Birthday Quilt In Progress

This year I participated in O’Sewpersonal’s charm square club. I have to say, I wasn’t at all sure what I would do when Mara Penny’s “Soirée” charm pack from Moda Fabrics dropped into my mailbox. I was really puzzled about why they choose this fabric line. It was the last pack in the series, and it was definitely different from almost all the prior choices.

I think it came with a mottled grey and mottled black fabric for the background fabrics. Those choices made this collection even less appealing to me. Still not sure what I was going to do, I kept the grey but put the mottled black fabric in the stash. I went shopping and found Sarah Watts’ super cheery bright pink “Sugar” from her Ruby Star Society line to replace the mottled black fabric. That totally changed the character of this set of fabrics!

This is now going to be a very happy birthday quilt. Hopefully it will have many happy returns from the quilt closet when it’s time to celebrate the birthdays of two little girls!

All I have to do now is make it!!

"Tula's True Colors" Completed Charm Squares with Circles Quilt

I posted this quilt top made with two 5 inch charm packs of “Tula’s True Colors” by Free Spirit Fabrics back on August 20th. Here, finally, is the finished quilt. It sat on the shelf for quite a while as I thought about how to do the quilting.

One option was to quilt concentric circles around each of the circles on the quilt. Eventually the circles would intersect, like ripples in a pond. (Click this lint to see this in the quilting on my “Portholes” quilt). This quilt is small enough that it would be doable, but my appliqued circles patches just aren’t picture perfect, so I couldn’t justify all the hours of quilting that would take.

I ended up quilting down the rows, just next to the seam in a row, and then sewing around the circle if there was in the row I was stitching. It was like driving in a road with a rotary….sew straight until you reach the circle, sew half way around that circle and then sew on out when you’ve reached the seam straight across from the seam you’d be sewing on.

It’s a bit hard to see, but there is one row of quilting around the left side of this circle and two rows around the right side.

Where the circles didn’t intersect a seam I simple sewed around the circle, about 1/8 inch from the appliqued circle edge.

This quilt is just so cheerful. And I love Tula Pink’s “Fairy Dust” design in the “Whisper” colorway from this line on the back of the quilt…you can see it peaking out in the photo above, with the sparrows flying among the tiny stars. It’s probably my favorite design in this line.

"Tula's True Colors" 5 Inch Charm Square Simple Quilt Top

Tula Pink’s new line by Free Spirit, “Tula’s True Colors” was recently released. When Bits ‘n Pieces, a favorite quilt shop in Pelham, NH, showed the fabrics at one in one of their regular unboxing videos, I ordered 2 packs of 5 inch charm squares. (Charm Packs: A stack of 5 inch, or sometimes 10 inch, squares of every color in a fabric line).

I was up for an simple experiment. I decided to see what happened if I put one stack of charm squares right side up and the other upside down and just sew them together as I picked the fabrics up from each stack. I did add a 5 inch square of a very pale Kona® cotton after 5 blocks of the charm pack. The diagonal lines look white, but they really are pink.

The stacks met in the greens! I did swap around a few blocks so that I didn’t get identical squares next to each other. I had fun sewing up this simple quilt, but when I got done and looked at it, my reaction was—-Hum.

Here’s the quilt right after the sewed all the squares together.

It just wasn’t cohesive. I was hoping the plain diagonals would give the random blocks some definition, but the light color didn’t do that. Considering how bright most of Tula’s fabrics are, i’m not sure what color would have worked better.

So I thought about it for a week. The “Fairy Dust” design in this line has tiny circles, concentric circles and stars. (If you look back at last week’s post, The Sleepy Dragon Baby© is lying on this fabric in the top photo). I decided to pick up one of those elements and using that to create some appliques. So I added 7 circles of varying sizes from fabric I had left over from another quilt I’d just made using “Tula’s True Colors.”

This project reminded why I usually don’t enjoy using every color in a fabric line. But the circles definitely make the quilt more interesting.

I think quilting this piece has to potential to add more interest to this quilt.

Next week I’ll show you a quilt I made from this fabric line where I made very deliberate decisions about my choice of fabrics.

Charm Square Baby Quilt with Dogs and Bright Colors, "Dogs + Sunshine"

A fellow Boston Modern Guild member gave me this "Dog Park" fabric designed by Sarah Frederking for Studio E fabrics. She said as soon as she saw it, she thought of me!  How great is that!!

Another friend, who also loves dogs, is having a baby soon.  They don't know if it's a boy or a girl so for her baby quilt needs to be gender neutral.  As soon as I saw this dog fabric, I knew they'd love it!

I cut the charm squares (5 x 5 inches patches) to match the colors in the doggie feature fabric. The patches of "Dog Park" fabric are in diagonal pairs, randomly placed in the quilt top.  I love how bright and cheerful this quilt is!

The quilting is stitch-in-the-ditch with a walking foot across the entire grid of blocks. Then I added 3 sections of diagonal stitching and two more sections of vertical stitching running between the top and middle diagonals. The added quilting gives this simple quilt an interesting texture, more visible in the photos since it's already be washed.

I used the "Dog Park" fabric for the backing of the quilt.  This makes it a fun, reversible baby quilt!

The back of "Dogs + Sunshine" showing the "Dog Park" fabric

I can't wait to see what my friend thinks of this quilt I made for her baby!

Charm Square Apple Blossom Quilt

I got the last 2 UFO quilts in my stack quilted last week.  We had a couple cool days in New England and so it was the perfect time to finish them. It's not so fun to quilt when it's hot and humid!

This is my Apple Blossom Charm square quilt, using my "Apple Blossoms and Dots Pink" fabric printed by Spoonflower.com and 2 Kona® cotton solid charm square packs, Warm Sunrise collection. It was quick to sew up and I love the colors.

Here's the back.  My backing fabric is the same "Apple Blossoms and Dots Pink" print but in a much larger scale. Only the smaller scale version is available for sale at the link above.

I keep a "dog quilt" on the foot of my bed where my dogs often end up.  This is the new addition.  They are quick sews--charm square quilts with polyester batting so that they can wash and dry easily.  With these bright, happy colors, I know it will make me smile every time I look at it!