Mosaic Mystery Quilt {Quilt Top}

It's been a LONG time since I posted about this project -- last year in fact! The construction directions were released in January, I printed them out, and only now finally managed to finish the quilt top. 

Because my burgundy fabrics were cut from three different fabrics and not from one fabric, I arranged the units so that a single fabric was used for an entire star. I ended up needing to make a few extra units as I put the rows together, but I had plenty of extra fabric. I didn't end up doing that with the pink fabrics and placed them randomly throughout the quilt top.

Going through my old blog posts, it looks like my original plan was to cut the additional pink fat quarters that I have (in the same fabrics I used in the quilt) into strips to make a scrappy, chunky border. I'm not sure if I want to do this or not but I don't have anything else left from this kit that would be enough yardage for a border. (I do, however, have another burgundy fabric that will work for the binding.) So this week I'll be deciding on that. It is probably big enough as is, but I might as well use the rest of those fat quarters.

What do you think? What have you been sewing this week?

Chrysanthemum Quilt Top {June Island Batik Project}

This month's theme for the Island Batik Ambassadors is more of a lack of theme! This month we were given free rein to make whatever our quilters' hearts desired!

For my project, I decided to finish a secret sewing project that I had started way back in March! This is the first block that I finished:

One of the reasons this started as a secret sewing project is that I originally planned (and maybe still plan?) for this quilt design to be a quilt along project and potentially a mystery quilt along project. With 2020 being the crazy year it has been, I decided to just finish up this quilt and show it off. I still have plans for it to be a QAL but it might just be next year at this point.

I wrote the quilt pattern originally in three sizes -- a 9 block version, a 16 block version, and a 25 block version -- and this is the 16 block version. I used Ebony Love's Primo line for Island Batik and used multiple prints for each color of the quilt.

This is a large throw and I am currently in the process of quilting it. That *might* not get done before the end of the month tomorrow, so I figured showing off a finished top was a better choice than showing you a quilt that is only 1/3rd of the way quilted. I'll also at some point write a post about how I designed this quilt and tempt you with some alternate colorways in case we do a QAL either later this summer or next spring with this design.

But for now -- happy Monday! 

Daisy Chain Baby -- Part II {Quilt Top}

Over the weekend, I finished up the quilt top of the Daisy Chain baby quilt I have been working on.

All I had to do was sew the nine blocks together...

... and then add the borders!

I actually just squeaked by with enough green fabric for the borders! I still have plenty of the pink fabric that I used for the stars, so I will be using that for the binding.

On my task list this week is ordering some flannel for the backing!

Update 8/11/2020 -- This pattern is now available in our Etsy and Payhip shops. Please visit one of those sites to purchase the full pattern.

Pineapple Day Quilt {Quilt Top}

It's quilt fashion show day for the Pineapple Day Quilt Along with the Fat Quarter Shop!

For my quilt, I did not use the official layout. Instead of sewing my 6" and 12" blocks into rows, I sewed my 6" blocks into pairs. I then interspersed my 6" pairs among my columns of 12" blocks and my quilt before borders was 48" wide by 60" long. I added the 4.5" borders as directed in the pattern, but my finished quilt is just slightly shorter than the pattern.

I absolutely loved working with these pineapple papers (especially the 6" size!) and am excited to use them again in the future for other scrappy projects.

Check out many of the finished quilts here!

Daisy Chain QAL {Quilt Top Reveal}

Update 8/11/2020 -- This pattern is now available in our Etsy and Payhip shops. Please visit one of those sites to purchase the full pattern.

It's here -- the big reveal!

This week we are making our cross blocks and revealing the quilt layout. Thank you for participating with us!

Alternate your star blocks and your star blocks as shown in each diagram. Pay attention to the orientation of the “chain” through your star blocks – the chains should run diagonally from upper right to lower left in each block. It is also necessary to pay attention to the orientation of your cross blocks.

Did the quilt turn out the way that you guessed?

Here's the finished top of my baby sized version -- I did add a border to my quilt to make it a little bit larger. Since I finished this quilt quite a while ago, it has already been given to a lovely little lady named Abigail -- I'll share the full finish of this quilt on Friday!

