Spinout Reveal!

Well, today's my reveal day, and I get to show you all what my final Spinout quilt top looks like:

I loved doing this one in batiks, they're so nice to sew on, they don't fray much, and you don't have to be careful of wrong-side or right-side up. It seems when I sew with white-on-white fabric, I always get one square or triangle wrong-side up; by the time I notice it's wrong, it's buried deep in the piecing where it'd take a lot of unsewing to get to it.

The inside of this quilt, Spinout, was designed by Barbara Cline, and if you follow the link, you can get a copy of the magazine with the quilt pattern in it. It's the July/August 2011 issue.

Diane Harris, of Quiltmaker magazine, is blogging about the Scrap Squad's interpretation of the Spinout pattern, and she did a very nice blogpost about my quilt, go look! Lots more details there, and you can also use links to see other Scrap Squad versions of the same pattern:

Scrap Squad Spinout

I also made a tutorial on my website to show people how I made the seminole border—or you could call it a bargello-type border too.

Seminole border Tutorial

Here's a closeup of the border I did:

Now I need to get to work on the next Scrap Squad assignment. This has been so much fun—to get the patterns before anyone else does,and try it in different fabrics. :)

Raspberry Desserts and Giveaways!

Well, here it is, the reveal date for the second Quiltmaker Scrap Squad project. I'm glad I was picked to be on this team, it's been lots of fun so far. For the last two months, we've been working on a pattern by Julie Herman of Jaybird Quilts. This one is called Raspberry Desserts (she did it in pinks and creams) but if you'll click around the other scrap squad blogs, you can see that it looks great both color controlled and scrappy! She also has some wonderful patterns on her site that look great in scrappy, look around while you're there.

I decided to do mine with a dark background, rows of blocks with jewel tone colors bordering scrappy insides. Then I used the same fabrics in the scrappy braided border:

Mine's not quilted yet - and before I send it off to my longarmer, I may add another braided border all the way around. I used my Accuquilt GO! to cut the chisel shapes that became the braid, and it was SO easy to cut the right and left shapes. And addictive, almost hypnotic, to keep sewing the braid, chaining them through the machine.

I also changed the setting of the Julie's blocks - instead of putting them on point with setting triangles, I set them square. I think it would have been neat to do them with smaller strips too, really scrappy against white, maybe I'll try that someday.

Now for the Giveaways!

Julie has given the eight of us on the scrap squad each a pattern to give away FREE. So comment on my blog between now and April 4 (that gives you a week to comment) then I'll use a random number generator to pick one of you to receive the pattern. Make sure your response is set so I can reply to your comment if you win! Then go hop around the scrap squad blogs and comment on theirs too (links on my sidebar) for MORE chances to win a free pattern.

AND it doesn't stop there!

Quilty Pleasures blog, over at quiltmaker.com, is having a fabric giveaway. Yup, FABRIC! Run over there and follow the instructions to be entered for that too!

Scrap Squad Teaser and Block of the Month

Still can't show you the Quiltmaker magazine pattern I'm working on, but just to tease you, here's some MORE of the fabrics I'm using.

These past two nights, I've also been working on the website for my guild. I put up a block almost every month, and the next series of blocks is starting TODAY. Here's block one. First the EQ drawing of what I designed:

And then here's the actual block, made out of fabric:

If you want to play around with us, it's all free, online at the Uncommon Threads guild website, just scroll down to see the block of the month links. The January page has some sample layouts and color options, and the March page starts you with cutting directions and instructions on the first block. Wouldn't you like to join us?

Braid-Making

I've been braid making tonight! I think I'm about half done with the lengths I'll need.

This is the kind of project I'd never have done without the Accuquilt. Cutting all those right and left tilting wedges by hand? eww. But the cutter makes it so fast to cut hundreds of them. And sewing them together goes fast and accurate too, since all the little dogear corners are already cut off for you.

I can't show you the quilt these are going to border yet, we have to keep it a secret until the day before Quiltmaker magazine subscriptions are supposed to come out. But I'll have a dark navy skinny border between this and the quilt center, then more dark final border on the outside. So even though this looks like a really scrappy hodgepodge of fabrics, surrounding it with navy will tame it down some. And even though you see some fabrics directly across from each other in the pic, they won't be on the final quilt. I'm planning to have the top braid pointing right, the side braid pointing south, the bottom braid pointing left, and the other side braid pointing up. Does that make sense?

One More Day!

One more day until the great Scrap Squad reveal!

Here's a couple more teaser pictures to get you excited. First the label I made for the back of the quilt:

I like to sew the tag to the backing, then layer and quilt it. That means the tag is there to STAY. :) For this one I used pigma pens to write on a scrap of white flannel. That gave it a sort of fuzzy looking appearance, but at least it matches the rest of the quilt!

And here's a picture of the quilt arranged on the library table, with a bunch of winter and snow books on top:

Don't forget, come back to this space tomorrow night for the great Scrap Squad pattern reveal!

Scrap Squad, Snow, and BOM

As I mentioned at the end of the last post, I've been selected as one of Quiltmaker Magazine's Scrap Squad. It's nice to make a little money with my quilting and not have to sell the quilt! We can't reveal the quilt designs we're given to make until after the issue of the magazine comes out, but we CAN give you a sneak preview teaser. Here's Toby to present it:

Toby agrees with keeping things quiet. Or maybe he just wants ME to be quiet so he can sleep on the nice, freshly ironed block segments. I'm doing this first quilt for Scrap Squad with leftover flannel bits from my Christmas flannel rag quilts, with the addition of some blue FQ's I won at a retreat auction.

And we had SNOW! In Memphis, that's amazing. Can you see the glowing red stop sign? It was pretty falling, but I'm glad it's all melted now:

The 3 inches we got were more than I wanted to drive to work through the next morning. But did the library close? No. It made for some slick and slushy travelling.

And speaking of travelling, my quilt-guild friend is touring Turkey this winter with her husband, and they're posting some fantastic pictures and a little Turkish history on the blog. Such vibrant blue skies! Such intricate tile work on the ceilings, floors, walls. For some real quilt inspiration, check this out:

Jeanie Goes Cold Turkey

I also finally got the new block of the month up for my quilt guild. We're doing twelve 16 inch blocks, and they'll all be tied together with a diagonal line of ... well, go see. Here's the address for the 2011 Sweet Sixteen Intro.

It's not just for my guild members, so feel free to join us if you want. :) Really, don't you have enough fabric where you could join something like this and not have to buy a thing? I sure do.

The work part for me was not drawing the quilt in EQ, or designing twelve blocks, but in taking last year's block of the month selection off of the website index page, making teeny thumbnails of the pix, and re-linking all the pages from within the BOM archives section. So I'll leave you with a couple of nail clippings from last year: