Teyla's Quilt

My second twin-sized quilt is completed!  And on time! Woo-hoo!

It's another Yellow Brick Road, but done in greens & blues, for my niece Teyla's 8th birthday.  I found a lot of the fabric from Intown Quilters in Decatur GA.  Some also came from my local store, Gina's and a couple came from my stash.

The sun was pretty harsh for my finished images.  Maybe this in-progress shot shows some of the fabric in better detail.

The back is pieced from 3 different prints, I found the Hello Kitty fabric online and the other two came from Gina's. Teyla likes Hello Kitty, peace signs and purple, too.

Things went faster the second time around.  I'm still working on my machine binding skills, but I only had to slip stitch a couple of missed areas.

 

Something happened to my Bernina 750QE when I had finished quilting.  As I was cleaning a stuck thread from the thread catcher, it locked up.  It went to a weird screen that's not in the book and I only found one reference to it online, but couldn't get to the related post on a FB page.  After hard booting and unplugging attempts failed, I took Bernie into my local shop and stumped them, too, so Bernina USA wants to see it.  Gina's loaned me one of their classroom 550 machines and I was able to finish the binding over 2 weeknights and have it ready for Teyla's birthday!

The 550 (above) is a very nice, solid machine, but I'm really glad I splurged on the 750.  I like having the extra harp space.  I'm also so used to the thread cutter.

I'm taking a break from quilts for a bit and when my machine comes back, I want to do a couple small projects mentioned my Jan 10th blog.

What are you looking forward to working on this spring/summer?

Posted on Finish It Friday:

http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/2014/04/rockets-and-robots-quilt.html?m=1 

Bungle Jungle Quilt #2

Quilt 2 of 3 is finished! Again using the Moda Bungle Jungle line, I made a quilt for my nephew/godson Jake.  I also incorporated some of the brighter colors in a 9-patch design.  He's a little over 2 1/2 years old, so I made it larger than the first quilt I made for my 1 year-old nephew Silas.

I tried doing some free motion quilting, mimicking the oodles squiggle pattern in some of the prints.  It's a lot harder to do than one would think.  I look forward to practicing it more.

I was able to manage a heart in all of that squiggle mess I made.

The backing fabric is another print in the Bungle Jungle line.  I don't remember the name of it, but I luckily got 4 yards at the monthly end-of-bolt sale at Gina's Bernina for 40% off.  I have enough Bungle Jungle fabric left overall that I hope to make a quilt or two for Project Linus.

Here's a closer look.  I used a gray thread for the quilting.

I again did a machine binding, but this time, I found a way to join the ends that worked out better for me at: Fons and Porter.  I do wish I could figure out how to make the stitching that shows up on the back look more even.  It goes on and off of the binding.  I also plan to learn to hand sew the binding to the back, but the machine binding is really quick to do.

Two quilts down and one to go!  How are you doing on your Christmas projects with less than a week to go?

Posted on Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Friday

Bungle Jungle Quilt #1

I'm trying to make 3 quilts for Christmas.  Yes, I know I've got less than 2 weeks left, but I finished quilt #1 last night - so time for a quick celebration!

Comprised of 5" charms (bought & hand cut) of various prints from the Moda Jungle Bungle line.  This is my second quilt ever, measuring 36 1/2 x 45 1/2.  I started piecing back in late summer and then stopped to finished the table runner and placemats featured in an earlier post.

Doing straight patchwork probably wasn't the best choice this early in my quilting endeavors, as I did quite a bit of ripping and re-sewing to get things to match up as best as I could.  The recipient's mother likes earth tones, so I stuck with the blue, green and gray prints from this line.

For the back I used the blue critter print and stitched in a ditch with a gray thread.  I did machine binding using the blue oodles prints and matching thread due to the time constraints.

I feel pretty good about how it turned out.  I wish the pictures were better, but it was very cold out this morning!  I'll replace them if I get a chance to do better.

Now on to finishing quilt #2, which is piece and pinned - ready to quilt!

Posted on Crazy Mom Quilts - Finish It Friday

UFO Finally Finished!

A few years ago a friend had painted her dining room, and for Christmas I was going to make her a new table runner and placemats.  We had picked out the pattern, Fragments from A Place at the Table by Claire Oehler and Nancy Mirman, and the fabric.  I had started working on it and then life got in the way, they moved out of state for her husband's new job and this project was put up.  I came across it in October and was determined to finish it in time for Thanksgiving.

Luckily, I had been in her new home and had taken pictures.  I traded out some of the fragments fabric, ironed them on with Heat 'n Bond Lite, then stitched closely around the edges with nylon thread on top and dark bobbin thread.

I didn't think I had enough of the black print to bind everything, so I started to just do self binding on the placemats, but it was uneven and just didn't look good.  I carefully measured and found I did have enough fabric to cut binding strips and finished off the placemats and table runner with a machine binding method I found on Crazy Mom Quilts.

There was definitely not enough black fabric to make napkins, so I just found black cotton ones online, pre-washed a couple of times to make sure there was not any excess dye in them and then embellished them with some fragments in one of the corners.

Here's a closer look at the table runner:

And a couple of the placemats and napkins:





Finished it just in time to be adorned with Thanksgiving Dinner!

Do you have any UFOs and do you plan to finish them, recycle them or just forget about them?


Linked to Finish It Up Friday on Crazy Mom Quilts.