Guest Spot

Psst—I'm guest blogging over at Fat Quarterly today. So exciting, right? Head over there for my tutorial for this wonky sunshine pillow. Would you believe you can make it without paper-piecing? It's true. You'll just have to hop over to FQ to find out how.

And if you're not up for making one of these yourself, you can still have this pillow for your very own. My version is for now for sale through Quilt Hope In's etsy store. One hundred percent of the proceeds will go to help women and children in Haiti. So you can brighten your day with a quilted sun, and brighten their day with some much needed medical help and education. Can't beat that.

Edited to add: I'm entering this in the Blogger's Pillow Party for March. Fun!

WIP Wednesday #15

It's Wednesday again! Here's what's happening in my world ...

Ongoing projects:

DQS 10
I paper-pieced another little section for my DQS swap quilt. I think it turned out cute—too bad I have no idea what to do with it. I wanted it to piece it onto the other curved section I made (seen here), but I quickly discovered that wasn't going to work. It was just WAY too bulky where all of those seams came together. So now I need to rethink my entire plan for this quilt. Which is fine, since that plan was pretty half-baked in the first place. I guess this is what happens when you don't sketch anything out first. It goes sketch, then sew, Lee. So my next step is to sit down with my sketch book and the pieces I've already made, and see what I come up with. Stay tuned.

Operation Stash Reorganization
Getting there. Slowly but surely. Having completely underestimated the sheer volume of my stash, I used up all of my comic book boards and then had to wait for more to arrive. Yeesh, I have a lot of fabric. There is no reason for me to buy any more fabric in the near future. Possibly ever. But that's the problem: I have never needed reasons to buy fabric. So I need to start coming up with stash projects. Fortunately, I have at least two in mind that hopefully you will see here very soon.

Completed tops awaiting quilting:

Hope Valley (Hey, want to make this quilt? I'm going to have a quilt-along announcement in the next few weeks!)

Completed quilts awaiting binding:
Modern Meadow

On hold for now:
Blockapalooza
Central Park jelly roll quilt
Figgy Pudding quilt
Wonky Log Cabin

This week's stats:
New projects - 0
Completed projects - 1 (my Sliced Coins quilt)
Currently in progress - 10 (down one from last week)

So how about it? What are you working on this week? Just link up a post with one or more works-in-progress. Don't forget to link back here to my blog and to comment on some of the other links. Let's whip those WIPs into shape!

February Bee Blocks

Do. Good Stitches: Rachel asked for wonky stars in pinks, reds, and whites. Knowing my tendency to under-wonk, I set out to purposely overdo the wonk here. However much my instincts told me to wonk, I doubled that. And you know what? It worked like a charm! I'm finally happy with my wonkiness. And how much do you love that red background?

I based my second Do. Good Stitches block on this one from Flickr.

{Sew} Beautiful: Emily asked for drunk love blocks on the other end of the spectrum, with no intentional wonkiness. So, mission accomplished: All wonkiness seen above was most certainly not intentional. : )

And finally, this isn't really a bee block, but Jenny of Cut. Sew. Iron. Repeat recently put out a call for cross blocks to be included in a quilt for an AIDS fundraiser. Since I had my red fabric out for my Do. Good Stitches block, I whipped up one for that project as well.

Wrapped in Pips

My quilt for "Wrapped In Hope" is now complete.

This quilt is a birthday gift for Alissa, who is turning 12 on March 4. Like all "Wrapped In Hope" participants, Alissa has a parent who is in prison. I'll be sending this quilt directly to Alissa ... along with a birthday card that I'll sign from her absent mom.

Alissa loves dogs, horses, art, and the color blue. I hope that means she will love this quilt. The blue solid I used for the sashing, borders, and binding is Moda Bella Solids in Blue Raspberry.

I adore all the little surprises when you look closely at these prints—this little hedgehog is my absolute favorite.

