this was a perfect pattern for April Cornell's Nature's Notebook by Moda. It incorporated stars as well as bright spots of blue and yellow to catch the eye.

I'm starting to see the potential for the quilt, but it's still got a way to go.

Bloggers Quilt Festival Entry Spring 2010

I love the bloggers quilt festival! It's so much fun to look at every quilt and get ideas for the coming six months.

Here's my entry:

I made this quilt for a friend having a baby boy. It was a really good project to try out new stuff. This was the first time I've quilted shapes using my machine. I was astonished at how easy it was to do--

• First I found clip art online.
• I printed it out and then cut out the shape.
• Using a water-soluble marker, I traced the pattern onto the fabric.
• Then I quilted the pattern using free motion quilting
• The stippling helps to give each design added depth
• Then I sprayed the markings with water to make them disappear

The quilt was pretty easy to put together, but I thoroughly enjoyed the process.

Whirlygiggle repeat is finished and it's fantastic!

This baby is 72 inches by 66 inches and absolutely vibrant! It's so much more dramatic in person than in a picture. I love it! It'll be perfect in my basement to help lighten and brighten the room without windows. I always love my quilts when they are finished, but I'm really enamored with this one. It just makes me feel happy inside to look at it. Yum!

I had not expected to finish the quilt this week. We are so packed with things that I thought I'd have to wait until next week to sew. Wouldn't you know it -- my daughter got the stomach flu and I had to cancel everything on Monday and Tuesday. Well, stuck at home means sewing time for mom! Yeah! But, I'll always remember this as the quilt I finished when my daughter was devastatingly ill. (She wasn't sick when I staged this photo, so there are no germs on the quilt)

It's gone to a better place

I finally gave away the Whirlygiggle quilt. I was sad to see it go, but the big one is almost finished! It's beautiful!

Whirlygiggle repeat

I've had a hard time parting with the Whirlygiggle quilt. So, in order to make it easier to give away the baby quilt (which has no real use in my house right now and thus no real reason to keep anyway) I'm making a BIG couch quilt.

It's going to be about 64"x74" when it's finished. Yahoo! A quilt to snuggle with that reaches all the way to my toes! The best part -- every single scrap of fabric came from my stash downstairs. I didn't buy a single thing for this baby! I even had the batting! I LOVE FREE QUILTS! (OK, so I did at one time pay for all this stuff, but it was for another project, so it's like getting it for free since it's leftovers)

I'm hoping to quilt and bind it this weekend -- I've got some new purse patterns I'm dying to try! This time I promised myself I had to finish my current project before starting a new one.

Grandma's Quilt

I made this quilt in stages. I started piecing the log cabin blocks back in 2003 with the great intention of giving my family each a Christmas quilt for the holiday season that year. I worked on it quite a bit, but just when the blocks were almost finished I gave up for some unknown reason. I picked it up again in the spring of 2009 and finally finished the job. It took me forever to decide how to make the borders. I just couldn't wrap my head around it, but in the end, I like what I chose.

We gave the quilt to my husband's grandma this year for Christmas.

Whirlygiggle complete!

Whirlygiggle -- 40"x40"

I really love this quilt! I think it turned out so cute! I debated whether to stipple it or quilt some swirls my friend has been trying out, but the stippling won because it would be faster. I'm so glad I did -- now the pieces have a kind of puzzle look to them. It adds a great dimension to the design.

Now I just have to force my kids(and me) to part with it so that we can give it away. Does anyone else have a hard time giving away their projects? Am I the only greedy quilter? It's so sad to see my little babies go to someone else!

Unfinished projects

This year one of my goals is to finish as many of my works-in-progress as I can. Each of those bins pictured above contains at least one unfinished quilt. UGH! What a mess!

Not only is it a big mess in my storage room, but they are starting to loom large in my mind and beginning to cause me overwhelming guilt. Most importantly, all that fabric makes me feel like I can't buy more until these quilts are done. I love buying fabric(a completely obvious statement!). I always want more! But, I need to force myself to finish these projects before going crazy with more stuff.

