book + a quilt giveaway

Soon after Stephanie's book arrived in the mail, I couldn't resist trying my first project with Corduroy fabric. It was hard to decide between Little sprout and California poppies, so I combined both quilts into one small quilt.

This is the moment when our heads are seriously bent over seed catalogs and exciting plans for spring garden are brewing with a hum.. Knowing your mood, I plotted this seed packet quilt for my sweet blogging friends. There are violets and roses and tulips, please take your pick (be assured that they only yield 100% super quality flowers like the poppy displayed in the shop window).
And pretty garden gloves and matching boots come with the package :)

Would you mind if this honey bee tagged along too? She is in a fix on how to fill her mini pouch with never before seen button sized pollen! Maybe you could help her with a clever trick hiding in your pocket?

More flowers on the back to keep our bee hopping all spring long! Backing fabric is cotton by Denyse Schmidt, and all the fabrics on the front are Japanese linen prints except for the green Red riding hood which is a Corduroy that I got from SuperBuzzy. The focus fabric with garden theme was a random fatquarter find on Etsy, it doesn't have details of the maker on selvage.

Before this book came into my sewing room, I never thought about sewing with Corduroy, always assumed that it is a heavy weight fabric meant for home decor or pants. But seeing Stephanie's examples changed my perception of this velvety fabric. I got a sample of Red riding hood fabric and very pleased with the soft rich texture it adds to the quilt. I was surprised that the fabric itself was more or less quilting weight, not dense like I thought.

I have sewn with Stephanie's patterns before and always been impressed with her efforts to simplify the directions into small doable steps even for a beginner quilter. This book is divided into two sections, one for bags & scarf and the other for quilts with color coded diagrams to follow. 

Forgot to mention, this poppy flower actually has pieced leaves in the original pattern, I left them out to make space to try a new quilting design. I found this leaf border stencil in Jo-Ann's, marked the design on quilt with clover pencil, then I simply followed the lines during quilting using regular walking foot. It is not perfect but gives me hope to practice new things with quilting.
Quilt size is 27" x 33".

Now comes the exciting part, to celebrate Stephanie's first book and also to welcome Spring, I would love to share 'Uncommonly corduroy' book and this 'Seed packet' quilt with two friends. I will take a separate draw for each of them. Please leave a comment between now and April 10, telling me if you prefer book or the quilt. I am happy to mail them anywhere, just make sure I have a way to contact you ( ^ u ^ )

Happy Spring... ♫♫♫

scrapitude quilt top

Quite a contrast to the previous quilt, isn't it! I doubt if I even know names of some of the colors that are here. This is my first time doing a mystery quilt. It was fun digging into scraps and sewing them without a care., not having any control over the process or expectations for the outcome was refreshing.

If there is any rule I followed, that is to place complimentary colors next to each other. I wanted to give this quilt to a friend and her 6 year old boy. I thought he will find the colors more attractive like this. I hope they will get lots of giggles from the cute prints in the blocks. I am also picturing them sitting side-by-side wrapped and warm, reading storybooks on lazy weekends.

I got a little confused with the diagonal rows and had to stop and think twice while sewing the corners and even did some seam ripping before I got it right. But I love this triangle border that came with the diagonal setting. Whatever fabric I tried for the outer border made these triangles disappear. So I went with a white print. I like how the crawling bugs, busy bees and floating clover leaves pick up the bright colors in the quilt.

I am not sure when I will baste this quilt top, it is big (83" x 83") which is making me nervous, though it would be nice to finish it soon and send it to my friend.

Charlotte creates amazing quilts mostly out of scraps.. Scrapitude is one of those gems. Sandy did an interview with her sometime back, she talked about the way her scraps are organized and gave handy tips for using them in quilts. This interview along with other podcasts Sandy recorded earlier on this topic are here. A grateful thanks to both of them for this memorable experience and a beautiful quilt that came out of it. 

Everyone's quilts in the flickr group are turning out to be so different from each other and wonderful.. adding to the excitement, Sandy and Charlotte are planning to start another mystery quilt-along in January next year. I hope I don't have other commitments around that time, this is too good to miss. ( " x " )

winter treats quilt

Spring is not far, we hear robins singing in the morning lately and sunlight creeping into the house in the evenings, which happens only in warmer months. In the meantime I was spending more time in the kitchen trying recipes, staying close to the stove to escape the chill. Very little progress to show on the projects, but today I am excited to have a finish to share.

I had no hopes of completing it in time for our anniversary.. I ran out of thread in the middle of quilting and had to wait until last week to go to the quilt shop. But I barely made it, putting last stitches into the binding early in the morning when I should be making a nice breakfast for us. We decided to eat cake and not bother with stirring oats :)

Because of all the linen fabrics on the front and back, this quilt was somewhat heavy to handle. I was going to stitch-in-ditch for center squares but found it difficult to squeeze and turn bulk of the quilt in tight throat space. After trying two blocks, I gave up.

So the quilting remained simple with straight lines in the sashing, just enough to keep it all together. I used 'Quilter's dream request ' batting which is light & soft and didn't add any extra weight.

I felt pink and green of these tiny flowers belonged in the binding, spreading their springiness to a wintery quilt.  

I made up silly stories around each block, even things that we do everyday like grinding coffee in the morning or picking out favorite socks to wear..  but most of the stories revolve around treats, especially the ones we crave in winter when there is little comfort otherwise.

There are so many treats in this quilt, I am afraid I am going to be hungry more often. I don't know if I should be happy to have a snuggly quilt to enjoy the quiet hours in, or worry about all sorts of sweets tempting me the whole time!

This is what the backing looks like. There are flowers and trains on a yellow background and playful kittens on one side. With 63 blocks in a 7 x 9 setting, the quilt came out to be around 68" x 86".

These are the measurements to cut the pieces for the block. I thought I will put them here in case anyone is interested. Please note that the single digits are meant to be cut as squares and rest of them as strips. The sashing and corner stones are not pictured here but I used them to sew the rows together in the quilt. And the borders are random sizes, adjusted to fit the limited fabric I had.

Thank you for taking time to visit. Have a wonderful week ( ' v ' )