Meanwhile, when I do grab 30 minutes or so I’ve been working on some class samples for when I teach up at A Quilters Affair up in Sisters, Oregon in July.

Are you going to be there? If so, I would love to meet you!  I’ll be giving a couple of talks too, so it should be a really fun week!

Anyhow – these class samples are coming along nicely and I’ll be sure to post them here when I’ve finished them up!

BTW – are you on Instagram? I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ll mention it again because I’m over there so much more than I find time for blogging… Follow me if you wanna. You’ll see a whole lot of my baby too so though maybe it’s not for you if baby pics aren’t your thing.  Ha.

Hope that  you get a good start to your week as April is here!

The LAMQG is putting together two of these quilts and I sewed up one of the tops. I received these great blocks:

Then it was time to make some decisions about how to use them in the lay out. Since the quilt is going to be long armed, I thought I’d leave lots of negative space that can be filled up with some beautiful quilting. This bright vivid blue is also perfect for kids.

You can see my process in this photo. I use Illustrator and design to scale. This makes it easy for me to sort out how big the fabric surrounding the blocks needs to be.

Another lil’ note about this photo – those two bits of sewing in the upper right of my design wall? I leave those there all the time as a constant reminder about what I should focus on with my quilting. The wonky log cabin was sewn up with Denyse Schmidts’ fabrics (I was sure she wouldn’t mind!) that she had brought for the LAMQG workshop and that I had in my house for about a day before mailing them all back to her. The A was sewn up in Elizabeth Hartman’s workshop using her freezer paper method. These two bit of sewing, to me, represent the 1) the freedom of design and sewing without thinking and 2) the importance of good craftsmanship. Having those there as a constant reminder is a good thing for me.

Anyhow – here’s the finished top and now it’s off to be quilted!

I don’t know about you, but I’m certain these quilts are going to add a lot of vibrancy to the shelter. So thrilled that together the MQG can do this great charity quilting!

I’m determined to get some good sewing time in these last couple weeks of the year. Quilts will be finished!! I’m shooting going to get these three done before the new year!

Yeah, that first one is from June 2011 – the waaaaay back machine! Let’s see how I manage.

Other stuff – a winner of 15 Minutes of Play was picked and contacted by Victoria.

And also, I’m on Instagram! Are you? I love it. You’ll be certain to see loads of my baby, but I post my sewing as I’m doing it too. Follow me if you wanna!

It was so much fun to get to just chit chat with friends and sew for a day. I actually didn’t get that much sewing in but did tons of quilt back making and basting…

…and got a start on my Center City quilt.

A lot more work to be done but I’m on my way!

For those of you in the States I hope that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!

I have managed to get this top finished up. I love it. It might be my favorite quilt that I’ve made. Though that tends to happen with the latest project I’m working on…

While making everything line up took a lot of attention, the hardest part was trimming the edges on the bias. HARD when you don’t have a large space to lay the quilt out on. My solution was to put it up on my design wall, draw the lines on with chalk and cut the edges with scissors. Not perfect, but I’ll square it up again once it’s quilted!

Now to think through the quilting… suggestions welcome!

I picked out the fabrics.

Got a really good start on it… loads of cutting and started getting there with the piecing.

It was looking really pretty.

My kid was super impressed.

And then…just as I was getting in my groove…

Yeah. No, that blue line doesn’t line up at all. Sigh. Seam ripper time… It’s all part of the process, right??

Tomorrow I’m headed to Quilt Market for the weekend. My first quick get away since having the baby. It’s gonna be loads of fun!

Remember this design? Well I finished the quilt top!

It’s queen sized and I’m really happy with how it came out. Oh how I love solids. I need to do some serious destashing of a lot of my prints – I’m rarely drawn to most of them anymore…

Now to get to the next steps! I’ve settled on how I’m going to quilt it, and it’s going to take forever because it’s (of course) dense straight line quilting. I’ve never done that on a quilt this big before – wish me luck!

Anyhow – on to the quilt! Using Illustrator has increasingly become a part of my process for my quilt designing… I’m always open to a quilt transforming along the way (and it often does) but I’ve gotten so that I want to see an idea of the big picture before I get started. If I’m writing a pattern, it’s a given that I have to work this way, but even if I’m improv. piecing the whole quilt, I want to have a sense of where I’m headed.

I’m going to improv. piece the columns here, and I won’t keep the height of each piece uniform. The end product will look quite different from the digital mock up, but this helps me with the overall color story and with where I’ll want to place the different pops of color.

I’ve pulled some fabrics. That new Kona orange, Flame, is so great. Definitely a needed addition to the Kona line up!

I need more blues though. I’ll pick those up at my great local shop this weekend…

And it’s bound to be a fun weekend down here for the LAMQG! Elizabeth from Oh Fransson is coming to teach and speak. We’re so excited to have her!

I love the Monsterz line for a baby quilt and think this design features it nicely. I’m going to use a lot of it on the back too…

In other news – on the parenting front I’ve learned one thing for sure: people love to give your baby shoes. It’s so cute I had to take a photo.

My sister put it best… “Your kid is like freakin’ Imelda Marcos!”

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Oh design wall, where would I be without you? I don’t know how quilters work without one! They are so worth the wall space they take up…