For the twin version, my cross blocks are not all the same. Here's the first set before they were sewn together.

24 blocks ready to go!

I've gotten a little delayed in getting this top together, but I'm hoping to get it done this week!

Don't forget to share your Daisy Chain quilt pictures on Instagram with #daisychainquilt and in the Honey, Bunny, and Doll Facebook group!

Check out some finished tops:
--Stephanie's Halloween quilt
--Gene's amazing technicolor quilt
--Gail's French General-inspired quilt (she's actually finished, holy wow!)
--Christina's very scrappy version
--Michelle's purple/blue/teal version

Schedule
Fabric Requirements - February 4th
Cutting - February 18th
Block Units- March 4th
Block Units - March 18th
Block Units - April 1st
Block Units - April 15th
Catch up week link up - April 29th
Top Construction Part 1 - May 6th
Top Construction Part 2 - May 20th <-- That's today!
Link up/giveaways/quilt parade starts: June 3rd
Link up/giveaways/quilt parade ends: June 17th

Radiant Jewel {Quilt Top}

My mom, sister, and I are doing our own "UFO of the month" challenge and this month's UFO is my Radiant Jewel quilt. I started this quilt in August of last year when I went to "Quilt Camp" and when I had last posted about this quilt in October, I had just finished all of the blocks for the center of the quilt.

I was very excited to pull this one back out and start working on putting the top together. I finally laid out all of the blocks for the quilt.

I had to make sure all of the four patches in the star blocks were arranged the same way AND to make sure that there wasn't too much of the same color touching itself in the intersections of the four patches and HSTs at the block corners. (There's one turned star in the picture above that I caught before I sewed the top together -- can you find it?)

For this quilt top, I used the webbing technique to put together the center of the quilt.

First, the blocks were sewn into rows and the rows were chained together.

I pressed towards my star blocks throughout to aid in nesting and block matching as I put the rows together. (So many pins!)

The pieced border has two different units -- the double four patches and then the four patch/HST units. I had made most of the small pieced four patches when I had made the star blocks, which also has four of the small four patch units, but I found that I needed to make a few extra. I also needed to make the HSTs for these block units as well; I used my Accuquilt to cut the background fabrics for these units.

Now this top is really finished!

While I'm a little disappointed that I didn't have enough fabrics to enlarge this quilt to a square (there would have likely been enough solids, but not enough of the prints in the kit) I do very much love this quilt!

I hope you and yours had a happy Easter!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social, Wednesday Wait Loss, and Needle and Thread Thursday!

Early April Showers {Finished Quilt Top}

Here in Pennsylvania, there's been a lot of rain and a lot of snow since about mid-January. I think we've gotten our share of April Showers and we're only in the second week of March!

I also have April Showers on the brain because I have *finally* (yes, finally!) finished the quilt top of my Coast to Coast Traveling Bee quilt from 2017 -- made mainly from the April Showers line from Bonnie and Camille!

Here's the quilt the when it returned to me in 2017:

This quilt will likely live in the guest room (which is red and white, with a bit of navy -- as it is my husband's baseball room too) on the queen bed, so it needed to have just a *bit* of a border. Because the fabric line came out years ago, yardage of it was no where to be found at a reasonable price (since I'd like to keep both of my kidneys) so I found a similarly colored print from a Cluck Cluck Sew line.

I cut 3" strips and got to adding the borders. (I actually only needed 9 strips instead of the 10 that I cut -- I probably could have cut wider strips had I realized this sooner.)

Finally, a finished quilt top!

Now to decide how it will be quilted... hopefully that part won't take two years to accomplish!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social!

Good Fortune {Finished Quilt Top}

After having to make a bunch more units for my borders (which was a long detour!) I have finished my Good Fortune quilt top!

The first task was finishing up the extra green HSTs for my green HST border. I also cut the necessary extra units for my QST units at the same time.

It was nice to already be mostly done with this border and only have to worry about adding on the last side!