I almost like the back more than the front. I hope Alissa won't mind the dark gray solid that I used (Kona Coal), but I just couldn't resist, it looked so sharp with the leftover blue Pips prints. And I love how the white quilting shows up so well back there (although, admittedly, that means you can really see the flaws, too!).

All in all, everything about this quilt just says "12-year-old girl" to me, from the Sherbet Pips prints and the modern, blocky design to the fun wavy-line quilting. Thank you to my wonderful bloggy friend Elizabeth—her Sliced Coins quilt-along provided the perfect design.

And happy birthday, Alissa. I hope you have as much fun on your birthday as I had making this quilt for you.

WIP Wednesday #14

Welcome to Work-In-Progress Wednesday. Hit it!

Ongoing projects:
Don't Call Me Betsy's Sliced Coins Quilt-Along
Yep, this was pretty much all I worked on this week. Thanks to a serious deadline, I've been kicking butt on this one, and I think I should have another finish for you tomorrow! Can you believe it? That will be three completed quilts in the past two weeks. It also will be three completed quilts in the past four months. But who's counting? Besides me, I mean. : )


Completed tops awaiting quilting:
Hope Valley

Completed quilts awaiting binding:
Modern Meadow

On hold for now:
Swaps and bee blocks (will be top priority when Sliced Coins is done!)
Blockapalooza
Central Park jelly roll quilt
Figgy Pudding quilt
Wonky Log Cabin
Operation Stash Reorganization

This week's stats:
New projects - 0
Completed projects - 1 (my Fall Equinox quilt)
Currently in progress - 11 (down one from last week)

Take it away, ladies! Remember to link back here to my blog, and don't forget to comment on the other links.

A New Winner

Still no word from Heather, who was the original winner of the Wonderland fat-eighths. So I've drawn another winner, and I really hope you won't think this is rigged, because the new winner is ...

#58, Felicity!

Felicity said: "Aren't you lovely to pay your good luck forward! Thanks for the giveaway! I'm really digging Anna Griffin's Darcey Collection (Windham Fabrics) these days. Great basics."

And the reason I hope you won't think this is rigged is because Felicity commented on yesterday's post, "Is it wrong of me to hope your no-reply winner doesn't contact you and I get another chance at the Wonderland?" So when I drew #58 today, I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be hilarious if #58 was Felicity?" And sure enough, it actually was! I swear, it's true! Thanks for the laugh, Felicity. I needed one today. : ) Sending you an email now.

A Finish + A Winner!

Second finish of 2011: My Fall Equinox quilt. I made the top as part of the Fat Quarterly quilt-along last year. I finished the top on the day of the Fall Equinox, so what better name for it? And now here it is, completed well before the spring equinox. : ) (Small victories, small victories.) The fabric is Wildwood by Erin McMorris, along with a smattering of Moda Bella Solids (Willow, Celery, Clover, Baby Yellow, Goldenrod, and Golden Wheat).

The back is a random collection of some Wildwood yardage that I had on hand, plus an attempt to echo the pattern on the front. And finally, the quilting is the easy wavy-line quilting which I learned about from the quilt-along, and I've raved about it here and here.

And I realized that all the green in this quilt matches my family room wall color, so I finally have a cuddly couch quilt that matches my decor.


And finally, what you're really here for: The giveaway winner! The winner of the Wonderland fat-eighths is ... #64, Heather! Heather said:

"I'm fairly new to quilting, but I have always been drawn to the quirky Alexander Henry stuff (especially if there are birds involved), and a line called Boutique by Chez Moi. So girly (unlike myself!)"

But guess what? Heather is a no-reply blogger. All comments made on my blog are automatically emailed to me, and if you have the correct settings in your Blogger profile, your email address comes with it, allowing me to reply directly to you via email. If your settings aren't correct, you are a no-reply blogger, and I have no way of contacting you. So Heather, please email me by noon tomorrow to claim your prize, or I will have to draw another winner.
And while we're on the subject, I enjoy replying to the comments made on my blog—I can't always reply to them all, but I usually spend time at least once a week replying to comments. So if you haven't received any replies to your comments on my blog or on others, that probably means you're a no-reply blogger. Here's how to fix it, if you're so inclined:

1. In blogger.com, click on Dashboard.
2. Select Edit Profile.
3. Check the box for "Show my Email Address."
4. Save changes.