Here's all the quilts in various stages of completion:

• two self-designed and as yet un-named patterns for the Oh Cherry! fabric
• three pinwheel quilts in the American Jane Snippets fabric
• one nine-patch from the quilt-along made from all my scrap fabrics
• one triple-Irish chain for John's baby quilt
• one blue & white in various fabrics
• two Christmas log-cabin quilts
• Underground Railroad quilt in blue, red and green
• one disappearing nine-patch in pastel colors
• one quilt from this quilt along, but I'll probably change the pattern
• one alphabet quilt
• one cream and red nine-patch

(That's a total of 15 quilts in progress)

I also have a lot of fabric purchased, but the quilts have not even been started. Here's just what I can remember off the top of my head:

• Yellow & blue fabric from April Cornel's Nature's notebook line by Moda
• Snippets fabric for this quilt -- a whirlygigle pattern
• Plaids for crazy nine-patch
• six-inch squares for an 'I Spy' quilt
• a purple medley of half-yards
• about 40 different pink fat quarters
• a black and white collection

(A total of 7 quilts with fabric purchased)

I've recalled all this from memory, and I'm sure I'm forgetting something. All told that's 22 quilts. UGH! If I finish one every two weeks I might be done by the end of the year -- wish me luck!

Christmas projects finished!

All the Christmas gifts are in the mail. This was my final gift project. After it has been delivered, I'll show the entire quilt. I'm pretty jazzed about this one -- I made up the pattern and finished it all in about 6 weeks. Compared to some people, that's a quilter's lifetime. For me, that's pretty speedy!

Now I'm off to make my kids Christmas pajamas! Yahoo! It's almost here!

Oh Cherry Oh! idea

I've been working with some fun fabrics lately, sadly I haven't figured out how to import fabric to Electric Quilt yet. I'll just suffer through with their sample swatches to make my designs.

The quilt design I'm working on right now uses Oh Cherry Oh! fabrics by Moda's Me and My sister line. I purchased the pre-cut turnovers and have been trying to figure out how best to use them on quilts for an un-named upcoming holiday. I really like how they look on point, and I think that may be my final choice. I don't have any yardage of the fabrics, so I think the end of each row and the borders will be bleached white Kona muslin.

Any thoughts?

Pinwheel Progress

I've been working on my quilt this week. I'm finally getting back in to sewing now that school has started. I think it's looking pretty good! I took a Snippets turnover and then cut my own 6" squares and then cut them in half. I've got a bunch of these that I'm going to make into several quilts.

I did notice when putting up this picture that I had put a few orange next to each other. When you look at the quilt straight on, it doesn't seem quite so drastic. I think I'm going to start taking pictures BEFORE I sew the blocks to make sure I have the right balance in the future.

Snippets Pinwheel

I've been working on my Snippets Pinwheel quilt this week. I'm loving how it looks so far. Hopefully my version will end up looking like the one I saw that started my whole adventure:

Fantastic Voyage Step #7

If you've been following along for the Fantastic Voyage quilt, we've reached step #7 -- putting the top together. I love this step! It always makes me feel like the time and creative energy was worth all the effort.

The trick to getting your top together correctly for this pattern is alternating the orientation for every block. The outside strips should be at 90 degrees from each other. It's easiest to look at the picture and figure it out. Promise!

I liked sewing two blocks together and then two additional blocks and so on. Then it's easy to iron them and stack them and then proceed to sew two to two. The four to four.

The final strips will each have 8 blocks. You should have eight strips of eight blocks each. By the time the entire quilt is assembled, it will be 8 blocks x 8 blocks.

That all came out a bit confusing sounding, but it should be pretty easy to interpret I hope.

Summer Quilt-a-long progress

This quilt has been such a challenge for me! I'm finally making real progress. I tried laying out all my squares on white fabric just to see what it would look like. I'm starting to like it, but it's so different from my usual attempts it's a mental struggle to work on it. I've been distracted with a million projects, but I'm promising to finish this one by the end of September. Pinky promise!

Fantastic Voyage Step #6

I love getting to the part where it all starts to come together!

In this step, you're going to add the 1.5 x 8.5 inch strips to the side of each block. Use two strips of the same color for the frame on each block. It helps to give the quilt a small bit of consistency and definition.

Take your block as it is, then add one strip to the left, and one to the right. I did not use chain sewing on this step -- I wanted to make sure I was duplicating the correct color.

As always, iron each block. I have to lay mine out on the floor as I iron so that I can see the effect of the quilt as it starts to emerge. LOVE IT! This part always makes me feel warm and fuzzy!