You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch

I know it's the next to last day of January, but we're gonna back up a bit to some of the Christmas sewing I did this year because who doesn't want a little extra Christmas, amirite?

This particular sewing was all for my little guy, the world's biggest Dr. Seuss fan (see here, here, and here for past evidence). Despite being scared of the actual Grinch cartoon (I know, I know), he loves anything with the Grinch on it, so when this Grinch Advent calendar panel (from Robert Kaufman) arrived at the fabric store where I work, he jumped on it the moment he saw it.

Miraculously, I actually managed to finish it by December 1st, and we kept up with moving the Grinch along all month. We always travel for the holidays, and a few days before we left, he commented that we were going to have to have someone come over to the house to move the Grinch while we were gone. Ha! You can imagine how excited he was when we told him we could take the calendar with us. I think this one will be a favorite for a while.

I used a candy-cane print from my stash for the binding. Since this calendar hangs on the wall, I wasn't too worried about the backing, so I pieced it together using a bit of another Grinch print I had, along with a red and white herringbone print.

Then, about a week before Christmas, we wandered into Joanns for some notion, and of course they had the Christmas fabrics right up front, so B insisted on looking to see if they had any Grinch fabric (because, obviously, we needed more). I actually bet him that they wouldn't, a bet I obviously lost. I simply couldn't turn him down when he asked if I'd make him a Grinch quilt, though I warned him that I wouldn't be able to do it until after Christmas because there just wasn't time. He agreed, and the fabric came home with us.

True to my word, it was the first project I undertook when we returned home, and I took it easy on myself by just making a simple wholecloth quilt. The flannel I used for the backing had been hanging out in my stash for a while, and this seemed like the perfect use, combined with a black and white dot and a green Cotton + Steel Dottie print for the binding. For the quilting, I went with a simple diamond crosshatch in red thread.

B's slept with it every night since I finished it, which makes for one happy mama.

January do.Good Stitches blocks

For January's blocks for the Emerge circle of do.Good Stitches, Allison was inspired by this awesome log cabin quilt and asked us to create blocks that would come together to form a similar look: two log-cabin blocks (strips any size we wanted), one with roughly 50% white, off-white, and/or cream fabrics and 50% blue and green fabrics (with a tiny bit of yellow if we wanted) and a second block that was 90-95% white, off-white, and/or cream and just a bit of color. Hope she likes where I went!

Tessellation quilt: A finish!

Back in October, I revealed the Tessellation quilt I finished for RJR Fabrics' What Shade Are You? Blog Hop, and now I'm finally getting around to posting all of the details here.

I love working with solids, so I jumped at the chance to try out RJR’s Cotton Supreme Solids for the first time. I’m a big fan of Cotton + Steel fabrics (a division of RJR), so I expected the Cotton Supreme Solids to be the same great quality, and they did not disappoint. The colors are so vivid, the fabric has a beautiful hand, and they were truly a pleasure to work with.

In fact, the hardest part was deciding which colors to choose. When the Cotton Supreme Solids color card arrived, I couldn’t seem to narrow down the options. They were all too good! So I shifted to choosing my pattern, which turned out to be a no-brainer. I had wanted to make the Tessellation quilt (pattern by Nydia Kehnle and Alison Glass) since I first saw it, and I knew it would look so good made up in solids, so it seemed like the perfect choice. The pattern calls for 25 fabrics, so I started with the blues and teals (my favorites) and then expanded to the cool pinks and purples to round out my selection. I chose the following Cotton Supreme Solid colors for my quilt top: Fairy Princess, Candyland, Charlotte, Rio, Rhododendron, Pink Orchid, Bougainvillea, Hydrangea, Amethyst, Caviar, Hyacinth, Periwinkle, Cloud 9, Carolina, Lancaster Sky, Anemone, Electric Blue, Robins Egg, Riviera, Turks & Caicos, Horizon, Bora Bora, Schooner, Proud as a Peacock, and Celeste.

Additionally, I used Geo Drops in Teal (from Rashida Coleman Hale’s Raindrops collection for Cotton + Steel) for the backing. I love how the hexie drops mimic the triangular shapes on the front of the quilt.

The quilt is composed of five triangle designs, and it was so fun to start playing with the colors to see how different combinations would work in each piece. I spent many a night with rows of paper-pieced sections laid across my work table and floor, shuffling and rearranging.

When it came time to quilt it, I struggled with choosing just one thread color, so instead I chose 16! The obvious alternative, right? I quilted diagonal lines in a triangle shape roughly one inch apart, changing my thread color every three to four lines. There are 15 thread colors on the front, reflecting the range of blues, teals, purples, and pinks in the solid fabrics, and one color on the back, chosen to match the color of the hexies in the backing print. I wish I could capture the colors in the quilting better in the pictures. They really are so fun in person.