How easy is that? Happy Valentine's Day, bloggy peeps! I love you all. : )

P.S. Linking up to Sew Modern Monday. Go check it out, it's one of my favorite linkies.

Friday Flickr Finds - Modern Day Quilts Edition

1. Spiderweb, 2. Grace's Quilt 05, 3. Summer Sundays, 4. Day one, 5. modern quilt geekiness, 6. Yellow Bloom Quilt, 7. L1000743, 8. Completed Yellow and Grey Lady of the Lake Quilt, 9. Day two

Juliet's Quilt was featured on a Tumblr blog called Modern Day Quilts yesterday. Modern Day Quilts is relatively new, and it features just one fabulous modern quilt each day. Tons of inspiration, minimal words. I'm officially in love with this blog!

So, today's finds are all quilts that have all been featured on Modern Day Quilts. As you can see, the blog's author, Heather, has incredible taste. I'm honored that something I made is keeping such good company. Now go put Modern Day Quilts in your Reader right this very minute. : )

One Good Turn Deserves Another: Giveaway Time!

This stack of giveaway goodness arrived at my house the other day, courtesy of Kristie at OCD and Fresh Squeezed Fabrics. I won a gift certificate to Fresh Squeezed by correctly guessing Kristie's age. Brave of her to let us try, wasn't it? I snagged some Meadowsweet 2 (a collection I mostly missed when it came out), plus that groovy print on top. Randi from Fresh Squeezed was super nice and got my fabric to me lightning fast. Fresh Squeezed has fantastic prices on Greenfield Hill bundles, including the voiles. Yummy!

So thank you, Kristie and Randi. And everybody knows that when you win a giveaway, you should appease the giveaway gods by offering one of your own, right? Plus, I recently surpassed 200 followers. Yep, it's giveaway time.

So I've got a collection of Wonderland fat-eighths here. Who wants 'em? Anybody? There are scissors in there! And butterflies!

To win, just leave me a comment telling me your favorite fabric line. And I would love to hear about lines that I may NOT have seen a million times all over blogland. I adore Denyse Schmidt and Momo as much as the next girl, and they deserve all the attention they get. But I also want to seek out the under-appreciated little guys. What lines or designers do you think are undiscovered? Aren't getting the attention they deserve?

I'll draw a winner on Valentine's Day morning. Nothing like a little fabric love to start your holiday off right. Good luck!

P.S. Voting starts today for the Gen X Quilters Love Nest Quilt Contest. Head over there to check out some beautiful bed-size quilts and vote for your favorite. My Single Girl is vying for the title—I'd love it if you would cast a vote for her. : )

WIP Wednesday #13

Welcome to Work-In-Progress Wednesday, lucky number 13.

This week was kinda good and kinda bad for me. Good in that I finished my Urban Lattice quilt and mailed it off. First completed quilt of 2011—yay that! Bad in that I've been kind of blah and unmotivated to do much else. Even though I've got like a million deadlines looming. I'm blaming our two-plus feet of snow. It makes me want to hibernate. I know I'll get everything done in the end, but if I put things off any longer, it's not gonna be pretty.

New Projects

Various Swaps and Bee Blocks
None of these are exactly new, but I haven't counted them here yet. For right now, I'm grouping them all together, as one project. Which isn't really cheating, right, since they're all small? : ) Anyway, my projects for Doll Quilt Swap 10, Make Mine Modern, Do Good Stitches, Sew Beautiful, and the 3x6 Bee are all at various stages (although none of them are even close to being done). The photo above is the beginning of my DQS 10 quilt.

