Snowdrift Quilt

Last August, Sarah (of Hip to Piece Squares) and I headed to Grand Rapids for the AQS Quilt Show. I wanted to go to see all the pretty quilts on display....but we managed to spend our entire afternoon shopping and didn't make it to any of the quilts in the show (big oops!).

The highlight of the show had to have been meeting Bill Kerr and Weeks Ringle of Modern Quilt Studio in person. Their book, The Modern Quilt Workshop, was the book that inspired me and taught me how to quilt back in 2006. I love their simple aesthetic and clean designs and my Plain Spoken Quilt is one of my all-time favorite projects.



Shopping at their booth that afternoon flipped the switch for me and I've been on a quilting bender ever since then. I purchased the Snowdrift Quilt Kit along with a few of their magazines.



The quilt kit sat on my shelf for a few months while I mustered up the courage to tackle curved piecing. I ended up pulling out the kit and making a last minute Christmas gift for Jon's grandma (bonus: curves no longer scare me). She's been hinting at wanting one of my quilts for many years now and the colors in this kit just happen to match her living room, so it was clearly meant to be.

(I'm pretty sure I cut out the printed pieces backwards, so the snow drifts in the opposite direction in my version!)

Llama Mania (of the sewing and real life varieties)

In September 2012, Jon and I spent 10 days traveling around Peru. We landed in Lima and then travelled to Cusco, Machu Picchu, Puno and Lake Titicaca. The scenery was absolutely breathtaking as Peru is known for having 28 of the 32 different microclimates in the world.






We were enamored by all of the artisans we saw. Weavings, hand knits, hooked rugs and dyes were available for sale.





Of course, we loved seeing an abundance of sheep, alpaca and llamas. We quickly learned that photo ops like these were one of the top tourist traps.










We spent two days exploring Machu Picchu and attempting to overcome our fear of heights with lots of hiking mountain climbing (it didn't really work!). The actual site of Machu Picchu is surrounding by the Andes Mountains and makes it feel really intimate.



We pretty much spent our second day stalking the llamas on the site. They are so cute!



Lauren, from the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild, wowed us all with her intricate llama paper piecing at our November meeting. There was a loud gasp from all the members as she held it up during show and tell. I had never really heard of or understood paper piecing before, but her project gave me the impetus to learn!



The pattern is Leonard the Llama from Sew What Sherlock. I set up my sewing table with my light box, glue pen, add-a-quarter ruler and iron and ironing board and got to work. It was overwhelming at first, but once I focused on a small piece at a time, it came together during a day off from work.









I free motion quilted around the llama and turned this into an envelope pillow case for our newly acquired down pillow forms from Ikea. I backed it with this llama fabric from Laurie Wisbrun. In addition to the llama, I made a contrasting pillow with some new Botanics fabric quilted in a random grid pattern. It's nice to have some fun new pillows that remind us of our trip to Peru!

Christmas projects

In December, I went into hyper Christmas crafting mode. Kitschy Christmas fabrics are a favorite of mine, so I used lots of fun fabrics to spruce up our house.



This tree skirt was actually one of the few sewing projects I finished in 2012. In a moment of weakness, I caved and bought a half yard set of these (maybe Michael Miller?) prints. I love the cuckoo clock and the vintage Christmas carolers on these. We have a trim line tree and most skirt patterns are too large in diameter, so I made a giant compass to trace out a circle in the perfect width. Then I divided the circle template into 8 sections and cut two of each print. I backed it with extra fabric, did an envelope binding and quilted the outside. I tied brown grosgrain ribbon to each side of the opening to tie it in place.



I totally fell in love with this gingerbread print this year. I didn't want to chop it up for patchwork, so I used it to edge the bottom of these kitchen towels. If I were to do this again, I would definitely prewash both the fabric and the towels before sewing them together. It takes a lot of ironing to get them to look decent now.




After several years of quilting, I finally got my act together and made a Christmas quilt and pillow set for our living room. I've been meaning to do this forever and I'm so glad things finally fell into place. I actually finished this up the day after Thanksgiving and we got to enjoy it all season long.



The main inspiration came from a Christmas bundle at Pink Castle Fabrics. I added a few other red or green prints and a charm square pack of In From the Cold by Kate Spain. I sewed together patchwork strips and then alternated those with a low volume spring green floral print. I used up almost every last bit of those fat quarters and even included a strip on the back of the quilt.




For the pillows, I sewed several strips together and then I cut them in half at different widths. Both pillows have the same order and progression of fabrics, but the heights of each row are different.

Arithmetic & Modern Maples quilts

During my quilting hiatus, I was on a fabric buying hiatus by default. Once I discovered the new semi-local quit shop, Pink CastleFabrics, I have been bingeing on all of this great new fabric that’s available. I love looking at beautiful patterns and colors, so naturally fabric (and stationery and wrapping paper) are all fun for me to use.

