Auction Quilt

Hello everyone! I've started a new project that I'm pretty excited about. I just signed up to make a quilt for a silent auction. The auction will benefit the grade school where I volunteer. So, I was looking at pictures of quilts online that might be easy to put together and I came across this one:

You can find and buy the pattern here:

Sparkle Plenty Pattern

I thought it was super cute, but I wanted to change it up a bit. Here's the layout I came up with:

I'm still kind of playing with where all of the colors land, but I'm going to let it rest for a bit - let it soak in - before I sew all the rows together. 

My plan is to only do straight line quilting on this one and to just echo the star shape. All done this should finish up at 60" square. 

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hello everyone, and happy Valentine's Day! I've been furiously working to finish my scrappy valentine quilt and I finished it with 2 hours to go here in Portland, Oregon. I really wanted to finish it before my husband came home from traveling tonight. It is now happily drying in the laundry and I'll be able to wrap him up in it when he gets home. 

So, here se some pics of the quilt. If I remember, I'll try to add some pictures of it after it's dry. 

My cat Leia approves of the final product, even if she did ruffle it a bit as I was taking pictures. She desperately wants to snuggle on it. 

This is the quilting that I did in all of the large white areas. I hashed each area with my walking foot and then added some free motion, free-flowing circles. I was trying not to be too anal with getting them all to be the same size and perfectly shaped. It was bugging me a bit because I really do like things to be perfect. I just wanted them to be more natural as if I was doodling on the quilt. I didn't want this quilt to be too rigid. Luckily I'm not super great at uniformity with the free motion quilting yet, so I think it worked out nicely. ;)

In the smaller white areas I did that same circle design around the edge and left the center empty. In the black and gray star pieces I did some straight quilting from the center out. In the heart I just wanted to keep it simple. It is hard to see, but I just did one large FMQ heart in the middle. 

Lastly, in the red border I did a free motion heart pattern. (Sorry for the indoor picture quality!) I debated doing this in the black border as well, but decided against it. I like it just in the red. :)

So, that's my scrappy valentine quilt! Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you all have a lovely Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Flimsy

Hello everyone! Just a quick post to show off my Valentine's quilt flimsy. I put on two borders actually, a mottled red and a black with tiny white polka dots. 

I love this quilt so much! No pun intended... 

I have some interesting ideas on how to quilt it. It will be a combo of straight line and free motion. I don't know if it will look good, but it will be good practice. :) Now I just gotta get it pinned and quilted up!

Valentine Project Update

Hello everyone! Progress is being made on my scrappy Valentine project. 

Lots and lots of squares ready to be sewn together. 

All laid out and happy. 

My fingers look pretty chubby in this photo, but rockin' a red nail for the project. :)

Six done and three more to go! I really love it. I think I'll border this whole thing out in red for 3 inches and make it 60" x 60". Believe it or not though, I don't have a piece of red fabric large enough to get me the full border, so I'll have to take a trip to the fabric store. :) 

Happy sewing everyone!