Another Goodbye Quilted Postcard

Another friend is leaving our town in two weeks time.  We have been having friends come and go so much, I don't have enough time to make everyone a quilted postcard.  

I still have a lot of honing to do with this craft.  This is what I came up with for her.  I hope she enjoys it. 

  

This is the back.  Everybody get to sign and said their goodbyes here.

 



Fabric Ornaments

These are the handmade ornaments I decided to do for this year.  It is inspired by a youtube video I saw (I did not save the link and can't find it again as I am writing this post) combined with this video from Jenny Doan. 

Went to our local Jo Ann's Fabric store and decided on these fabrics below.

 

I had fun making these ornaments. 

A Little Buggy - Finished

Finally!  I got this Little Buggy project finished.  It ended up being 44X 55 inches and the biggest so far for me.  I think this is the biggest I could go until I really get the hang of this and can figure out every little thing that goes on with the machine.  I originally planned to be done with it before school starts.  But I got into some machine trouble when I started quilting and it was stubbornly not correcting itself for a while.  I tried different tension settings but it was when I changed the bobbin thread that everything went smoothly again.

 

Picture below is the back and it is now all tightly quilted again.  Almost used up all my chicken fabric as well.

 

Now I am ready for another project.  Let's see what's next in my quilting journey....

 

A Little Buggy Quilt

My very first attempt to make a big quilt.  This top is finally done and is approximately 45 X 56 inches.  While at our June camping trip at Hartwick Pines, we visited Grayling's one and only quilt shop The Icehouse Quilt Shop.  As we were looking around the walls of quilts, one of the quilt sample stands out to the hubby. 

We asked for the kit available and asked if this pattern would be doable for a beginner quilter and she told me it is just simple, nothing complicated.  So we bought the kit but the kids were like: mama that is huge, you think you can do it?  The top was finished last week.

Below is the backing.  I finished it today.  I used some of the scraps from the fabrics for the top.  But because I like the fabrics in this kit, I kept most of the big pieces and used the old rooster fabric for most of the backing.

 



Quilt top squares done, just needed the borders

Bandit has been so good with the quilt fabrics so far.

Arranging the fabrics for the backing

 

Memory Quilts

This went to HAWAII and is a folded card

For those of you following my quilting adventures.  Just want you guys to know, I have been doing little projects for a handful of friends who were leaving our little town.  All these leaving occurred in May and June so its been a little sad.  But life must go on and so I created a few of these memory quilt postcards with the use of the jelly roll fabric from the last quilting post and included a picture of our landmark "the tridge" and some other pictures to make it more personal.


This went to Indonesia and is like a big postcard 

 

Some of the thank you postcards I made for both Lyn and Vyn's friends. 

Jelly Roll Quilt

Jelly roll fabrics are always available at fabric/quilting stores.  So for this week's project, I decided to use jelly rolls and bought 2 packs from our local JoAnn's.  Then of course, it is youtube tutorials again.  I found three I would like to try.  Most started out sewing 2, 3 or 4 strips of fabric together and so I did 3 strips on most of the fabrics and made 2 with 4 strips of fabrics together.

 These two pictures below shows how my fabrics looked like after sewing the jelly roll quilt pattern by 3 dudes using the 4 strips of fabrics.

Below is another picture showing the same pattern but with only 3 layers of fabric.   They obviously are smaller.  I also happened to have red, white and blue fabrics.  Those will definitely be put together for a Memorial Day/ 4th of July quilt.

 

The picture below is the result for both summer in the park and tube quilting tutorials.

 

I still don't know how I am going to put all these together.   But as a friend mentioned, I am officially addicted to my sewing machine.  Until then...

The Holy Spirit Quit

 

This is the finish product for the Spring Quilt.  It measures approximately 18X18 inches including the border and binding.

 

I am trying to get better with my swirls and stippling for quilting designs and so I did the swirls for the border and stippling/meandering on the main quilt.

 

 

Picture below shows the back.  This time  I got the tension for the whole quilt right.  No more loose thread and I think I now know what was causing mine to loosen up before.
 

 

 

April No-School Day Quilt

Couple of weeks ago, I bought a quilted bag pattern and a set of fabrics from our local Meijer. But when I got home, I can't follow the directions.   So I have a set of fabrics but no idea what to do with it.

Today, we had an unexpected "no school" day due to icy road.   Since the wall with the Easter Quilt have to be change.  I decided to make one to replace it.  It gave me the chance to use the fabrics originally bought for the bag.

Went to consult my ever trusted  "Quilted Devotions" book and found a pattern that don't need too much fabric.  It is titled "The Holy Spirit".

 

After cutting the fabrics, I tried this arrangement below and kind of liked it as well.  Maybe will try this on another project.

