Postage Stamp Stars

Since I shared about the PA Relief Sale yesterday, it seemed like a great time to show off the quilt that I made from the fabric I bought as last year’s sale.  Given my addiction to scrappy quilts, I was smitten with the bags of vintage postage stamps.  They were great to have on hand beside my machine for leader-enders,  and it seemed like I had tons of postage stamp blocks in no time at all.  So when I needed another quilt for my church, the blocks seemed like a great time to use some of them.

Hopefully this quilt is being already being enjoyed by one of the newest little members of Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship!

Sweet Geese

After more than a year, this sweet little quilt is finally quilted, bound, and ready to donate.

I’ve been using these little charity quilts for machine quilting practice.  Not making much progress, I can do a passable job, but that’s about it.  I think I’ll be looking for a class in the near future.

I’ve got to give some of the credit to a fun flickr group I’m a part of now.  Project: UFO (unfinished objects for those of you who don’t speak quilter) is a great little support group for those of us who are addicted to starting new projects before we finish up the old ones.  Check it out if you want some help staying on track with projects!

UFO Goals: January Progress

Improv Workshop

This weekend the Capital Area Modern Quilt Guild hosted its first sew-in workshop and I had my very first chance to teach a group!  There was lots of creativity and fun.  All around a pretty good day.  You can check out everyone’s work over at the CAMQG Blog.
I wanted to be able to show the group several different types of improv blocks and passing books around  and flipping pages just seemed slow, so I decided to dig into my scrap bin a bit and make a baby sampler quilt.

This block was my personal favorite, and all the ladies agreed.

It’s was a bit smaller than I like for baby quilts, so I’ve been working up a nice improv border.  Because I just hate the idea of putting that much work into something that will be too small for them in less than a year, most of my “baby quilts” are really toddler quilts.  Anyway, I came home from the sew-in day and cleaned my sewing room.  Now I’m feeling very motivated to spend time in there, it’s so clean and organized, so I imagine I’ll get the border on very soon, hopefully later this week.
Until next time,

Jill

Sunny Day Dresden

There are some things that have kind of fallen off my to do list since moving and going back to work at a pretty tough job.  Like blogging and my etsy shop.  Photos have been one of my biggest problems, I just didn’t find the right time/weather/light conditions to take half way decent, or really any, photos this winter.  But summer sunlight is shining into the evenings now and my first shop sale since Christmas invigorated me to finally get a recent finish photographed and up in the FallingForPieces Shop!

Probably the last new addition to the shop for awhile though, between wedding quilts, a commissioned church banner, and one more baby just announced at CHMF, I suspect I’m booked for quite awhile!  Given most of the people who read this blog are other quilters, or my mother, but if anyone is looking for a fabulous little baby quilt, this one is up for sale here.

Napping Bears: Finished

A finish, just under the wire, since this had to be in mail today!

It’s a very special finish for me, made from the same pattern as the baby quilt my Grandmother made for me.  Now this quilt is off for the first baby of the next generation in our family.  I hope my cousin’s baby will love it as much as I loved mine!

 

 

Two Simple String Quilts

Finished up two simple baby string quilts over the weekend and thought I’d share:

Full report tomorrow!

Jill

“Lila” Strippy String Quilt

Finished up my Lila Quilt Friday night, but we’ve had sad overcast weather here in Durham and I was waiting hoping to get better photos.  No such luck though, it’s still sadly overcast here, so I’ll have to update this with better photos of the quilting later.

The inspiration for this quilt came from the very first quilt book I owned, The Ultimate Quilting Book by Maggi McCormick Gordon.  In terms of technique this book is a little out of date, though for a new quilter it does cover basic techniques like binding methods very well with step by step photos.  The real value of this book for me though is the veritable treasure trove of inspiration with fantastic photos of a few hundred classic American quilts.  For me looking through it is a bit like looking through your favorite flickr group of quilts, but with historical quilts.  Seriously, if you need a little treat for yourself, you can get it on amazon for like $6.   That’s nothing for 400+ pages of quilt eye candy!

One section that has appealed to me as long as I’ve had the book is Strippy Quilts (pgs 182-189), which is all quilts made of long bars of two alternating colors, creating vertical stripes.  The very simple piecing design allows the quilting to be the focus, which I love because the quilting itself is my favorite part of the quilt making process.  Although the classic quilts they feature were mostly made with two solid fabrics, there is also a strippy quilt in the “how to” second half the book (pg 376), which uses one solid and one print.

For Lila, I decided to take that one step further and make my own print, so to speak, by string piecing the “print” stripes.  The hand quilted along the seams with cotton perle 8.  For the solid bars I borrowed some hand quilting motifs from a strippy quilt, featured in another classic inspiration book I love, Treasury of Amish Quilts by Rachel Pellman.

I’ll be blogging more on this quilt later this week, so please check back to find out more.  There will be one post covering making the string quilting strips and some ideas on using recycled foundations.  Another post will cover the hand quilting and talk about the state of modern hand quilting, featuring some wonderful modern hand quilters who’ve agreed to let me feature their awesome quilts!

Until Next Time!

Jill