My Sewing and Quilting Adventures

I start the Totally Groovy QAL @ PileOFabric with  Alyssa Lichner this July. But I haven't really gotten much far with my quilt top. So, this week I dedicate few hours to just piecing this quilt top. And I'm happy to say that I'm half way through :-). It was quite interesting to do the curve piecing. I have attempted at curve piecing with machine before and didn't go to far. And ended up hand piecing it. And still haven't finished that project: Apple Core Quilt . I really found it helpful using the following two tutorials without any pins :-). My first curve was perfect and then had some wonky ones but hid it with piecing ;). 1. Curve piecing with Emily Cier 2. Painless Pin-less Curves by Kate Conklin Half-Quilt Top , horizontal View Half-Quilt Top, this was supposed to be Vertical View ;) One thing I wanted to mention about curve piecing is that, if I cut my inner and outer curves separately as the required square dimensions it went pretty smooth. ...

This week for another pivoting designs. I was hoping for a triangle or heart paisley ;)...LOL This was a little bit tricky design for me. The the texture was beautiful. Paisley does come naturally to me, so I have to think for each tear-drop to make it a little bit wavy. Doodling on paper also seems to help. But I didn't have time to practice this one on paper :-(.. Here is my practice for the week: Lava Paisley FMQ I definitely need lot more practice with Lava Paisley FMQ. I am so excited about this quilt, just one more block to quilt and some borders. Then I'm done quilting and can start binding the quilt :-) Thanks Leah for yet another wonderful FMQ design.

I'm so excited to share the news that another one of my block has been featured on the The Modern Quilt Guild website today. I actually first worked on the following block, but this ended up measuring 14.5 square, so I had to changed my design  a little bit and came up with this improvisational Hourglass block below this one. Its an simple but clean block. Love the look of it. My original block I really like my original block and the strips from it. Didn't want to trim them down to fit the 12.5inch height limit for the QuiltCon block challenge. So I made a design change to include(or keep) all the strips to be within the 12.5inch height limit. Here it is with the new design: Hop on over to Modern Quilt Guild website to check out the other wonderful blocks.

This week I made some progress with the FMQ design on the X's and O's quilt. My toughtest decision was what thread color to use. I tried two different thread colors: Dark gray and Dark Green. Both the thread color blended pretty well with most of the fabric.  I planned to do the Plume Feather FMQ on the print fabric and probably just to stitich-in-the-ditch for the diamonds. I hate to change threads often and the darker thread which I choose for my print fabric won't look good on the white diamonds.  Here are some pcitures of my Angela Walters's Plume Feather FMQ: Closeup of the Plume Feather FMQ Front of the Quilt - Plume Feather FMQ Back of the Quilt - Plume Feather FMQ  Leah I hope its not too late to ask a question. So, here I go: 1. For a busy quilt how to do choose the thread color, if you're going for a look that blends well with the fabric? 2. Also if you were to quilt this one would stop and use a different thread color...

This week's design was my all time favorite. Its an easy design but people who don't FMQ think its so complicated ;). I really love the the texture on the quilt. Here are some of pictures of the Paisley FMQ on my Shades of Blue quilt: Paisley FMQ with Circles - you see on the first block I tried to mix paisley with circles Paisley FMQ Paisley FMQ The past week was really productive for me. Finally my sewing machine started behaving and the quilting went really smooth. I almost quilted away 3 blocks. Just 2 more blocks to quilt approximately. I can't wait to finish this quilt soon. I was in a flow this week with FMQ, but did have stop and work on my piecing my Groovy quilt and work on the UFO. Which is always good. Here is pic of the whole quilt, I would love to make one in girl colors ;): Shades of Blue Quilt - almost done!

This week was wonderful week with lot of good progress. Most of the week I spent Free Motion quilting on my "Shades of Blue" modern quilt. I just have 2 more blocks to go(approximately). Will be blogging about it tomorrow. So, for this week's UFO, I basted my X's and O's quilt top. Here are some pictures all basted and ready to be quilted. I'm thinking of using the Angela's Plume Feather for the Print fabric and still thinking about what to quilt for inner and outer borders. I definitely want some flower FMQ for the outer border. New Basting Method I tried a new basting method this week using painters tape to tape the quilt back down to the floor. This was super tight and the basting did go so fast. I wonder does this damanage the hardwood floor though. I used to do my own method which is still perfect for baby/toddler size quilts. Quilt Back taped to the floor Here is the quilt all basted: X's and O's quilt This fabric line is ...

I'm so glad that Leah Day from Free Motion Quilting Project started these UFO Sundays . Just couple of weeks back I started working on my UFOs and this is so awesome that I get have company now. And thanks to Leah for all the wonderful tips and reading my mind ;). When I started working on this Apple Core quilt for my daughter, she still wasn't aware of quilts. So, she would call this her apple blanket. Just a little background on why this quilt when into UFO state. When I started this quilt I was so excited after watching Jenny's tutorial in YouTube . The fabric line I'm using is Little Apples by Aneela Hoey. Perfect harmony right, what could go wrong. Back in December 2011 when I started working on this project I didnt have a 1/4inch quilting foot and I started the apple core curved piecing on the machine and found it very difficult and out of control. Felt like hand piecing would go much faster. But the whole concept of hand piecing just felt like its going to ta...

Wow! I can't believe its been almost 8 months since I started quilting with Leah Day. This has been an amazing journey. This week was fun trying out different FMQ design stippling, loop de loop & circuit board with heart of other motifs. I choose to try it with Heart and Paws motif. Here are my quick little practice while the baby took a quick 15min nap. The squares or rectangles are 4inch in width. This quilt has become an FMQ sampler. I have been trying different FMQ designs on the blue squares or rectangle while trying to keep consistency with the negative space (white) to either use Circles, Swirls or Paisley. You can see all 3 FMQ designs in the blue squares. Circuit Board with Hearts FMQ Loop de Loop Hearts FMQ Stippling with Paws ;) FMQ I had a kick out of all these FMQ design names. I think anyone will be intrigued by these names ;). Now, I am going to link this up with Leah's Quilt Along .

I was so excited to see my block featured on the Modern Quilt Guilds website today. Here is the block which was featured today :-). It was fun to see a lot of similar designs. Quiltcon Block using Improv piecing

So, this week my UFO task was pretty simple. I have been putting quilting my "Shades of Blue" modern quilt on and off. For some reason, I had lot of thread issues in the beginging. I  know that I'm using good thread but I'm suspecting my sewing table. I think its high time that I invested on a good sewing table. Any suggestion? For my old portable sewing machine I had a 26 inches tall end table which just worked perfectly. But I need a proper sewing table for my new Singer machine. I know I know I'm still stuck with Singer. Okay enought about why my quilt became an UFO. But this week I tackled a most important but simple task, of hiding the threads. So here are some pictures of my quilt without threads hanging all over the place. Forgive me for my last few pictures with all the threads hanging over all over the place. I forgot to mention, that the other reason this quilt became an UFO for it kind of became my practice quilt. Here is another reason not to pic...