Clover

This is my first attempt at doing the monthly pattern in the Another Year of Schnibbles parade going on in quilting blogland. The pattern for September is Clover, and you can get it here . 

I had some Noteworthy by Sweetwater fabrics that I've been wanting to use, so I used them with this pattern to make a little mat for one of my end tables in the living room. I tried a new technique for quilting it, thanks to my sister for her suggestion and the quilt pattern. She just happened upon a flower quilt design at the same time I was thinking maybe a flower would be a good design for the center of the blocks. But how to transfer the design to the fabric was my dilemma. Lots of people mark their quilts with various types of pens, but I haven't tried any of those disappearing ink pens yet. She told me to trace the design onto tissue paper and pin the tissue paper to my quilt and stitch right through the tissue paper. The tissue paper comes off pretty easily once the design has been stitched. That was an easy method to use so I will definitely do that again.

Here is my little table topper quilt.

And here it is in use on my end table. Now I'm anxious to make another one for the other end table. A different pattern, though. And different fabrics. I don't care if they match. I just want to play with fabrics and quilt patterns. And for future table toppers I'm thinking of doing some reversible ones with fall colors on one side and Christmas on the other so I can flip them depending on the season.

 

It looks so nice here now, but once I load the table back up with two TV remote controls, a box of tissues, my blood pressure cuff, a coaster, and various other "stuff" that ends up here, you won't see much of the quilt. But that's OK. I'll know it's there!

 

Camp Quilt

This I call my Camp Quilt. I just started making it because I bought a layer cake of Moda's Kansas Troubles fabric. I more often tend towards brighter, more modern colors and fabrics, but there is a part of me that also likes this more old-fashioned, darker color scheme too. I made it from this book:
Another Bite of Schnibbles

(It's called Two Percent in the book.)

As I was making it, I wondered where I would use it. I have a lap quilt for my couch, which I use almost every single day. (I'm always cold when I sit still for more than 10 minutes.) I decided I would use it when I go camping. Even in the summer it's often cold at night around the campfire. So I brought it camping with me in June. Well, I don't know what kind of batting I used, but apparently I picked up something that was quite thin. Even doubled up it wasn't very warm outside with the wind blowing around me. Bummer! But still, I love the quilt. I put it over my sleeping bag in my pop-up and it helped keep me warm while sleeping, so at least it wasn't a total loss. I used it again on another camping trip and it did keep me warm that time. I think the difference was that there was no wind on the second trip. Cotton batting just isn't an effective wind break.

Wall hanging

This is a wall hanging I made for my bedroom. The pattern comes from this book: Another Bite of Schnibbles

This book is well written, with clear directions and great photos. Each quilt is done up in two sizes, bed size and wall hanging size. And each quilt is shown in two different color options.

This pattern is called Lincoln. It's about 32" x 32". The colors match my bedroom.

Purple!

This quilt was made from a gorgeous jelly roll from my sister - gorgeous purples and greens. I picked out a simple jelly roll pattern and whipped this up pretty quickly. I tried my hand at machine quilting it, using straight lines. I especially love the border quilting, which has straight parallel lines, except for the small strippy sections in each border strip where the quilting goes perpendicular to the rest of the border quilting.  Nothing fancy, but pretty to look at.

Christmas Quilt

I was inspired to try my hand at a scrappy Trip Around the World quilt in a Christmas theme. I got all the fabrics at a local secondhand craft store. People donate their unused craft items (scrapbooking paper, rubber stamps, dollhouse furniture, unfinished wood pieces, patterns, fabric, etc.) to this store. It is run by all volunteers in the town, and they sell everything very inexpensively. The money goes to support senior citizen transportation in their town. Crafters get to purge their old stash, crafters get to buy stuff to build up their stash at a good price, and seniors get some help - everybody wins. This was inspired by Bonnie Hunter's blog. http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2005/06/scrappy-trips-around-world.html

Great lap quilt for December and beyond.

Quilting Passion

I have switched my main interest in paper crafting to quilting. I love quilting in part for one of the reasons I love paper crafting - color. I am always interested in seeing how different colors and shades of colors go together. About 4 years ago I started quilting, and I have been learning a lot as I go. The following pictures are some of the quilts I have made in 2013.

Fun with colors - unnamed quilt (I am terrible at coming up with names. Just ask my cats. Boring names, poor babies.)
I saw this quilt on a blog and fell in love with it. I must say, orange and yellowish orange are not in my list of favorite colors, and I don't ever gravitate toward them. But something about this quilt really grabbed my attention. I saved the blog entry in my favorites and would go back and look at it often. Eventually I bought the same fabrics and decided to make the same quilt. I did not use a pattern, but it was pretty simple to reconstruct. I even copied the blogger's straight line quilting on it, since I am not good at free motion quilting at this point, and straight lines are best for me to work with. The fabric on the front is all from the Simply Color line by V and Co., whose blog I stole this quilt from.
Here is her blog: http://www.vanessachristenson.com/2013/04/v-and-co-reverse-hopscotch-done.html

 

For the back, I decided to play with my growing collection of gray fabrics. I was going to make a quilt using different shades of gray and black fabrics, but how many lap quilts does one person need? So I figured I could piece the backing and the quilt can be reversible. Since I had lots of leftover squares from the front of the quilt, and the colors all looked so good with grays, I incorporated them into the backing as well.

 

 

Fun cards

I am working my way through the July kit by Simon Says Stamps. This kit has some fun papers  and a nice set of stamps. I've been adding a few of my own embellishments like the fun twine.