I went the extra mile with this top and sewed it up using Y seams. I only wanted pieced seams where it made sense in terms of the weave of the plaid … Though I’m gonna go ahead and call it: Y seams are a pain! But I’m really happy with the end result

I also matched up the stripy fabric in the one place where it had to be pieced. And now I need to quilt it!!

Not much like what I’m doing these days, huh? Well the twins are lucky enough to have welcomed a younger sister into the world, and their parents requested a new quilt in the same colors. I don’t have a lot of those fabrics anymore, but I have some… so I pulled a bunch of pinks and greens.

We’ll see what I come up with! 

For those of you in the States, hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!  I’ll be busy cooking and spending time with family for the rest of the week.  See you next week!

I don’t know when I’m gonna move on from the straight line quilting… so in love with it these days!

(Need to get started on the Habitat Challenge!)

…piecing…

and quilting!

This actually isn’t how I usually work. Normally I have one project going that I finish before I start another but recently I’ve had too much on my plate to work that way.  Makes me feel scattered but what can you do? I’m still getting work done…

And thank you all so much for all of your kind comments about my latest quilt. There were so many great name suggestions.  I heard Crossroads from a few people and I really liked that, both because the piecing looks kinda like roads (let’s go with it…) and because the piecing crosses itself.  So that’s what I’m going with!   Thanks again for all of your ideas!

And now I’m diving right back in! A couple of friends having are baby boys. In fact, one was born just yesterday so I have to get cracking!

Just getting started on them but they will be simple and come together quickly. Just need to add some more negative space to this one…

And I dove into some fabrics I haven’t touched in ages with this one! Hi brown. It’s been a while… but their registry was all blues and chocolate so it should work out!

I hope to make a lot of progress on these in the next few days.

I finished the top for my mother’s quilt ages and ages ago and I finally got it quilted late last week. I have been wanting to get more time in with the long arm at Sew Modern and this quilt is big, so I dove in!

It’s funny… there’s a part of me that feels like I’m betraying the idea of making quilts on my home machine, from start to finish. Why is that? I need to get over it because the freedom and speed of working on a long arm just straight up cannot be denied. Especially with really big quilts. You’re not going to find me zipping every lil’ baby quilt I make on the long arm, but I think that I’m going to be using it a lot for the big bed quilts.

I have been trying to move away from all over quilting patterns but I thought this quilt, with all of its open negative space, lent itself to one. I’ve seen a couple of quilts recently have that have this sort of stretched out water looking all over pattern and it worked perfectly on the quilt.

I promise it won’t be eleven more months (time flies, huh??) before I get the binding on, finish up and show you the end results.

Oh and thanks so much for all of your comments about Project Runway. It makes me happy that my two jobs/worlds overlap through sewing!

I pulled some fabrics….

…chopped up a ton of strips and started sewing them together!

We’ll see where this goes from here… just getting started!

I love it. I think that when it comes to bee quilts, it’s a balancing act of asking for a block that allows for creativity but will also lead to a group of blocks that work together… Thanks to all of the bee members for their great blocks!!

The top started with these fabrics…

…and a request to be inspired by this photo.

(which I discovered over here on Cathy of California‘s blog. BTW – if you don’t read her blog you should. Nothing but inspiration all the time.)

I can’t wait to quilt it. I might long arm it… I’m determined to make this my Summer Of The Longarm! I will get past that learning curve!!

I picked fabric…

I pieced…

I basted…

And I got the whole thing quilted and bound!

Just the hand stitching of the binding now and I’ll be done. Sometimes it’s really nice to sew up a fast quilt.

Hope you all enjoyed your long weekends as much as I did!

Later this week I leave town for the first of three trips, all happening in May.  I’m so excited for Quilt Market!  Mellow blog means busy life, right??