Everything Rolled Into One

Yes, it is late on the last night in February and I am just barely posting about all of my February Challenges.  Please forgive me for not making separate posts for everything but I am tired and just want to crawl into my bed!  

I will try to label everything so if you are looking for a certain part just scroll down till you find what you are looking for!  

Color Palette Challenge

I knew even before the colors were posted what I wanted to do for this month.  My dad has been asking for a quilt made with his Coke Bottle Template.  Well after 6 months he finally has something.  

The inspiration photo of the figs was beautiful but I had a hard time picking out fabrics.  I just couldn't find anything in the orange family I liked.  Finally I settled with this.

I love the color combination and the way it turned out.  I am going to call it Lava Lamps and hopefully have the pattern written up by next weekend!  I love it and my kids love cuddling up on the couch with it.  Hopefully it stays looking decent for when it travels with my parents to their quilt shows!  

Free Motion Quilting Challenge

This month we were supposed to practice quilting feathers.  I absolutely love feathers!  That is the reason I joined this challenge because I have just wanted to learn this feather skill.  I have tried in the past, with pretty good results but after reading Diane's tutorial I knew I could do better.  I decided to put the feathers in my UFO Viola's Jewelry Box.  Here is what I ended up with.  

The first feather I actually marked on the fabric because I was too chicken to just jump right in.  Sorry about the quality of picture, with the blue lines and the white on white quilting it is hard to see.  

After this one I was confident to just go for it.  

Here is attempt #2, completely free hand.  I am pretty happy with the results.  The individual plumes are about 1/4 of an inch.  

I love how each plume is unique, they will show up more in my quilts from now on.  

Here is the scary picture of the back!  I really should take a class on how to take better pictures.  

UFO Challenge

My UFO for this month was Viola's Jewelry Box, another one to be quilted!  I kept putting this off because I couldn't decide on how to quilt it.  Marlene from Kissed Quilts gave me some good tips.  Thanks Marlene!!  I took parts of her advice and meshed them with a few ideas I had floating in my head.  

I outlined the applique in the border twice and then added a clam shell thing (as you can tell I don't know the exact term) as echo quilting.  

The back of the border.  

I forgot to take a picture of the entire quilt, and as I said before it is too late to upload any more.  

Here is what it looked like when I started.  To me it looked like there was white sashing running behind everything so that is where the feathers went.  And then the rest was pretty much different kinds of fillers.  I will try to post more pictures when I remember to take them.  

I think I told you my mom was participating as a background UFO player as well.  She doesn't have a blog but I think she should get some recognition as well.  

This quilt is called Blast from the Past and was expertly pieced in black and white.  I think it is stunning!  She is just glad it is finished and she says this will be the last big quilt she makes for a while.  

 

Thanks for checking in.  I can't wait to see what all the other quilters have been up to this month!

More stuff to do!

Sorry, no pictures tonight, but just to let you know Lava Lamps in quilted and bound!  I will post pics in a few days.  

But I am excited to let you know about two quilt classes I have registered for in June.  I know, June is a few months away but just being able to think about it will keep me going until then.  

If you remember I posted about the Panguitch Quilt Walk last year, if you missed it click here.  A quick recap, we go to Panguitch every year.  My parents have a booth and my husband has tons of family so it is always a great weekend.  

However, I rarely take quilt classes, but this year is going to be different. 

My passion at the moment is learning how to free motion quilt (FMQ to the quilt people out there) and they are offering a few machine quilting classes this year.  I am taking Advanced Free Motion Quilting by Lisa Brothman, and Feather Fundamentals by Renae Allen.  I am beyond excited!!  

If you have a chance to get to Panguitch in June I would highly recommend it.  It is so fun to see an entire town get behind the art of quilting!  You can check out their website at quiltwalk.org  

Have a great week!

Design Wall

Lava Lamps is almost completely quilted!  Check back later for more pictures.  But as always I can't finish one project without looking toward the next one.  Remember this one?

It is from McCall's Design Star Challenge.  I need to quilt "Viola's Jewelry Box" but I am having issues with how to quilt it.  So I need some advice!  How would you quilt this if it was yours?  To give you a reference the pieces in the nine patch blocks (look in the corner of the star blocks) are one inch pieces.  Thanks in advance to any suggestions you have!  

I know I haven't posted anything for a long time but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy!  These three gorgeous girls have kept me busy and there has been some quilting going on as well!

I have finished the top for the Color Palette Challenge with Patchwork Times and Field Trips in Fiber.  If you want to check out the challenge go here.  

These colors were definitely out of my comfort zone.  I tried placing the colors right next to each other but that didn't work.  I was a little concerned my idea wouldn't work.  When I put the white in, it just came together.  

I would love to say this quilt is for me, but it will actually be going to my dad.  He has been asking one of us to make a quilt using his Coke Glass Template since the summer.  Finally he is going to get something!  I love the design I came up with, and it is a really fast project.  I used raw edge applique so there are no curved seams, just lots of fun!  Right now I am thinking of calling it "Lava Lamps."  But I need to hurry and decide because my dad has a show he is going to the first week of March.  He would like to have the pattern to sell along with the template.  

I am frantically trying to quilt this thing over the weekend.  It is coming together alright.  I still need lots and lots of practice machine quilting but I'm trying to see the positive side of it just being finished!  However, I have run out of white thread.  I had 900 yards when I started but now I just have a 1/2 bobbin left.  My mom has some she will lend me, so maybe I will still be able to get in finished this weekend!  Thanks again to my mom, who has bailed me out more times than I am able to count.  

As far as the quilting, in the white sections I quilted a flame looking thing, for lack of better words, and in the rest I quilted circles because I wanted a lava lamp look.   

It feels as if it is taking forever!!  The circles are taking more time than I anticipated, but then again most things take far less time in my mind than they do in reality.