Dead Simple QAL Finish

I really meant to post during the last week, but it's been crazy.  Between my annual Halloween Party, costumes, a craft bazaar and two school Halloween parties, I feel like I didn't sit down last week, unless I was making something.

I finished up my dead simple quilt.  I kept the quilting dead simple, just a line of stitching on either side of the seams.  It's really soft and lovely, even if the colors didn't quite end up the way I envisioned.  It was an interesting exercise, that I'm glad I did.

I used a beige and brown toile from my stash for the back.  It was soft, the right size and in my stash so I used it.

I bound it in Remix, which was my inspiration fabric for the palatte.  I thought about adding a border of Remix, but I wanted to keep in dead simple.

DSMMQG

Tonight is the DSMMQG meeting, 6:30 at the West Des Moines Public Library.  We're going to have a very interesting speaker on the topic of quilt as you go.  You might know the speaker, it's ME!!!  The scheduled speaker was supposed to be Carla of Lollyquiltz.  She has had a family emergency and someone needed to fill in, so I volunteered.

I'm bringing all my QAYG pillows, plus examples of how to use quilt as you go methods to join panels into larger quilts.

I was up until 12:30 am making samples to pass around.  I thought about just doing them today, but then I decided to just knock them out last night.  It's a good thing I did, because my already scheduled to the minute morning got the addition of two, yes two, emergency trips to the car repair shop.  Starting at 7:30 am, my day has gone something like this:
Dogs to groomers
Home
Make breakfast
Baby Girl to preschool
Repair shop get tire patched and oil changed
Sam's Club
Grocery store
Home to unload groceries
Baby Girl from preschool
Drive through McD's
Repair shop for new tire
Pick up dogs from groomer
Drive through McD's for Hubby's lunch
Home
Pack samples and machine for meeting tonight
Sit for a second and write blog post

I'm getting tired all over again, just looking at the list.  I've got half an hour to relax and then I need to start driving to Des Moines for the meeting.  I hope to see a few of you there.

Halloween Quilt

I finished up the Halloween quilt last night.  I'm really pleased with the way it turned out.

You can't tell where the cheater panel pieces end and the piecing begins.  I used a Halloween panel and I described how I cut it up and made the blocks here.  These would have looked really cute wonkified, but I had NO extra fabric and I really didn't want to buy more.

I used virtually every scrap of the Halloween prints and had to pull a few grey/black prints from the stash to have enough for all the blocks.  I used all the leftover bits in the coordinating pillow.

Originally the front of the pillow was going on the back of the quilt, but
I decided to do a more neutral autumn back, so I could reverse it.

The orange prints in the center are all Central Park.  I have no idea what the zigzag is, but it was the perfect back for a Halloween quilt.  It was 50% off at the LQS and I bought a few yards.  It is super soft too.  I bound it in a orange on orange print from the Riley Blake Halloween line that makes up most of the fabric in the top of the quilt.  I was originally going to use the stripe I bound the pillow with, but it didn't go with the neutral autumn back, so I changed direction.

I was featured

The lovely Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild featured my House Warming Quilt here, on their blog as inspiration of the week.

I wrote about my process creating this quilt here.

WIP wednesday

There are entirely too many WIPs hanging around at the moment.  I got 2 quilts back from the long arm quilter and I must get them done and out to their new owners.  B's Bento box quilt only needs binding, which is already made and ready to be sewn on.

My mom's rainbow Boston Commons turned out so fantastic.  I tried to get some up close shots of the quilting, but it's beyond my photography skills.

Here is the quilting.

 Every color has a different pattern.  It's amazing.

I clearly need to finish my kids' Halloween quilt before Halloween.

I have it half quilted.  I'm doing straight lines following the lines of the concentric squares.  I did one direction all the way across.  Now, I just need to go back and do the perpendicular lines.  The hard part is done.  I had spray basted it, but I started to run out of adhesive and didn't realized it.  I had to go back and pin almost half as I was quilting it, because it was shifting too much.

The Dead Simple quilt is small and would be a snap to finish up.

Then there's the top I started for a Christmas present for my Dad and his wife.

 My grey and yellow bed spread is stalled for the moment.  I actually packed it up and put it away for the moment.  I have too much else going and I haven't even geared up for Christmas yet.

Linking up to 

Dead Simple QAL

I'm loosely following the Dead Simple QAL.  I decided to just do a medium wall hanging approximately 2 feet by 3 feet.  I discussed my palate choice here.

I cut one 5 inch strip from each of my fabrics and cut 8 charm squares from each strip.  Then I kept the layout simple.  I had 10 fabrics and 8 squares of each fabric.  My layout was 8 x 10 and I used each fabric once in each column and row.

I like the fabrics and they looked great all stacked up, but the final product is a bit lacking.  It took me a while to figure out why I have a problem with it.

Try it in black and white and see how it looks.

There aren't enough medium toned fabrics.  There are 3 dark fabrics, which is about right for 10 total.  However, in the B&W you can see there's only 1 medium tone.  Ah well, lesson learned.  Squinting isn't enough sometimes.

Halloween Pillow

As I was working out the design for the back of the Halloween quilt, I made a panel out of all the scraps from the front, plus some scraps from making trick or treat bags.  It didn't work out for the back of the quilt, but I saw no reason why it should go to waste.  I quilted it and turned it into a pillow.

 I quilted it in straight parallel lines that are randomly spaced.  I used a few different thread colors, to either blend or stand out.  It's bound in an awesome stripe with all the Halloween colors.

 The back is an orange and black stripe leftover from making pirate pants and some cute dancing mummies which was the biggest piece leftover from the Halloween quilt.  The mummies aren't very wide, so I just made the stripe piece wider so there would still be a good overlap.

I love these envelop back pillows.  I'm teaching a group from my MOMS club how to make them and we are having a blast.

Halloween projects

I've been working on a couple of halloween projects.  The first one is this Halloween quilt.  I finally got the top together.

I really love the way it turned out.  The top has been done for a while, but I've been struggling with the back.  I got a great orange and grey zigzag to use for the back, but I wanted to mix in some other prints and I just didn't like anything I came up with.  The grey in the zigzag is more of taupe and it looked best with autumn browns, not the bright orange and black from the Halloween prints on the front.

 I finally decided, I'd do a simple autumn palate on the back, so I can flip it over to Autumn when it isn't Halloween.  I decided on the orange color way from Central Park and am using a tonal orange for the binding.  No I just need to get it basted and done.  I need to get started on Halloween costumes.