Fabric for Life Contest!

I just entered this contest from Keepsake Quilting to win fabric for life!  

Enter once a day until February 28, 2014.  

Click on the picture to enter!

Mary

Circles Quilt - Heavily Machine Quilted!

I can't believe I made this quilt in twelve days!  But then again -- that's probably more than 100 hours.  I am a bit obsessive with my quilting, and tend to spend all day in my studio when I'm working on a project I really enjoy.  

Autumn Circles

The beautiful fabric was from The Fat Quarter Shop.  Birch Autumn Harvest, by Jason Yenter.   I love the feel of this fabric!

I used Strips'N Curves acrylic templates for the quilt. I've had these templates for years, and this was the perfect time to use them again. I didn't have much trouble with the curves, and the piecing went pretty quickly.  

Autumn Circles Detail Top Left

I blogged about another similar quilting project, White Wholecloth Quilt where I was excited to use some of Cindy Needham's techniques in a white quilt. (Her Craftsy class  Design It, Quilt It: Free-Form Techniques is excellent!) 

Light and shadow make a big difference in heavily quilted quilts, once I got that from Cindy, my quilts looked a lot better.

Autumn Circles Detail Bottom Left

I used a light weight grey thread in the machine and bobbin, Gutermann Miniking, and quilted on my mid-arm Juki on a Grace GMQ frame.

Autumn Circles Detail Bottom Right

The back was off-white.  If I were to do it again, I'd probably make the back a light blue or grey, but it does show off the quilting!  The hardest part was knowing when to stop!

Autumn Circles Back

I'll be putting the quilt in my Etsy shop Mary Manson Quilts later in the week, but it will be hard to put a price on all that work!

I hope you enjoy my pictures! 

Mary

New Favorite Fabric!

Yesterday I received a package from The Fat Quarter Shop, and when I opened it, there was the most beautiful fabric!  

Here's a picture of the fabrics -- Birch Autumn Harvest, by Jason Yenter for In The Beginning Fabrics.  Aren't they beautiful?  And the feel of the fabric is wonderful.

There are many more fabrics in the collection, but these were my favorites.  I got 1/2 yard of each, I knew that fat quarters just wouldn't be enough!

This is going to make a really special quilt - I can't wait to get started.

Mary

Swatch Book and New Quilt Top

I really like solid fabrics.  And Connecting Threads online fabric shop has a great selection of solids, mirage, and basic prints in their Quilter's Candy.  They are good quality, reasonably priced, easy to work with, and pretty!

I bought several charm packs, and some yardage, and went crazy, and created a swatch book.  That way, I'm sure I'm getting the right color when I order.  30 pages later....

This definitely says something about my personality :)  But I love it!

Afterwards, I had a lot of charm squares, and decided to make a quilt with them.  Since they were so many different colors, I decided to try 9-patch blocks alternating with X pattern blocks in a lattice design.

Is it too wild?  I'm still not sure how I feel about it, because its SO different from my usual quilts, but I think when it's finished and quilted, it'll be really nice.  If not, I'll make the 9 patches a solid center section for another quilt, and use the X's with more subtle colors

What do you do with your charm squares?

Mary

Red Triangles is Finished!

In June, I blogged about my progress on the Red Triangles quilt ... it's finished!! 

I used a layer cake of Esprit de Noel by French General for Moda Fabrics, from the Fat Quarter Shop.   This was my first time using a layer cake, and I really liked it!  It was nice not to deal with big pieces of fabric, and not having to make so many cuts. The fabric is just beautiful, I'll definitely be buying more of some of the designs. 

Since it was Moda fabric, I went to The Moda Bake Shop and used their free pattern, The Dark Side...or Not Layer Cake Quilt  that I adapted for my quilt. I don't always like things to be evenly spaced, so I used fewer blocks and made the quilt design off center.  

I machine quilted feathers on the lighter areas, and a straight line pattern in each dark triangle.  I really like the final design. what do you think?

Mary

Woven Ribbons Quilt

Woven Ribbons is finished!  I usually design or adapt my own quilt patterns, but I purchased this pattern "Weave it to Me" by Judy Dohrman, and having the instructions made it much easier :) :)

The fabrics were part of fat quarter packages I had gotten at the Loving Stitches quilt shop.  Grey and yellow aren't my "colors", but the combination really turned out pretty!  The white background was a good contrast, and really set it off.

For the machine quilting, I just quilted in the ditch around the ribbons, and did a feather design around the border.  Between the border and the ribbons, and between the ribbons I did a fill of pebbles.

It makes a really pretty bed runner, or twin sized quilt!

Mary

Double Wedding Ring Quilt - Here Goes!

A Double Wedding Ring quilt has been on my list of quilt patterns I'd like to try for a long time.  Spring seemed like a perfect time to use my new fabrics, too!

I'm in a bright pastel phase, as you can see, love these fabrics, a combination of Joann's, Connecting Threads and Fat Quarter Shop.

So, off I went -- first I went to my scrap stash, and pulled out everything I could use -- I got tough, and if it was too small for this quilt pattern, it got thrown out.

The pattern I used came from Quilt Inspiration Blog - Wedding Ring Quilts Part 1, I love the River City Quilt Guild's quilt, but it will have to wait until I master the technique. Part 2 has some beautiful quilts too!

I'm doing the Double Wedding Ring Quilt by Marsha Evans Moore at Free Spirit Fabric for a collection by Jennifer Paganelli at Sis Boom.  Click on the link for a free pattern.

So  away I went!  I like paper piecing for this pattern, it's more precise for me.

One of my goals with quilting is to enjoy the process, and to SLOW DOWN!  This quilt is definitely going to be a process :)  Here's what I have so far.

I can't decide between making a bed runner or quilt, we'll see how it goes.  Now I better get off this blog and get quilting!

Mary