Sew Sunshine

Earlier this year Suzy over at  Suzy Quilts  hosted a sew along using her Modern Fans pattern.  She not only hosted a great sew along but she was giving away a Bernina Sewing machine at the end. Well ....I have a friend who would like a new machine so I pressured her into joining the sew along with me. We did not win but we each made really super cool quilts.  See my friend Jennifer's quilt  @Jenniferunderthejunipertree blog My monster Modern Fans black and white beauty is called "A Star is Born". I played with the color layout (see below shots) to come up with the secondary star shape in the dark colors in my quilt.  Plus I used this fun face fabric see below. 85" x 85" All fabric was found in my stash (and there is lots more where that came from) I machine stitched the binding on and rounded the corners. I should have rounded them more but this was a nice easy curve.  I used one extra block on the back for the label....

In late October my husband and sister and I took a road trip to Austin Tx. to attend the wedding of my niece.  It was a beautiful wedding and the weather was great. Outside our hotel was this river walk and it was really fun to walk around a bit. For quite a while now I have been working on an improv piece that I started in 2016 I believe, in a class taught by a fellow guild member Kris Khan.  I loved the colors I had chosen and we were doing improv strip piecing.  I had a few nice strips and then decided it needed to change direction a bit. Once I did that I was not sure where to go so back in a bag with all the fabric it went until a couple sew days this year with my lqg. I had so many solids set aside for this piece and I could be using them in other things but I didn't want to break up the fabrics in case I would never find them again or horror...use them up elsewhere!!! So....what does that have to do with my Austin River walk pictures? Fina...

"You are my Sunshine"  27" x 34" most of the sun rays are made from hand dyed either I did or purchased, background fabric is mixed pattern is from  Scrappy and Happy Quilts by Kate Henderson Sun was just starting to coming up when I took this pic.  It was super windy this morning so it was hard to go to far from shelter.  I kind of like the sun starting down on the bottom corner. :)  My local quilt guild held this challenge and just said do what gives you Joy. We had a lot of variety in quilts and a lot of fun stories.  I can't put a fine point on what gives me "joy" but some of the things that came to mind while I was making this: I love to use fabrics from my stash. I used a few experimental dyed fabrics I made. The bottom left sun points were made by just pouring undiluted dye over another dyed color. It has dark and light spots that almost look like it burned the color into it. Love that. * note- probably not washabl...

My Moth (er) pattern by Tula Pink 42 x 38 My second entry into the Blogger's Quilt Festival hosted by  Amy's Creative side   The back of this moth quilt was so fun. All those 1" strips folded onto themselves leave 1/2" on the front and this double layer on the back.  Check out my original post  HERE  and  click on over to the Blogger's Quilt festival to see all the lovely entries. 

  Blogger's Quilt Festival is going on right now over at  Amy's Creative side  Hop on over and see all the amazing quilts from the blog-o-sphere. "Under the Rug" Scrappy improv QAYG string quilt 52 x 64 For how I made this scrap quilt you can read more about it  HERE   and click on Amy's Creative side link at the top of this post to see all the lovely entries this year. 

"The Wall"  39" x 51" scraps, orphans, extras and so much more Freemotion quilting random stuff It was a sew day back in Oct of 2015. A few brave members of my local modern quilt guild got together to attempt a Round Robin score taken from Sherri Lynn Woods book: Improv handbook for Modern quilters. Six showed up and bravely worked on their beginning pieces until the timer said to pass it to the person on your left.  We had so much fun just improv sewing.  I really didn't have a theme at first and then the bits and scraps just became this graffiti to me that represented a bit of my life. I mean, there is some chunks of blocks from a Victoria Findley Wolfe class I took. Some bits of the very first Quilts for Kids quilt I made that was race car themed. There are favorite fabrics used by me and 5 other members all somewhere on this wall quilt.  When the initials M + K sort of formed I knew it was supposed to be my wall representing my husband and...

This is My Moth(er) 42 x 38 Tula Pink book Pattern -Ikat Moth freemotion quilted circles over moth and wavy lines over background By now if you follow me you know I am really an emotional quilter/crafter. I attach to certain things I choose and often it comes from a somewhere deep inside that usually circles back to my mom.  "You and I possess within ourselves - at every moment of our lives, under all circumstances, the power to transform the quality of our lives.  Knowing that is what the work is all about." - Werner Erhard I put that quote on the label of this quilt because this was a huge learning curve for me. I chose to use these vibrant colors inspired from the Madegascan Moon Moth. I think many moths are beautiful and live such short lives.  This quilt taught me lots of patience which is burned into a memory of my mother when she started getting sick.  1" strips sewn down to 1/2" makes for a very thick quilt. The skinny li...