Pipe Dream Quilt: organized chaos

 

TAA DAAA! 

I have been working on this quilt top since early this winter.  And I finally finished it this week!  It is essentially the same as this quilt I made a while back from Red Pepper Quilts Pieced Scrap Border tutorial.  Except different...

 

I made separate warm and cool colored blocks and instead of a plain block in between I had to make more work for myself and made it so that each warm and cool colored blocks "connected".  And where they intersected I put a white square. 

 

 

I don't know if my design ended up being all that apparent in the end.  It kinda looks like organized chaos!  But I will say that I used up a LOT of little scraps!  Each little square is 1".  It measures 80x93.  I call it "Pipe Dream" because it reminds me of an old computer game we used to play.  And since it had hot and cold "pipes" it seemed fitting. 

 

 

Here's my down loadable pattern!  lol.  This is my little design sketch that I thought I would share.  See how detailed I am at planning this thing?  Those numbers are the size you would cut from your background fabric. 

 

I am linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts Finish it Up Friday.  Now that I have this project wrapped up, I really want to start a new one.  But I am forcing myself to finish up a few other projects before I start anything new.  And to me, if the top is together, it's Done!  Cross it off the list!  :)  (it may be a few months before I get it quilted and bound)

 

 

 

Katie's Sunset Star

 

My sister made this!  This is the Sunset Star pattern from Edyta Sitar's book Scrappy Firework Quilts.  Yep, she's a fan of hers.

 

I used a gray thread throughout the quilt.  In the blocks I did a spiraling flower design, but stayed out of the red center.  I didn't like how the gray thread contrasted and distracted the eye. 

 

A funky feather for the border and a row of pebbles for the sashing.

 

And I quilted this super cute baby quilt of hers on the same back and batting since there was room for it.  She used some cute farm prints for her QSTs.

 

Nothing too exciting quilting-wise.  Just corner to corners. 

 

But look at this quilt one last time!  Isn't it neat?!  I love how the solids are all different shades and tints and not all the exact same color.  It keeps your eyes dancing!  I believe she used a jellyroll of solids for it.

 

Also, I have some sad news to share.  No, noone died.  Just my favorite quilting thread- Essential Pro from Connecting Threads is no longer :(  I inquired about not being able to find white and silver on the website-pretty popular colors- and they replied with the news that they are no longer making Essential Pro and white and silver are gone.  Forever!  So I stocked up on some colors while they still have them.  And meanwhile I'll be shopping around for a new go-to longarm quilting thread.  So if you have any recommendations, please, let me know! 

Berenstain Bears Baby quilt

 

Norene made this baby quilt with Moda's Berenstain Bears fabric. 

 

That's my little guy getting upset with me for not letting him have the camera.  He becomes obsessed  with the camera as soon as he sees it.  So if you want to capture that sweet cute little thing he's doing- forget about it!  This is the kind of photo you will usually end up with instead!  :) 

 

Anyway, back to the quilt.  I love how it uses the Sister's jumper and Papa's shirt fabric.  Since this quilt is going to a baby girl, I sweetened it up with flowers and swirls. 

 

I remember reading these books as a little youngster- but the only one I really remember is the Picnic one.  My husband had a bunch of their books as a kid that we now have.  We have about 20 of them so I thought maybe we should try to collect them all.  Well, I looked up the book list and there are about a thousand different Berenstain Bear books!!  Seriously.  So much for having a complete collection! 

Peg's Fred Fisherman Quilts

Peg made up these quilts using these hand appliqued Fred Fisherman blocks made by her husband's mother and grandmother.  They have been in a box for 60 years!

There were lots of them!  Enough to make 3 small quilts and a wallhanging.  

I had lots of fun quilting up these guys.  I made each one a little different- making the sky and the foreground a little different.  This guy is walking through rocks and grass with his fish on his pole.

And this one caught two!

And this poor guy came home empty-handed.  Or maybe he is just on his way to the fishing hole...

I really loved how these special quilts turned out.  Quilting on something so sentimental makes me a little nervous sometimes!  But I'm so glad that this UFO is finally able to come out of the closet and be enjoyed for many years to come!

QCR and do. Good Stitches Blocks

This was my March block for do. Good stitches Haven group.  We could either make 2 smaller blocks or one big one.  I went with BIG!  It's 20.5 inches square!  I wanted to use that fabric for the center- it's a big print and worked with the color scheme for this quilt.  

