strip quilt | Needle and Foot

Hurray – It’s Friday!! When you work at home, it doesn’t really matter as much that Friday rolls around, does it? But I still love that feeing of heading into the weekend. It is probably just ingrained in me from the years of being in school, working, having kids in school – Fridays are a great day!

I am popping in with just a few things to tell you. Before we get started, you may have noticed the incredibly beautiful hatching chick in the picture above. Julia made it in first grade and it makes me smile to remember those days. Do you keep your kids Objet d’art from way back when?

Ok, the first point of discussion is about commenting on various blog posts. There has always been this glitch in commenting on certain blog posts since I use WordPress for my blog. I know about fixing the no-reply issue and I have done that a couple of times but things are always changing and once again, there are many blogs I cannot comment on directly.

Additionally, those blogs I can comment on (that are not on a WordPress platform) usually have a Captcha process to go through. I don’t mind this for the most part. Many of the blogs have it set so I usually have to click one round of objects (you know, the fire hydrant, traffic light, bus, car, cross walk or store front) but there are some blogs where I have to go through five and six rounds. To be completely honest, after the 3rd round or so, I just give up. It becomes a bother.

Instead of just reading posts and not commenting, I have started to comment directly by using a blog reader. I have used Bloglovin for years to organize the blogs I follow and to keep track of those following me via Bloglovin. A while back they added a feature where a reader can comment on a post right there. It is not heavily used but it is so convenient. It does mean the author of the post has to check Bloglovin to see those comments. I cannot figure out a setting where they will notify me if I have a post comment on Bloglovin. That would be a great feature, so maybe one day. I just wanted to let people know that they might want to check Bloglovin and see if there are comments from yours truly or others on their posts. Not the perfect solution but I am going to continue to do this and see how it goes. At least I am trying to interact and not just lurk behind the scenes.

As for sewing, I have been working on these cute blocks. This line is called Floriography. I had purchased a stack of it at least three years ago. I began a Tula Pink quilt with it but hated the way the blocks looked. I clearly didn’t know what I was doing and it gives me a headache just to look at those blocks! So, I decided to throw in some solids from my wonderful closet of stash and make these blocks. I want to make more blocks with the darker blue and pink before I really work on the layout. I am using a pattern (tutorial really) by Cluck Cluck Sew. I had pinned it long ago and decided this is a great use for it. I am looking forward to making more of these and putting it together.

This weekend Julia selects her piggy for this year. She is pretty excited (actually, so am I!). My son and his wife are coming for a little family time and my parents are coming to dinner tomorrow night as well. I am thinking steak and shrimp for dinner with peach cobbler for dessert. This should make for a great weekend! Family time, baby pigs, and good food. What more does this girl need?

Check out my Forsythia blooms! So pretty this time of year!

I cut some to bring in the house. The blossoms always drop everywhere but it doesn’t bother me. I love the bright yellow indoors!

Remember – there is a great sale on Michael Miller Fabric over at my shop. Today and through the weekend, it is 50% off. There are some great stripes for quilt bindings and a few large scale prints that would make wonderful quilt backs. Come take a look! Have a great weekend everyone! Linking with Myra at Busy Hands Quilts for Finished or Not Friday.

At the beginning of this year I set a goal to make three birthday quilts for three special women. You can read about the first two of these quilts here. Yesterday I finished the third of the birthday quilts!! Yay! I will ship it out today in honor of her birthday, which is today! Think it will make it from California to Chicago in time for her to open it tonight?? At least I am getting it in the mail – it will have to arrive a few days after the day. I am sure she won’t mind. I really love this quilt. I had pinned this design on Pinterest a long while back and was so happy to have an occasion to make it. I used the pattern called Sedimentary created by Debbie Grifka at Esch House Quilts. Before I got started I check with my son, partner of the birthday girl, Marisa. I knew I wanted to use black, gray and white as the basis but wanted him to select the accent color. He chose cobalt blue, which I thought was a great choice. Nice bold contrast but not too bright. This is a really easy quilt to make. Cutting pieces consisted of lots of strips in three different widths. The pattern directions are crystal clear and easy to follow. Once the strips are sewn together it is a matter of laying them out and moving them around until the layout is pleasing. I think if I ever make it again, I would reduce the widths of the strips overall and just create more of them. The strip widths are a bit “chunky” looking and narrowing the width would help that. Overall though, I am so happy with it and hope that Marisa loves it!! It was a lot of fun to choose all of the different black and white and gray fabrics. Some I had in my stash and others I purchased for the quilt. I used two text prints that I thought were perfect for Marisa. One was all about stories (fitting as she is absolutely a bibliophile) and the other is written in French (Marisa is multi-lingual and speaks French among other languages). I had not used text prints before and they look great. It is fun to personalize the quilt with just the right text prints. The quilting was easier than it has been. I suppose that it truly is all about practicing and it seems that each time gets a bit more comfortable and looks better over all. I used YLI thread in a varigated gray to quilt a random pattern of swirls. The pattern contrasts nicely with the linear direction of the pattern. The thread was heavier and showed off the quilting better. (Although on the swirls that were a bit herky jerky they showed up more than I wanted!!) The only real problem was when I was quilting on the darker black strips, it was hard to see where I was coming from and going to. The back – I love the back. Sometimes I get more excited about the back of a quilt than the front. I decided to make four modern blocks with leftover strips and insert them in a column. It looks great. It is bound with a tiny print of blue and black, setting off both the front and back nicely. Here is my favorite tale about this quilt. When I had the quilt lying on the floor and I was squaring it off and trimming the excess before binding it, my 13 year old daughter came in the room and took a look at it. She said, “Mom, this is so pretty. It is sophisticated. Just like Marisa.” I loved Julia’s interpretation and that is how the name of the quilt came to be. Sophisticated. Happy Birthday Marisa!! Linking up with Freemotion by the River, Fabric Tuesday and Sew Cute Tuesday and Show and Tell Tuesday. Also at the lovely Lorna’s, Let’s Bee Social and, finally with Freshly Pieced’s WIP Wednesday.

Needle and Foot

Tag Archives: strip quilt

Little Updates

Sophisticated