I decided to skip the neutral border from the original quilt and just add the QST border directly to the HST border as it was *exactly* the right size for an even number of units. I also probably don't have enough background fabric to add a spacer border of any size anyways -- I only started with 2 yards of the dot print as my background, didn't feel like ordering more, and I like the look of the two different pieced borders next to one another.

Now this top is finished! My changes from Bonnie's original are as follows:
--substitute aqua instead of orange
--half as many total blocks in the center
--spacer border before HST border
--skipped neutral pieced border between HST border and QST border

I'm not sure how and when this one will be quilted -- having On Ringo Lake pantograph quilted was definitely the right decision for that quilt, but I am going back and forth about what to do with this one. It's certainly a manageable size for me to quilt since it's a small throw, but since it isn't a project with a deadline, it will likely be shelved for a while.

But I do know one thing -- this quilt needs a red binding once it is quilted!

Have a Happy Wednesday and Happy Valentine's Day!

Sharing at Needle and Thread Thursday!

Good Fortune {Clue #1} + Double Delight {Finished Top}

Despite the fact that I had to work on Black Friday (boo!) I was able to take a half day, complete a bunch of errands, and get all of the sewing done on Clue #1 for the Good Fortune Mystery Quilt!

For this clue we eased ourselves in a little bit with simple four patches made with our background fabric and our red fabric -- since the only color I changed was replacing orange with aqua, nearly all of my units will be the same as Bonnie's examples.

I used approximately 16 different red fabrics for these four patches, some of them are technically Christmas fabrics but for the most part they are small enough that it won't be entirely obvious. I also used two red patriotic fabrics that were left over from my Uncle Sam wall hanging all the way back in 2013! There are also fabrics from my Christmas Twirls MBS quilt, my Blitzen Basketcase quilt, the tree skirt that I made for my mother-in-law, my Jingle Bell Rock MBS quilt, and a few projects that I've done with Benartex for their Sew in Love with Fabric blog!

For now, I am still planning to use just one background fabric. If there comes a clue where I find that it would be helpful to have multiple background fabrics, I might add in one or two for just those clues but keep my ditsy dot as my main background.

Since I was able to get Clue #1 finished before I even went out for groceries on Saturday, I decided that it was high time to finally put the borders on my Double Delight quilt! I had finished the rest of the top all the way back in June and picked out the border fabric in October and even cut the borders for this quilt when I cut the borders for my Drift Away quilt! Double Delight is an older mystery quilt pattern on Bonnie's site.

As you might be able to tell in the photos, my side borders are skinnier than my top and bottom borders. This way the quilt had a little more length since I tend to make mostly twin-sized and queen-sized quilts when I go big, rather than full-sized quilts. My quilt is now a lovely twin sized at 70" x 88".

The border fabric came from the clearance at my LQS -- it's a Downton Abbey print from 2014, but it has the perfect shades of red, pink, and a tiny bit of chartreuse!

This quilt is now ready for quilting. This might be one that I send out to have a lovely large pantograph done on it to keep the tiny piecing front and center!

Sharing at Bonnie's Monday Mystery Link-up and Linky Tuesday!

Drift Away {Bordered}

At the same time that I worked on my Breezy Blooms quilt, I added the black sashing strips to the top of my Drift Away quilt. The suggestion to add a skinny black sashing before adding a print border was given by quite a few of you and you were definitely right!

And then it sat, because I just wasn't sure what to use for the final border. I finally got the border fabric at the beginning of October. (Only, like, two months later. You can tell it's been a long time since I worked on this project because I was watching baseball in the photo above!)

The blue fabric on the right is what I picked up for the border, the other fabric is for my Double Delight quilt. When I did the math originally, I thought that I could squeak by with just a yard, but when it came time to make the decision at the cutting counter, I ended up getting a yard and a quarter.

And a good thing I did! Instead of cutting width of fabric strips, I decided that it would be better to cut length of fabric strips. With 45" long strips, I only needed two strips per side -- had I cut width of fabric strips, my two final sides would have been *just* too long and would have needed an additional seam and chunk of fabric. I am ALL about eliminating unnecessary seams, ladies and gents -- this is one of those occasions where it pays to take the extra time to do the math and plan ahead of time!

