A Sweet Heart Quilt

Hi everyone!

I can't believe it's been more than a month since I last posted. Wow, how time flies. But I'm back today to share a quilt with you.

This quilt is a Valentine's Day quilt that I finished in March. For the pattern, I used Big Love Quilt by Modern Handcraft, which you can find here. It's a super easy quilt to make. It's made up of large half-square triangles and, I love how it came out.

All the fabrics that I used.

You can't tell but, the backing is a very light pink.

Our dog Rocko wanted to be in the picture.

I had a lot of fun picking out the fabrics. They are all from JoAnn's and Walmart. The backing, as usual, is a thrift store sheet. The quilting is my usual stitch in the ditch of all the seams. Super easy. And I sewed the binding on by machine. 

The finished quilt is 54″ x 62″.

Since it wasn't finished for Valentine's Day, I guess I have to wait until next year to display it in my house. Oh well.

That's it for now. Until next time...

Thanks for stopping by!

Camille

Stone Toss - A Half Square Quilt

Hi everyone!

Today, I'm sharing photos of my finished HST quilt.  It's called Stone Toss and, I just love how it turned out.

The quilt is a gift for one of my BFF's sons, who recently purchased his first house.  I wanted this to be a surprise, so the only direction I received (from his Mom) was that his favorite color is grey (just like me).

So with that, I settled on the direction I wanted to go - half square triangles. And then I went looking for fabric. After much searching on Etsy, eBay, and Amazon - I settled on a Kona Stormy Skies fat quarter bundle, a Cold Snap 5 Karat Gems pack (Wilmington Prints), a Stonehenge Graduations in Graphite fat quarter bundle(Northcutt), that worked really nicely with the gems pack, and a couple of fat quarters thrown in from my stash.

There was no plan or pattern used for this quilt, other than wanting to use HST's and that it be masculine.

First, I figured out how many blocks I needed to make a quilt that was at least 72" x 81". Answer = 288.  I cut 144 'background' squares and 144 'focus' squares and spent a couple of days making a lot of HST's. (Which I truly didn't mind. I think I might be the only quilter who likes making HST's including the trimming.) 

And then I put them all up on the design board.  No overthinking it, no second-guessing myself, I just put them on the board. I even let blocks with the same colors touch each other in quite a few places. Oh my! 😮 But I think it gives the quilt some interest and gives the eye a place to land amongst the randomness of the design.

The backing and binding are from my thrift store sheet stash.

                                

             

The quilting is something new for me. I did horizontal lines at 1.50" apart. I think it really allows the design to shine.

The quilt measures 65" x 76" and the layout is 16 x 18. 

And I can't wait to give it to him...hopefully sometime this month.

That's it for now...

This week, I'm starting another quilt. A Christmas present that will be a half-hexie quilt in yellows. Can't wait.

Until next time...

Camille

What I've Been Working On...

Hi there!

Just thought I would stop by and let you know that I've not forgotten you all.  In the past few weeks, I've managed to spend some time working on a new quilt as well as doing some other fun things.

One of those things is stepping out of my comfort zone. I'm extremely uncomfortable with heights and when one of my friends invited me to join her and a few other ladies in doing a rope course I was at first very hesitant to say yes. But I am so glad that I did. I faced my fear and though I only spent about 30 minutes on the rope course I am so proud of myself and glad that I can now cross that off my To-Do list.

The other thing that's happened is my youngest son came home for a visit. We spent a lot of quality time together and had a lot of fun. I'm happy to say he's decided to come home and go to school. So he'll be home in November and I couldn't be happier.

So anyway...onto quilting.

I'm working on a pinwheel quilt. So far I've got the quilt top done and the backing ready to be pin basted.

This is the fabric that I picked out. It all started with the center fabric (the gray with orange flowers) and the two fabrics on either side of it. The other fabrics were pulled from my fabric stash.

Cutting HST's using the June Taylor Perfect Half-Square & Quarter Square Ruler. This is a great ruler to use when making HST's.














And here is the quilt top on my design wall. (the blue squares are my numbering system so when I chain stitch everything the blocks they end up where they're supposed to.)

I plan on pin basting this tomorrow and should start quilting it this weekend. I think I'm going to just stitch-in-the-ditch for this quilt. So if all goes well I should have this completely finished in the next couple of weeks. At which time I will take a lot of pictures and share them with you.

Until then...

Camille

Star Blossom Quilt

The first time I saw this Reverse Sawtooth Star Block I knew I needed to make a quilt with this block. But I wanted to make it scrappy. And after much searching I found this Scrappy Sawtooth Star block and added it to my Quilts to Make list.

Time passed and after spending a few weeks organizing the fabric in my sewing loft I decided I had enough scraps to make a scrappy star quilt.

Working from tutorials I came up with a block design using 3.5" squares. 

So after cutting a lot of scraps and fat quarters, I sat down at my sewing machine and started chain piecing blocks together.

It took a little longer than some of my other quilts but it never felt like a daunting task. I don't know about you but revisiting long forgotten fabric is like reconnecting with an old friend. Picking up a scrap and remembering the quilt that it was used in was very rewarding.

The blocks finished at 12" and I made a total of 30 blocks.

I label and name all of my quilts and the name of this quilt is Star Blossom.

And here it is ...

Star Blossom - Front

Star Blossom - Back

The back of the quilt is from a duvet cover that I bought at Ikea on clearance. I paid $10.00 and I have enough left over to make another lap size quilt and a baby quilt plus more for scraps.

Unlike your children, I think you can have a favorite quilt and I think this is my favorite quilt so far.