I love scrappy charm square quilts, so the Arithmeticpattern was calling my name. As I was folding some of my new purchases, I came up with this bundle of teal, citron, navy and gray. This is pretty much my all-time favorite color combo (and the colors in my living room), and I was so excited to put this one together.

Apparently Nuku Nuku was super excited too! I’ve been holding out on a design wall because it just doesn’t look pretty when it’s not in use, so for now I’ll have to take my chances with our bedroom floor space.

I love this gray comma fabric that I used for the binding. I miraculously had 4 yards of this backing fabric in my pre-hiatus stash. I must have purchased it for the back of a different quilt, but now I can’t remember what was earmarked.

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While I was away, I also seemed to miss out on the HeyPorkchop blog (and subsequently thought about learning how to cross stitch to make these adorable patterns). I immediately fell in love with her Modern Maples quilt pattern (also love this Maple O’s quilt).  I pulled lots of fall colored fabric and rushed to finish this before winter.

 

I made it while we still had leaves on the ground….but not before our first snowfall this year (yikes!).

For the binding on this, I used fabric from my favorite new line, Sunprints by Alison Glass. I can't get enough of her colors and fun designs.

back at it & Happy Halloween!

I blinked and nearly two years have past since I've blogged. Oops! A new job and a new puppy proved to be quite demanding for a while. I've been settling into a more balanced routine, which includes spending more time working on sewing and quilting projects (knitting has always been 100% compatible with a codependent lap dog!).



I attended a quilt show in August and was super excited about all the new-to-me fabric options and purchased a few Denyse Schmidt fat quarters and a set of these gorgeous chambray solids. Audrie and Erica's isosceles triangle quilts were my main inspiration for this one.



This was made for my friend, Jodi, in memory of a dear friend who spent many years working in the middle east. The rich color palette reminds me of the beautiful textiles and fabrics from that area. Finishing this quilt perfectly coincided with her visit from Belgium and it was fun to catch up and give it to her in person. I used the zebra-esque print because zebras are symbolically significant to Jodi.

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Jon is almost as obsessed with sheep as I am with knitting, so he requested a sheep costume for Koko for Halloween. I used a black dog shirt for the base of this and sewed on small loops of Polwarth and Merino roving. It took forever and was ridiculously expensive for a dog costume. There's about 12 oz of wool attached to this pup. I even had a meltdown halfway through because it was taking so long and I wanted to give up. But we're so happy with how it turned out. Next year, we're buying a costume instead!



As she was walking around sniffing the yard, small pieces of vegetable matter kept attaching to the bottom side...just like a real sheep! Koko's a great sport!

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While away from blogging, I jumped on the instagram bandwagon. You can find me as rebekah725. (Warning: it's 75% pet photos!)

Hello Koko!

Lest you think the past few months have been entirely dreary around here, we'd like to introduce you to our newest family member, Koko the pug. After wanting a pug for more than 10 years, I am so glad that things finally aligned and we were able to bring this sweet little one into our family.



We got her from a rescue (after filling out the longest application ever) in August. She was 11 months old at the time and is now fitting in with our lives wonderfully. Nuku nuku is not as thrilled with her as we are, but they are slowly starting to tolerate each other.



As you can see, she is ridiculously cute! Whenever we take her out on the town, we can't go more than a few steps without people stopping to coo over her. She's the little instigator at the dog park and tries to initiate play with every dog that she meets, big or small. She plays tag with huge labs and weimeraners and is always the last one running. It's hilarious to see!



When she's not running around like a crazy girl, she can be found at my side 90% of the time. She's the the best cuddler in the world and I love it when she falls asleep and starts snoring away.





She's got the best sense of humor and a face that makes me melt! What a darling!

Goodbye Shinji

We lost our dear, sweet Shinji to a brain tumor on Friday, July 22. It was a tough summer between the two weeks leading up to his death and the grieving afterward. I never realized exactly how much I cared about him or how big of a hole he would leave in our lives until he was gone. To this day, it's hard to walk around the house and not get choked up as I pass one of his favorite spots or remember that he's not around to greet me at the door anymore.

He was the nicest cat and always loved greeting visitors and making them feel welcome. He had the smoothest, silkiest fur and was always ready to be cuddled or petted. His love for eating Cheez-its and licking plastic bags was unmeasured.

Whenever I want to feel even more depressed, you can count on me to be looking at senior, special needs cats up for adoption on petfinder.com. Jon has pretty much banned me from looking at the site because of how emotional I get. I'm not sure when or if we'll get another cat. Shinji was just the best.



My library did the sweetest thing for me in honor of Shinji! They plated a picture book in his memory for our bookmobile collection. I was so touched! The book perfectly describes him and is a darling book if you are in search of a sweet cat book.