Blogger's Quilt Festival: Zig-Zag Quilt

It's my favorite time of the year...fall! Which means lots of changing leaves, apple pie, thanksgiving, and then of course Christmas (aka the best holiday ever). But before I go getting ahead of myself, the fall also has one of my favorite blogging events - the blogger's quilt festival. I can spend hours looking through the entries on Amy's site, but usually don't have time. However, with the lovely Frankenstorm or Hurricane Sandy as she is known, it looks like I might have hours to spend indoors. So bring on the quilts!

After much hemming and hawing, I settled on sharing with you my zig-zag quilt I made in celebration of the birth of my cousin's first child.

I really wanted to create a bold, graphic quilt that featured pink paired with some unexpected colors. I think that the magenta and golden oranges are really framed nicely against my favorite Kona Coal.  Because I wanted the color to be the focus of the quilt, I paired some tone-on-tone prints with a few solids for some visual interest...and as a fun surprise when you looked closer. I backed it with solid magenta and used a golden orange binding.

To make the chevrons, I used half square triangles that I pieced together. I really do enjoy working with half square triangles -- and find it isn't so bad if I trim and prep a bunch of them at once. =)

I quilted it on my machine using straight lines echoing the zig-zags. I really like how it turned out, and it gives a nice touch of texture to the quilt - especially in the gray areas.

Hope you like it! And don't forget to check out the other awesome entries for the Blogger's Quilt Festival.

Zig-Zag Quilt Stats:
Measurements: Baby Blanket about 36" x 52"
Special Techniques used: half square triangle piecing
Quilted by: me! on my lovely sewing machine -- echoed the zig-zags.
Best Category: Baby Quilt/Quilt Photography
Quilt Entry #: 411

Floor Mat

After my successful attempt at making the fan bag, I decided to tackle another one of the projects in Suzuko Koseki's book Patchwork Style: 35 simple projects for a cozy and colorful life -- this time the floor mat.

As I have come to expect from Koseki, the instructions were quite straight forward and left little room for confusion. In fact this mat took me a few hours to complete from start to finish. The most time consuming part was actually deciding how I wanted to arrange the fabric squares onto my linen background. Additionally, I loved that ideally this project could use a lot of my scraps. So I went shopping in my stash and pulled a charm pack of blue and green solids which I then combined with a few of my favorite green and blue prints. I had fun experimenting with different styles of straight line quilting. I think that it really shines, especially on the solids.

I think if I were to do this again I would fray check my fabric squares, or perhaps cut around them with my lovely pinking shears to help reduce the amount of fraying...a lot of my solids frayed quite a bit which was somewhat frustrating to deal with. I also used 2 layers of batting as suggested, but I think next time I will put a towel or something as the batting to make it a little softer.

I love this floor mat and can totally see a few more in my future...the possibilities are endless!

That time I sorta went to sewing summit

So last week I boarded a plane and flew to Salt Lake City, Utah for the weekend. While it just happened to be the weekend of sewing summit, it also was the weekend of my lovely sister's wedding. And as luck would have it, my dashing husband and I happened to be staying at the same gorgeous hotel where sewing summit was held.

I have the world's best husband who allowed me to juggle both and while I had a blast hanging out with family and doing family fun things, I also had fun at sewing summit. I didn't have time to take any of the classes or go to the lovely lunches (sad face) but I did get to make a few friends and I spent some time in the sewing rooms...the lovely Faith even showed me how to sew a partial seam...and I mastered a new way of sewing hexagons together. Yay! Although, I might win the worst blogger of the year award because I failed to take a single picture of my sewing adventures. Lame. I guess I'll just have to go next year so I can take pictures.

Anyway the best part of the weekend, obviously, was my sister's wedding -- here's to a lifetime of happiness for two of my favorite people!

Fall Fan Bag

I made the fan bag from Suzuko Koselki's book Pachwork Style. This is the first bag I've ever made...successfully. I am dying to tackle the infamous weekender bag by Amy Butler, so I figured I'd start with something much simpler first. 

I grabbed a stack of beautiful fabrics from the DS Collections that reminded me of fall and got to work. 

Overall, the bag took me half a day to complete - the hardest part of it, in fact, was finding the leather material for the straps! Luckily, the people at my LQS had a few suggestions and helped me find some material. 

I found Suzuko's instructions very easy to follow and the diagrams were key for a visual learner like myself. My favorite part of the bag is the pockets I created with the scraps that fit the things I carry around with me on a daily basis. Now I don't have to go digging around for a red pen (or 3) when I grade papers.

I am excited that I finished this bag and look forward to bringing it with me to Salt Lake next week...now bring on the weekender!

Project Sneak Peek!

One of the benefits of having a husband in medical school is the access I get to the library. His school's library offers to get any book - and if they don't have it, then they will borrow it from another library somewhere in the country. This is a lifesaver for our budget (especially since I read quickly). I've checked out a lot of quilting books - which I enjoy because it lets me look through the book before I decide if I want to buy it.

Recently I checked out Patchwork Style: 35 Simple Projects for a Cozy and Colorful Life by Suzuko Koseki. Stay tuned for a review of the book and one of the projects. So as I begin to work on a project (or two) in the book, cross your fingers it goes well and enjoy the photos!

I am linking up to Lee's blog for WIP in Wed...because this is my major WIP. =)

3x6 Hexagon Blocks

I am one of the queen bees of the 3x6 Bee, which is hosted on flickr. It's a fun group of people and this weekend I managed to finish up some paper pieced blocks for my hive.

Originally, I had created a block to make, but due to time restraints decided at the last minute to find a pattern that was already created and had significantly less pieces. I chose the Snow Cristal block by Shape Moth which is available for free here. They were very easy to make and I loved that it allowed me to use up a lot of my scraps.

I liked that this pattern allowed me to create a lot of variety within each block. Are you a fan of paper piecing?