And here is April's blocks.  Emily had us pick out a block from Jeni of In Color Order's HST Block of the month tutorial.  A great resource if you are looking for HST block inspiration.  Emily is going to make two baby quilts- one with cool colors and a black and white.  

Also: Sarah completed our first quilt made with inspiring words and traditional blocks.  It turned out amazing!!  Sarah blogged about it here. 

And then I have my QCR QAL blocks.  These are #10- Star block.  

This one is  my Scrappy/practice version.  I really like this block pattern a lot!  And it was really simple to make too.  All 12 of the block tutorials are posted, and I'm working on finishing them up.  The last two are drunkards path and spools.  Can't wait to put them all together!

Peg's Butterflies

Lately, I've been quilting more than I have been blogging- so there is lots to catch up on.  So stay tuned for plenty more quilting!

Peg made this beautiful quilt with her embroidery machine.  All sorts of butterflies!  Each one is different and oh, so colorful.  

I did a flower in each dark square and filled in around the butterflies with a meandering loop-di-loop plus a little butterfly to keep the other company.  

The back was a solid black and really shows the quilting off nicely.

 Here you can see the detail the best.  

Jessica's been busy...Part II

 

This one ended up being my favorite. 

 

 

I quilted the same heart/loop motif in each block and in the pieced borders a curly-Q vine with a few hearts here and there.  The block design is from Eva Larkin's "Free Motion Quilting Made Easy: 186 Designs from 8 simple shapes" book.  Chuck full of ideas, that book! 

 

 

I don't like to do very much marking. It's just is too time consuming. And when you are a longarm quilter- time is money! And who wants to be that precise anyway?? OK, maybe award-winning quilters do... But I will sometimes mark a few guidelines when necessary. This block just needed a big X and then you are off and running. 

 

 

This quilt may look familiar to some of you.  Jessica made an identical one that I qulited last year, only this one is a bit bigger. 

 

 Lots of free-form feathers, swirls and leaves.

 

 

And last, but not least is this darling baby quilt. 

 

 

Swirls with sun-rays, a small row of circles and a row of crescent beads. 

 

Thanks for letting me quilt all your adorable quilts Jessica!

 

 

Jessica has been busy...

 

Jessica dropped off her stock-pile of quilt tops a few weeks ago.  Oh what fun I had with all of these adorable quilts!  And I'll share all 5 with you.  In no particular order- there is this adorable baby quilt.  The photo here does not do justice to the brightness of the pink and green fabric.  It was BRIGHT I tell you!  Neon. 

 

 

corner to corner with a scalloped-edge border.

 

 

Next up is this Oh Deer! layer cake quilt. 

 

 

I did an all-over feathered swirl on it.

 

 

Tweet-tweet!  Such cute fabric... 

And I wanted to note that she even made sure that all the birds, deer and critters were all upright!

 

This quilt and a few others are available to purchase from Jessica's Etsy site.  It could be yours!

 

 

Lone Star kit

 

This lone-star quilt kit was in with my Grandma's sewing stash.  My mom ended up with a lot of Grandma's sewing stuff when she moved to assisted living a while back.  And my sister ended taking this project home and piecing it together.  I love how it turned out!

 

I did a funky split feather in the corners and corner to corner in the star.

 

 

I was worried about how wonky this thing was going to be to quilt--all those diamonds were pieced individually- lots of biased edges going on here!  Everything was going very well until I got about half-way down the quilt, when it became very apparent that I was going to have to make a tuck!  This was my first time attempting a tuck, and after reading Jenny's tutorial I decided to go for it! 

 

I ended up tucking in about 3 inches of extra fabric in the middle of both setting triangles.  I took an 1.5 inch tuck and tapered it in to the point of the setting triangle.  (in the top photo- the tuck is in the top and bottom setting triangles) 

 

It turned out pretty well and was not too scary to do.  I did hand stitch the tuck down after I quilted it so it is barely noticeable.  However, the quilt does have an hourglass shape to it--not sure how one would have avoided that.  So it is not perfect by any means, but considering the circumstances, I'm still pretty happy with the way it turned out.  I guess that's why they don't sell lone star kits anymore--they sell jelly-rolls and strip-piece them!  (Better off Thread has a tutorial here.)

 

We are going to be giving this quilt back to Grandma- all finished!