Operation: Stash Reorganization
As I work on all these swaps and bee blocks, I've been pulling a lot of fabric from my stash, and I've come to realize how inconvenient my teetering stacks of fabric really are. At the same time, I was seeing all these cute miniature fabric bolts that people are using for stash storage, and was insanely jealous of them. OMG, it's like having your own fabric store, I thought. I must have that! Angela of Cut to Pieces uses comic book boards to make her bolts, so I immediately ordered some from Amazon. I sat in front of the TV folding fabric for a couple of hours last night. So far I've only done my blues and greens—which is what I have the most of, by far—but I am In. Love. With this system. Cannot wait to have it all done and organized.

Ongoing projects:

Don't Call Me Betsy's Sliced Coins Quilt-Along
Sashed and ready to rock on the quilting—if only it had a back. T minus 9 days and counting until this one needs to be mailed to my Margaret's Hope Chest Wrapped in Hope recipient. Gulp.

Fall EquinoxHand-stitching the binding on this one now.

Completed tops awaiting quilting:
Hope Valley

Completed quilts awaiting binding:
Modern Meadow

On hold for now:
Blockapalooza
Central Park jelly roll quilt
That Girl quilt-along
Figgy Pudding quilt
Wonky Log Cabin

And finally, I just have to throw this in: Look who's got her own little WIP these days. The Whipstitch blog has been running a series on Sewing with Kids, and when I saw the latest project—yarn and plastic canvas—I knew it would be perfect for Miss E. She's expressed a lot of interest in my quilting and sewing recently, and her fine motor skills are pretty advanced for her age, so I've been eager to start teaching her. Sure enough, she loved this project. She kept telling me as she stitched her yarn, "Mommy, I love doing this!" Atta girl, E. : ) Is there anything better than enjoying a favorite pastime with your child?

This week's stats:
New projects - 2
Completed projects - 1
Currently in progress - 12 (Up one from last week. Crud.)

Block Party Entry

I wasn't going to enter the Block Party at Quilt Story - I didn't think I had any existing blocks that fit the bill, and I had too many other things going on to make one just for this. But I've been seeing all your posts with the blocks you're entering, and I decided I couldn't sit this one out. I guess peer pressure still works on me. If you all jumped off a bridge wearing nothing but your Flea Market Fancy yardage, I'd probably do that too.

So anyway, here's what I came up with. I'm calling it "Photo Corners" because that's kind of what it reminds me of. It's basically a log cabin, but the logs have some bias piecing. I just sewed strips together like you would do with bias binding (lay them perpendicular, right sides facing, and sew across them diagonally). Voila!

Now go look at all the other pretty blocks at Quilt Story. I wish I had time to do a traditional one.

Juliet's Quilt

My Urban Lattice quilt is complete. This quilt makes me very, very happy. Very.

My sister "commissioned" me to make a quilt for her long-time best friend, who was having her first baby. But the parents-to-be weren't finding out the baby's gender ahead of time—and neither were some friends of ours who are due in March. Since I wanted to make two baby quilts, and I didn't want to make both of them gender-neutral, why not take a chance and make one boy quilt and one girl quilt? My Modern Meadow quilt was the boy version, and this one, made via Cara's excellent Urban Lattice quilt-along, would be the girly version.

One of the babies is here now, and she's a girl, so little Juliet gets the Urban Lattice quilt. It's all done, it's washed and dried and crinkly soft, and it will be in the mail later today, headed to its new home.

The quilting is a long-arm pattern called "Wind Swirls," and I can't imagine a more perfect quilting design for these Far Far Away prints. It's like a magical breeze just picked you up and dropped you into a fantasy fairy-tale world. You see? It's just happy. : )

The back is mostly Kona Stone, with an angled strip of half-square triangles in the FFA prints. I thought about just piecing a straight strip down the back, but with all the angles lines on the front, I thought this would be more fun. (More work too, but worth it.)