Picture below is the back.  As usual, trying to limit the increase of my stash.  Not really my original idea, I saw from  tutorials that a lot of quilters do it.  Mostly to save fabric and give a little design to the back as well.

Another Quilted Bag

 So my 5 year old wanted a bag as well.  This is what I came up with.  The handles were done right this time.  But this time, I end up sewing the pockets on the wrong side.  Good thing Lyn does not mind that the pockets were a bit wacky on this one.

 

The lining needed some pressing obviously.  I tried to sew together girlie colors and Lyn was happy with it.  Which is great.  Notice the handles they came out as well when I turned everything right side out.  YEAY!!!

 

These are the two bags I made so far.

My Very First Quilted Tote Bag

The hubby mentioned that I really needed to buy myself a new purse.  What do you think a wanna be quilter do after hearing that?  Of course, I started searching through youtube for a quilt bag tutorial.  Luckily my favorite Jenny Doan have a free youtube tutorial for a tote bag using charm squares.  Click on the link to see her tutorial.  I modified it into a shoulder bag instead of the four handles, just because I like my bags to only have one long handle.  The handle was supposed to be even longer but I put it on the wrong side of the bag so I had to removed it and just sewn it right on the lining.

Since I still have a few more charm squares leftover from my spring quilt.  I was glad to finally be able to use them.

These are the charm squares that I decided to use for this project.




These two pictures are the lining inside the bag.  I just used some more extra fabrics in the stash. 

After the lining was sewn together with the top of the bag and everything pulled right side out.  My handles were stuck in the middle layer so I just cut them off and attached it on to the lining.

I did straight quilting for this project. 

This is the inside, showing the lining with the pockets.  I am not sure what the orange pocket is for.  It is too narrow and small.  But am sure I can find something to fit inside it.

Spring Quilt = Finish

This quilt is the biggest for me, it measured approximately 25 X 29 inches.  I did the stippling quilt design for the whole wall hanging.

The needle of my machinge came off while I was attaching the binding fabric.  This added to the delay since I thought I destroyed the machine and stopped sewing.  Again, I search through youtube for help and found out how to attached everything back.

The above picture shows the stippling design.  It still need more practice but is surely looking better than my previous ones. 

This is the back, I just used this fabric for no reason other than  I have a lot of this in my stash.  I can't even remember why I bought this fabric.  It was one of the first fabrics I bought right after I got the machine for practice.  Which I did not get around to using until I saw the quilt wall hanging I recently saw which inspired me to finally use the machine.

The bobbin thread tension is showing signs of getting better as well.  No more loose tensions, for this project.

Spring Quilt Top

I tried to pace myself and give a week or two between quilts so I don't end up having too much fabric stash.  Since the sun is finally shining and the day starting to get longer, I decided on a spring inspired quilt top.  Youtube search brought me these two patterns.  The fabric are charm squares from our local Walmart.

Dabbling with quilting has made me realize just what a restless soul I am.  I can't make myself sew more than 3-4 blocks of the same quilt pattern.  This is from Jenny Doan free youtube tutorials for both Garden Flower Charm and Disappearing Nine Patch.

Disappearing Nine Patch
 
Jenny Doan made a very simple nine patch block look like it is very complicated. The final block looked like you sew together tiny pieces of fabric.

Garden Flower Charm

This is a garden flower block.  I still need a lot of practice to make my points meet more sharper and the seams to line up better.
 



This was how the blocks looked like after the fabrics were cut.


Let's see how I decide to finish this quilt in my next post.  Until then.

Easter Wall Hanging Quilt = Done

Since the fabric is already very busy, I thought practicing my free motion quilting on this project will not be very noticeable.  What the hubby noticed right away is the fact that it was not lying flat.  It is a little wavy on some sides.  I guess it is because  I used a polyester batting instead of the cotton batting I have been using for the other previous projects.

I did stippling on all the 9 square blocks and tried my hands on swirling on the easter egg border. 

Total size of the quilt is 18 X 18.5 inches.

The next two pictures show the back.  You will see that I did not check the bobbin stitches at the back until I finished the 9 blocks with my stippling.  Since I can't imagine repeating my stippling, I did not bother to rip the whole thing.   An Easter quilt will be something I have to do again next year.  That is if I ever get better for two reasons, first being the busy fabric choice and second the loose stitches at the back.

 

After seeing the loose tension above, I checked my swirls for the border after a few stiches and it stayed loose for a few times.  Lyn saw me repeatedly ripping stitches and told me that if I want to make a quilt for their rooms, I should do the brother's first.  She wants hers to be done when I am a little better with quilting.  Glad that after some tweaking with the tension settings, it tightened back to normal.
 

 

Here are more pictures, still need a lot more practice, practice and more practice on the quilting designs.