Here's the finished quilt top! My schedule and the weather has been uncooperative for outdoor pictures.

I am very happy I went with a more blue fabric to highlight the darker blues mixed into the quilt, which is mainly aquas.

(I'm also sort of happy that the leftover border fabric is the exact right shade for my planned color scheme for this year's Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt, Good Fortune. That's a post for another day, though!)

My parents were in town visiting this weekend, so I decided to send this quilt, along with my now-completed Border Quilt top, back with them to be long arm quilted or quilted on my mom's mid-arm, if she feels so inclined. This quilt will end up with a teal dot extra wide backing and the Border quilt top will be backed with its tan-gold counterpart.

As a reminder, the pattern for Drift Away is by Melissa Corry of Happy Quilting. I followed her directions to make the 80" quilt and then added 1.5" black strips for the inner border and 4.5" blue strips for the outer border. My finished quilt will be 90" square which is a good queen sized bed quilt.

Happy Tuesday! Sharing at Linky Tuesday and Let's Bee Social!

Yesterday was also the first day of the semi-annual Tips and Tutorials Festival! Honey, Bunny, and Doll is one of the sponsors and I have also linked up three of my own tutorials:
Chit Chat Placemats
Easy Rail Fence Tablerunner
Fancy Flying Geese Units

Cozy Cabins {Quilt Top}

As an Island Batik Ambassador, I am provided with samples of various lines of Island Batik fabrics to use and share with you!

Log cabin month rolls on for the Ambassadors! Make sure to check out the Island Batik Facebook page to see what the other Ambassadors have been making!

My quick and easy blocks were so quick and easy that I forgot to take a picture of all of them before I put them into the quilt top!

These blocks...

...(and a few more just like them) became this quilt top!

My original plan was a 5 block by 5 block quilt that would be square set but that would have only been about 45" square. I decided that putting it on point and using the checkerboard batik in teal as the setting triangles would help the quilt "grow" slightly. This fabric looks great with the other geometric-inspired prints.

I did cut my setting triangles slightly larger than necessary to make it easier to square up the quilt and now the quilt is about 52" square. While my options might be slightly more limited, I am going to try to find some 60" wide fabric to use for backing.

This weekend will likely be a non-sewing weekend with family in town but it will be a nice break from how busy we've been in the last few weeks! Have a wonderful weekend!

Christine's Kitchen 2.0 {Finished Quilt Top}

My Chrstine's Kitchen top -- version 2.0! -- is now ready for quilting!

I sewed together the three out of four of the rows of blocks right away. The last remaining row is the row containing the two flower blocks which stick out of the vases.

For my two applique blocks, I decided to make white daisies with blue centers. I made my flowers larger than the applique templates in the pattern, so I made two flowers for each block instead of three for each block. These fabrics, as well as the green stems and leaves, came out of my stash of Island Batik scraps. As an Island Batik Ambassador, I am provided with samples of various lines of Island Batik fabrics to use and share with you!

For the machine applique, I used a blanket stitch around my flowers, stems, and leaves. For the leaves, I used a dark olive green Aurifil thread. For the flower centers and petals, I used a navy blue thread. I used a wider stitch width for the petals and a narrower stitch width for the centers.

After adding the applique blocks to the second row, I added the set of sashings that are added before the pieced border.

Instead of using the background fabric in the pieced border, I decided to alternate between the light and dark colors from the strip pack. I had to cut down the strips from 2.5" to 2", but strip piecing the pieced border was a very quick process. I was able to use up the scraps I had from paper piecing and I think I used about 10 different fabrics in the pieced border.

I'll be using the remainders of my two blue yardages for the backing, binding, and hanging sleeve. This is the next top that I'll be quilting -- I have a batting from Hobbs that was provided in my July Island Batik Ambassador box that I'll be using. I am leaning towards quilting this one with grey thread and I have a few different grey options.

Happy Wednesday!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social and Needle and Thread Thursday!