I’m so pleased with the final quilt in all of its saturated solid glory. The movement across the blocks makes me think of a sparkly geode or shattered glass, and it has such great visual interest, keeping your eye bouncing from one section to the next. This was definitely a perfect solids project, and it was a joy to get to work with these lovely fabrics.

If you're looking to branch out from the usual solid suspects (Kona, Moda Bella), I'd highly recommend giving RJR's Cotton Supreme Solids a try. They have a similar feel to Konas (a little heavier than Bellas), and the colors are bold and saturated.

Design Star Round 4: Voting open!

Hello, my lovies! It's been a few weeks, but I'm excited to tell you that voting is now open for Round 4 of the Stash Fabric Design Star contest, and yours truly has a bundle in the running! The theme for this round was "wanderlust." Here's the write-up I did for mine:

As I was sitting at my computer with a cold, wet rain falling down the window, all I could think was, "I need to be on a beach." This soothing bundle was inspired by dreams of warm sand between my toes, a cool blue-green ocean in front of me, a soft wind on my cheek, and pops of bright bougainvilleas around the corner. Oh, and a tasty drink in my hand, too.

Sounds pretty nice, doesn't it? Anyway, this is the last round before the finals, and I'd so appreciate your vote! You're just voting for ONE bundle this time, so it really counts. Thanks so much for all of your support!

Oh, and Beth's already put together some real life versions of our bundles, in case you're interested in purchasing one. Here's mine:

Super cute, huh? She had to sub out a few fabrics from my mosaic because one sold out and one's still a pre-order (so not yet available), but I think it looks great. You can find it right here.

November do.Good Stitches blocks

Like October, our November quilter went easy on us for this month's bee blocks for the Emerge circle of do.Good Stitches. Amanda asked us to make appliqued circle blocks in earthy fall colors -- mustard yellow, navy, or burnt orange -- on a low-volume background square.

We could use any applique method we wanted -- reverse appliqué, raw edge appliqué, or standard applique by hand or machine -- and I decided to go with raw edge. She was hoping for some blocks that would really crinkle up and fray in the wash for a super cozy quilt. She wanted the blocks to finish at 12.5", 8.5", or 4.5", totaling approximately 26", so I made three blocks, one in each size. The circles could be any size, and centered or offset was fine, so I did a little of both. For such a simple quilt, I think this one is going to have a great visual impact.

Improv sky

For the last few months, the St. Louis MQG has been working on their entry for the guild QuiltCon charity quilt. The theme for this year is playing with scale, and the MQG specified this rather interesting color palette.

A core group of us met to discuss how we wanted to interpret the theme and decided on a large but partial view of St. Louis's Gateway Arch based on a photograph by a local photographer (from whom we obtained permission). We decided to improv piece the quilt so we could easily divide up the blocks among lots of members who wanted to help. Since I work at a fabric store, I offered to curate most of the fabrics needed for the quilt.

We also received some contributions from guild members, and I was joined one night by another member to cut up all the fabrics and assemble them into bags that coordinated with the parts of the picture in each quilt block.

Members worked on their blocks at our local retreat in October, as well as on their own, and we collected the bulk of the blocks at our November meeting. Our member Dottie, who's serving as the Project Manager for the quilt and will be quilting it, began to lay them out on her design wall at home. Pretty cool, huh??

(Two photos above borrowed from Dottie's Instagram. Thanks, Dottie!)

I managed to finish up my blocks in the week or so before the meeting. I don't do a lot of improv, but as seems to happen every time I do, I really enjoyed the process of making the blocks, and after finishing them, thought to myself how I really need to do more. Maybe this time I will. I knew I wouldn't have a lot of time in my schedule to work on the blocks, so I chose three blocks from the sky portion, which was a bit easier than the arch. You can see my blocks in the top left corner in Dottie's pictures above.

I am so excited to see the rest of this quilt come together. It's been great to see so many guild members involved in its creation, and I'll be really happy to see a quilt at QuiltCon that I had a hand in, especially since I wasn't able to finish some of my own quilts that I was hoping to submit this year.

October do.Good Stitches blocks

October was our group leader Kelly's block as quilter for the Emerge circle of do.Good Stitches, and she asked us to make three Cross Cut blocks using the tutorial from A Quilter's Table.

She wanted us to keep the blocks intact so she could cut them down and reassemble them herself, which made for a quick and easy assembly. We started with a 9.5" low volume square for each block and then used green and blue prints for the crosses. I gotta say, with all the busy projects I've had going on lately, I really appreciate a quick bee block. (Oh, and that green cross isn't nearly as wrinkled as the pics make it look. It did not want to photograph well.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hi there! I just wanted to pop in and wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving! We enjoyed a lovely day in California with family, football (go Cowboys!), and so much food, including the classic pecan pie I make every year. We have much to be thankful for, and I hope you all can say the same.