Handmade by Alissa

Quilted Pillow Tutorial

April 11, 2011 in Tutorials/Patterns with 12 Comments

I wrote up a simple quilted pillow tutorial for Janome recently.

Such pretty stitches.

And now – the winner of Modern Log Cabin Quilting! Random number generator gave me number 19 out of 223 comments! So that’s Alice R. who says: “I love the tweaking of the traditional log cabin. What a beautiful book – I have book lust big time!” Congrats Alice – keep any eye out for an email from me!

And one last thing, Cate, my twin sister has her house in Apartment Therapy’s Small Cool contest and it would be so great of you if you could click on over and “favorite” her place. You have to sign in or create an account but 1) I figure a lot of you already have an Apartment Therapy sign in name and 2) if you don’t it just takes a second to create one! Thank you!! I’m pulling for her and her place is seriously so cute.

Modern Log Cabin Quilting Blog Tour & Book Giveaway

April 7, 2011 in Other with 223 Comments

When Susan Beal asked me to be a part of the blog tour for her new book, Modern Log Cabin Quilting I jumped at the chance.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you’re certain to know that I have had quite the love affair with the log cabin block.

There was a time when I would sew pretty much nothing but! There’s so much room for creativity with them and as a beginning quilter I was comfortable there. I loved that I had so much room to explore design while also using just this one simple construction method. Modern Log Cabin Quilting shows just how much this is the case. Check out these two amazing and completely different quilts, both with log cabin blocks.

Pretty great, right? The book is filled with ten wonderful quilt patterns and loads of cute home dec.projects…

…and bags too!

The beautiful photography really shows off the fun and fresh atmosphere of all of the projects.

The generous people at Potter Craft have been kind enough to offer up a copy of the book for you! Just leave a comment on this post and you’ll be entered to win. (US residents only please.) Good luck!

I’ll leave the giveaway open through the weekend and announce a winner on Monday!

Blue.

April 4, 2011 in Finished Quilts with 17 Comments

Lots of it in this quilt!

Plus a little gray and just a tiny bit of golden yellow. And I seem to be on a dense straight line quilting kick these days.

A friend from the LAMQG is adopting from Ethiopia and I made this quilt for Linus, her little baby boy!

Otherwise, did you see that Challenge 3 of Project Modern was announced? Check it out here!

My weekend.

March 28, 2011 in Quilting Works in Progress with 22 Comments

First some piecing…

…and then some quilting!

Now I’m stitching the binding.

What did you get done this weekend?

So busy!

March 23, 2011 in Fabric, Other with 13 Comments

So awhile back I promised myself that I wouldn’t blog about not blogging and here I am breaking that promise. Being freelance with my work, my quilting free time ebbs and flows. After a very long time just quilting a ton (mostly stuff I can’t post here!), on Monday I started back up on a job. So I’m in an ebb and I will be for about three months. I’ll miss my sewing machine but the paychecks will ease the pain.

Meanwhile, the fabrics for the next quilt have been pulled!

Oh gray – why can’t I quit you?!?

Can’t wait to get cutting and sewing this weekend!

Apartment Therapy

March 17, 2011 in Other with 11 Comments

Hey all! I’m super excited that the lovely Bethany from Apartment Therapy came and shot my sewing space recently.

Check out the full post here!

Japan

March 16, 2011 in Other with 0 Comments

We are all so terribly sad about what’s happened in Japan… Did you all see that Jacquie is giving a quilt away if you donate to the Red Cross? So generous of her!

Check out her post here and please give what you can!

Robert Kaufman Kona Cotton Solids Challege

March 14, 2011 in Finished Quilts with 24 Comments

It was so much fun taking part in the Kona Cotton challenge that Robert Kaufman was generous enough to sponsor for many many of the Modern Quilt Guilds.

Each group was allow to create their own rules for the challenge. Here in LA, we were each given one charm pack in the dusty palette. From there we were allowed to add one additional solid fabric in the quilt top, and one more for the binding. Here’s the quilt I made.

The quilting is 100% inspired by this quilt.

This type of random piecing is so much fun for me to do.

And I used some scraps from the piecing in a bit of the binding.

There were so many amazing entries into the challenge. We had a lot of categories that the guild picked winners for but these are the two that tied for “best of show.”

Amazing, right?? So wonderful! And isn’t it funny how much they work together?? They both picked Ash as their background! You can see all of the quilts that were made by The LAMQG here. And there’s also a flickr group for photos of all of the different guilds’ challenge quilts.

And here we all are showing off our quilts!

Oh and Jacquie’s talk? So so inspiring!

Everyone was so thrilled to get to know the woman behind the blog we’ve all been reading. She was open and warm and just an all around wonderful speaker. And the quilts! She brought many more than you’d imagine could fit in one suitcase and each one was more beautiful than the next. I heard rumors of a petition getting started to get her to move to LA…

A lil’ quilt.

March 10, 2011 in Classes, Finished Quilts with 18 Comments

I sewed up a little sample for my class at Sew Modern. A beginner’s how to quilt class that includes some fun improv. piecing of log cabins. Just a little 30″ square quilt with four big blocks that sew up quickly.

I’m pretty sure the class is almost full but I’ll list it more in the future too.

This little center is my favorite part of the quilt. I love these gray stripes. I’m in a stripes place these days.

Jacquie comes and speaks to the LAMQG tonight! AND we have the Robert Kaufman Kona Cottons Solids Challenge reveal. I can’t wait to see what everyone made! Not to mention that 70 people have RSVPed for the meeting. It’s gonna be a big one!

The Best Ever.

March 1, 2011 in MQG Posts with 17 Comments

That’s what the LAMQG 1st annual quilting retreat was. Seriously. The. Best. Ever. We had so much fun!

First off – 18 inches of snow fell while we were there. That’s a whole lotta snow. Amazing that this is only an hour and a half outside of sunny Los Angeles!

Those are the cars we drove up in. And we stayed up in those cute lil’ cabins.

We dealt with one vehicular mishap, but all ended ok and while there was some trudging around in the snow to get places, everyone was warm, inside and sewing, sewing, sewing for most of the time.

We were in such a great space! We even had a big cozy fireplace that we all gathered around the whole weekend.

The knitting nook was also quite active through out!

The women I’ve met in the LAMQG have become irreplaceable to me. I’ve made so many friends who I am certain I will still be sewing and laughing with when we are old cranky quilting ladies. This has added to my life immeasurably and I’m so, so thankful for what we’ve created here with The MQG. I read on blogs that lots of you are having similar experiences in your local Modern Quilt Guilds and that makes me so happy. We’ve started something really great here.

Anyhow, I didn’t get nearly as much done as I could have… but you know what happened just as much as quilting? Chatting. Lots and lots and lots of chatting.

We all could have stayed for longer! And next year we will.