The last of the mini quilt mondays

I've had so much fun this month, it's been wonderful to push my creative boundaries.  That said, it's a bit of a relief to get back to the things I've put on hold...  it's a lot of work to make something every week!  This week I decided to go back to handwork and finish up this reverse applique mini from the BMQG workshop with the amazing Pippa Patchwork.  My circles aren't as perfectly round as hers but I love this technique.  I tried using big stitch quilting with pearl cotton to outline the circles.  It was odd making big stitches after I've spent so much time perfecting my 12 stitches to the inch but it sure does go fast!  I was able to quilt all of these circles while watching the premier of Pan Am: )  Thanks Faith for pushing me to learn some new things even if I didn't get to go back to school!

Work In Progress Wednesday

This has been a busy week but I did manage to finish up the Sherbet Pips baby quilt I re-purposed after my failed attempt at a pieced border. 

I think the quilting really made the design work, especially on the back.  Apparently great minds think alike, the amazingly awesome Rita @ Red Pepper Quilts did a very similar quilting design on her mini quilt.

I also started working on something new...  a sneak preview of my latest project for The Ghastlies blog hop sponsored by Madam Samm at Sew I Quilt.  Check back at Halloween to see the transformation;-)

Mini Quilt Monday

This week's mini was a challenge for me, literally: )   These are the fabrics I received for the BMQG Habitat Challenge.  We could make anything we wanted, the only requirement was we could only add solids.  These fabrics are way out of my comfort zone so I stared at these for a long time before I got any ideas.  Eventually the paint splattered one made me think of urban art so I added some Kona pomegranate for sashing and built myself a wall.  It was tough, those bricks finish to 1 1/2" x 3" and the sashing is only 1/4" wide.  Then I used some FSDS olive to add some raw-edge applique graffiti.  This will totally represent hanging in my quilt studio!

The back is FSDS gray with some extra bricks thrown in. The hot pink quilting really pops on the gray.

You can check out the other entries on the BMQG site.  It was so amazing to see what different ideas everyone came up with.  One of my favorite things about quilting is the creativity that each person brings to making a project their own.  I can't wait to see what we do next!

Mini Quilt Monday on Tuesday

With school and activities starting up again this week somehow got away from me...  I did finish my mini, I just didn't get around to blogging about it.  This week I decided to try making some 3D pinwheels.  They are super easy and rather forgiving since the puffiness obscures the intersection points. 

The pinwheels were made with Jennifer Paganelli Flower Power & Dance with Me and the background is some Kaffe Fassett shot cotton in Blush that I picked up at Marden's.  The shot cotton is a bit stretchy but I Best Pressed it in to submission.  I love striped bindings, this one is from Sunkissed by Sweetwater.

For the quilting I tried to design something that looked like the wind blowing.  I think it came out looking a bit more like ocean waves but to really move out of my comfort zone I decided to just live with it:-)

Mini Quilt Monday - Improv Pieced Sherbet Pips

Last week my quilting wonder twin Aimee at Salt Marsh Designs invited me to join her in Fresh Lemons' Mini Quilt Mondays.  September always feels like a fresh start to me, a time to try new things and meet new friends, so this is the perfect way to kick-off the school year.  This week I used a pile of Sherbet Pips scraps and some improv piecing to come up with this mini quilt.

For the quilting I just used random straight lines.  Again, not my norm but I tried to make it look like a game of pick-up sticks.  Finally, for something really different I machine tacked the border.  No pictures of how that came out... I'll definitely need to keep practicing before that technique is ready for prime-time!  This week was definitely a stretch for me but I'm already thinking about what to try next: )