Thursday, February 18, 2016

Moda Love Quilt


I was looking for a charm pack quilt to make as a baby gift and found the Moda Love Quilt (click for free PDF download link!). Since Moda makes most of the charm packs sold, their website is a great source of additional patterns that utilize all their precut shapes (eg charm packs, layer cakes, jelly rolls, etc).

If you Google or Instagram search for Moda Love Quilt, you'll be able to see lots of other designs based on the same pattern. This is really a great pattern that looks so different dependent on fabric choice and placement!

All my fabrics for the quilt top are ready to go!
For my quilt, I used fabrics from Spirit by Lila Tueller for the top and binding. The backing is an organic cotton by Cloud 9 from their Backyard Garden collection. My friend thinks her baby will be a girl, but they decided not to find out the gender. Thus, I wanted my quilt to have some pink in it, but not be entirely pink and purple.

The steps of making the blocks. From left to right: 
1. Drawing the diagonal and sewing on either side 2. Cutting along the diagonal, 3. Pressing open 4. Squaring up

The charm pack size is perfect for a small baby blanket, so I'll be keeping this pattern in mind in future!

From quilted to getting the binding attached!



Finished size: approximately 32 inches by 32 inches






Cut and Pieced: February 12, 2016
Quilted: February 12-13, 2016
Bound: February 14-15, 2016

Monday, February 8, 2016

Scraps

Made from the scraps from my Triangle Quilt
When cutting the fabric for projects, I end up with a fair amount of scraps. I have just been tossing them in my Sephora boxes, but recently, they've begun to overflow. Hence, I am trying to make a quilting block from my scraps as I go. The hopeful result is that eventually I will have amassed enough scraps to piece them together to make a quilt.

It started with me making two very simple blocks from the scraps of the Tula Pink drawstring bags I made (I ended up with 8 squares from each bag, so they really begged to be pieced with some other scraps I had in the leftover box). This was so simple and fast to do at the end of the project that I didn't think much of it.



I then began looking at the scraps from my triangle quilt (see my triangle quilt posts here: Part 1 , Part 2 , and Part 3). While cutting the equilateral triangles out, I would end up with roughly half of an equilateral triangle left at end of the row. Since I had so many similar triangles left, I figure I should do something with them. Thus I played with them one night while watching TV. A while later, I was in the mood to make some blocks, so off I went assembling 6 hexagons from them. While the hexagons do take a while to make, the fact that they were already cut and arranged made them super easy to build. I love the result that they gave!

One of the hexagons created from the scraps of my triangle quilt. This hexagon is all fabric from Tula Pink's Eden line.
I am waiting to make them into square block until I know what quilt they will go into (and thus what color to use).

I am hoping in 2016 and on, I will make more use of my scraps as I go!

My six hexagons from the scraps of my triangle quilt. I love the tiger eyes that look out!

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Triangle Quilt - Part 3 finished quilt top



Note this post the third in a series on my triangle quilt project. Click to view Part 1 or Part 2.


I have finished the quilt top of the triangle quilt! I have never done triangles prior to this quilt, so this was truly a learning experience. I must say by the time I was halfway through piecing the rows, my triangle assembly was notably better with few errors. Sadly, this meant my errors in the early rows were now very obvious to me, and I ended up separating and redoing a lot of my early piecing.


I am just so happy to finally have the top pieced! It is now waiting to be assembled, but all my safety pins are currently tied up in other projects. This is probably a good thing since I have two quilts half quilted at home, and I really need to finish those before I start a third. They are just taking a little longer than I thought since I am trying to do free motion quilting on them. Keep a look out for a post on those in future!


I think when this is assembled, I will go with a nice simple straight line quilting method. This is the largest quilt top I have made to date, and I do not think my little sewing machine could do anything besides a straight stitch on a quilt this size.

I have some beautiful Tula Pink Free Fall wide backing in Lipstick for the backing of this quilt. A Tula Pink triangle quilt definitely needs Tula Pink backing!


Some production pictures are below. I hope you enjoy!

Triangles ready to be pressed
Pressing! I usually press to one side, but you could also press your seams open
Piecing at my machine
Checking my row layout