I'll be sad to see this one go. But since my sister was paying me to make one of these quilts for her friend, and that was the first baby due anyway, I designed both quilts with this particular baby and mommy in mind. And this Urban Lattice quilt, especially, strikes me as just perfect for them. I've known the mother for many years myself, since she's so close to my sister, and I've done a fair amount of design work for her—I even designed her wedding invitations and her baby shower invites. She's got a great sense of style and I think she genuinely appreciates beautiful handmade things. So I know this quilt is headed to a good home and that it will be right where it belongs. Can't ask for much more than that.

Here are the specifics:
Design: Paper-pieced via Cara's Urban Lattice quilt-along (thank you, Cara, for a great quilt-along!)
Fabric: Kona Bone, Kona Stone, Far Far Away II by Heather Ross
Binding: Kona Stone
Size: 48" by 57"
Quilting: "Wind Swirls" pattern in Parchment thread, done by long-arm quilter at LQS

P.S. Linking up to Sew Modern Monday at Canoe Ridge Creations.

Friday Flickr Finds - Wonky Star Edition

I love me some wonky stars, but I have yet to try them myself. Wonky is still tough for me—I think I tend to be too tentative with my wonkiness. And when you underwonk, instead of being cute, it just looks like a mistake. But this month, Rachel asked my Do. Good Stitches circle for wonky star blocks, so I'm looking forward to giving this a try at long last. I'm sure I'll get the hang of wonkiness very soon—it's probably just a matter of doing it more often, and this is my chance.

In the meantime, I'm being inspired by some of Flickr's best wonky stars:

1. Flea Market Fancy mini quilt, 2. Bumblebees, Bee Europe, Wonky stars, 3. Wonky Baby Stars - the Grey & Yellow version, 4. Bee Block for Janice #1 - Fresh Modern Bee, 5. Bushfire Quilt Project, 6. Tea Garden Star Quilt, 7. Stars and Sea: The Reveal!, 8. Starbright pot holder/mug rug back, 9. April Blocks for Pretty in Pink Bee, 10. First snow, 11. STUD swap jan '10, 12. Wonky bee block 2 for Kate

P.S. As a resident of Wisconsin, I think I'm legally obligated to put the following sentiment out there: Go Pack!!! Have a great weekend!

WIP Wednesday #12

Welcome to a very snowy WIP Wednesday linky! Please join us—that is, if you're not too busy battling the Snowpocalypse. Although I suppose that could be considered a work in progress, too.

Ongoing projects:

Don't Call Me Betsy's Sliced Coins Quilt-Along
I am so loving my Pips layer cake in Elizabeth's design! The prints almost seem to sparkle, don't they? The next step is lots of very blue sashing! This quilt, which is part of the Margaret's Hope Chest Wrapped in Hope program, is my top priority right now. It will be a birthday gift for a 12-year-old girl named Alissa whose mother is in prison. (Heartbreaking, isn't it?) The deadline to mail it off to Alissa is just a little more than two weeks away. Lots to do on it before then!

Blockapalooza
Oops, I'm already falling behind on my Blockapalooza blocks. Well, maybe Snowapalooza will give me a chance to catch back up, what with not being able to leave my house and all.

Ready for binding:
All of a sudden, I have not one, not two, but three quilts that are ready to be bound: Modern Meadow, Urban Lattice, and Fall Equinox. How did that happen? That's a lot of hand-stitching. Fortunately, Snowmageddon is here! There is actually a "civil danger warning" in my area—nobody's supposed to leave the house if they can help it. So I get to sit on the couch and stitch! My Urban Lattice quilt is already being hand-stitched as we speak—there's a newborn baby girl with her name on that one. (Literally. I made my first quilt label last night.)

Completed tops awaiting quilting:
Hope Valley

On hold for now:
King-size Intersections
Central Park jelly roll quilt
That Girl quilt-along
Figgy Pudding quilt
Wonky Log Cabin

This week's stats:
New projects - 0
Completed projects - 1 (My secret project! I'll be sharing it soon!)
Currently in progress - 11 (down one from last week)

So come link up! What—you have something better to do? Battening down the hatches maybe, or digging a snow den for warmth? Let's see what you've got!