free motion quilting

Oh my goodness, I never knew quilting could be so awesome...

You must check out these free motion quilting designs - I love them!

Especially "Shoo-fly"

Beautiful!!!!

This is also a great sewing website: modern domestic

Flea Market report

Oh, my goodness...look what I bought for $5 at the Punk Rock Flea Market!!

It's a bundle of antique scraps from a kimono store!

A lot of these are handwoven silk and a lot of these are shibori dyed in indigo! I love indigo and I love shibori - I flipped when I saw these scraps.

I see an indigo sampler quilt in my future....wouldn't that look great? Then I can showcase each of the prints emphasizing the variation in texture and results from just one dye. I think it would look awesome with red-orange stitching/ties and binding. I can't wait to make it. More photos to come - each scrap is absolutely beautiful and deserves documentation.

Here's me at our Tree Peeps booth.

It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day - the first day we've had temperatures over 70 degrees since last August...and the whole city almost died of heat stroke (including me)! Hilarious.

A sampling of our wares (above) and the rock star seller beans and rice (below) I love how well this goes over every year :)

black and white quilt

I've been planning how to best use my new black and white quilt squares I bought at an antique store in Orange, Ca.

Here is my plan:

Using the 8 antique squares and 4 new squares I will make, I'm going to make a queen size quilt for our bed.

There will be 12 b&w quilt squares with a 3" white border between each square, 12" white overhanging panels on all 4 sides, and white backing.

Here are the additional black prints I found at ReproductionFabrics.com I'll use for the 4 new squares. It's going to be hard to find the right white fabric since the antique one is aged and tinted.

I'm going to use a bright yellow binding to add some pop to this almost Amish looking black and white quilt. I might use the yellow flower print (below).

These three prints I fell in love with while looking for the right black prints. The green one in the middle was on sale (yay!) and I think it would make a beautiful blouse or dress for me...or a cute baby bib and baby pants for Pea!

Well, I guess I have another quilt project to keep me busy...

California Visit

I just got back from a quick visit to my family in Southern California. It was wonderful; the weather was nice and sunny, we went walking everyday, and we did some garden and attic organizing projects.

Here are some photos:

sunny weather

going for walks by the beach

Tess and Briana

my mom

A wonderful, all produce grocery store called Growers Direct!

Me and my Dad filling up the IKEA bag with fruits and veggies :)

My mom, Briana, and I went exploring in the old town area of Orange. We oohed and ahhed over items in antique stores and ate Belgian waffle sandwiches at Bruxie's (but ate them before we could take a photo).

If I lived nearer, I would have wanted to buy this dresser chest. It was beautiful and in excellent condition, and way less expensive than I've seen in other stores. It would have been perfect for clothes, diapers, and blankies in a baby room :)

pretty idea for folk painting

pretty idea for old-timey lettering

An old dye cabinet!

with packets of dye still inside!

And a list of recipes to obtain various colors:

My purchases: set of 8 black and white quilt squares, two bobbins of handspun wool (I've started a collection), cute apron.

At the outdoor Bruxie's Belgian Waffle joint:

Then we made some fruit crepes at home (bad photo, but delicious!)

Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of Thom! He came down with the flu the day I arrived; so sad. He has grown up to be very tall and handsome and will be the best uncle!

I miss everyone alredy! It was wonderful to be with family for no specific reason - no holiday or family event, just regular everyday life.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I know Valentine's Day was last week, but I finally finished the quilt I started in January which happens to be valentine-themed. (as you can see!)

Back at the Provo DI when I found that great cotton trim and various fabric scraps, I also got a stack of leftover quilt squares. Since I had never made a quilt, it seemed nice to have the squares ready to go. Plus they were all matching like they were from the same fabric collection.

It's different than how I imagined it would be (see explanation below) but I like it and I learned a lot of tricks that will make a second or third quilt less difficult.
To keep with the matching colors, I cut my own bias binding. like so:

I actually sewed this quilt top twice, once with 5"x5" squares arranged randomly and then with 2.5"x2.5" squares arranged diagonally by print. I put the whole thing together and had a few leftover squares so I cut each into 4 squares and made a "doll" quilt (I know it sounds silly, but I thought I might as well use the leftovers to make a matching doll quilt so when our future kids play house or whatever, they'll have a mini replicate of our real quilt).
Anyway, I liked the doll one better! It looked much better to have the prints organized since there were so many, and I liked the look of the smaller squares.
Doll quilt:

After deliberating back and forth for a few days, I decided to unpick the entire thing and re-cut and sew the squares! Unfortunately, to have enough fabric, I had to use the doll quilt to make the large quilt. I made another one, though! It's only about 1'x1' now - a doll's doll quilt.

*As often happens when buying someone's leftover craft supplies or unfinished craft projects, I ran into several obstacles when trying to complete this quilt.

1. limited supplies (I only had small amounts of each print, so I had to be very "skillful" in how I organized the pattern)
2. fabric from a few years ago with impossible to match colors (brick red, salmon pink, and off white were never so hard to match. Luckily, I found enough back stock of the same print collection, "Candy Kisses" by Sandy Gervais, at Prairie Point Junction online. I ordered enough for the quilt backing, binding, and a couple other prints to fill out the front)

3. inexperience. This was my first real quilt, and I naively thought it would look nice if the 15+ prints were arranged randomly. I laid out the squares, thought it looked awful, but sewed them all together anyway. A few days later, I finally gave in and unpicked the entire quilt! I cut the 5" X 5" squares into 2.5" X 2.5". I like it much, much better, but it took forever!
Before (I didn't take a full photo, because I didn't like how it turned out):

After:

4. precut squares - would have been easier as strips (sew strips together, cut crosswise into strips of squares, arrange in shifted pattern, see diagram below)

I'm glad it's finished!