Coral, Queen of the Sea

Coral, Queen of the Sea, is a new panel by Stacy Iest Hsu for Moda. She an adorable little mermaid with a seahorse friend and quilt to lay on. Details of the panel and coordinating fabrics can be downloaded as a PDF here. More about Stacy Iest Hsu for Moda can be found here.

The cut out panel is shown above. Once Coral is cut out, there are assembly instructions. She is a great beginner project to get introduced to toy making!

Coral is currently living at In the Making and I will be leading a sew-a-long there so you can make your very own Coral on Saturday, July 23, 2016 (please click here to see the whole calendar of events)! You can register by calling or visiting In the Making.

Cluck Cluck Sew Mini Flag

Cluck Cluck Sew offers a great free tutorial on making a mini flag block. I saw this after making a couple of her Mini Quilts and knew I wanted to make this for the 4th of July! Since it is done already and today is Flag Day, I thought I would post it early!

Debating fabric choices at In the Making

The block goes together really quickly (compared to the Mini Quilts!) and was super easy to do! The quilting was even fun because the small quilt is very easy to manipulate.

For mine, I made it into a wall hanging and used some of my extra backing to make little tabs to help hang it up by. I could definitely see myself making this one again!

1600 Inch Quilt / Jelly Roll Race Quilt

This is the second post on the 1600 Inch Quilt. My post about the quilt top can be found here.

My 1600 Inch Quilt is now officially done! The binding was finished on May 24, 2016.

The backing of the quilt was made using Chipper by Tula Pink, just like the top. I used the chipmunk, Fox, and circle fabrics on the back. I love how back turned out and I feel like it is a second quilt!

The binding is also from Chipper and called Labyrinth.

Tula Pink Flower Market Quilt

My local quilt shop, In the Making, offers a kit to make Tula Pink's Flower Market Quilt from her Eden collection. The pattern is a free one and is in the lookbook for Eden (it can be downloaded here). I naturally went with the amethyst (purple) colorway, but the quilt can be done in tourmaline (pink/orange) or sapphire (blue/green) too.

While there is a fair amount of cutting for this quilt, I think the finished result was totally worth it! I also used a little more fabric than the pattern called for since I fussy cut many of pieces. Another lady didn't fussy cut and had plenty of fabric.

In the Making still had more kits available in the three colorways if you want to make your own! My quilt top is currently still at the store if you want to see it in person. There is also a quilt top in tourmaline colorway to look at.

I have Tula Pink's freefall wide backing in purple to finish with, but I know that won't be for a little while!

Quilted Pouches

After making my new quilted purse, I needed some pouches to organize in it. The quilted purse only had slip pockets made for it, but I prefer to secure some items in a zippered pocket to ensure they don't accidentally fall out.

The pouch above was made using the quilt-as-you-go method. I really struggled with this and my free motion quilting definitely needs work. I do love how colorful it turned out though.

This is fairly large pouch that I store various papers in (eg coupons, lists, blank paper, etc). It can easily be removed if I know I do not need this extra weight in my purse on an outing. 

The fabrics used are an assortment of scraps I had in my scrap pile. Fabrics include, but are not limited to, Tula Pink, Tina Givens, and Anna Maria Horner.

The feather pouch above was made to snap into an existing slip pocket in the purse. The pocket can be snapped closed without this pouch, or have this pouch sandwiched between the snaps (hence the snaps showing on this pouch). Because this pouch gets snapped in, even when the bag is held upside down, this pouch will stay in the bag. 

I have never done this before in a bag, but I really like the result I got. I plan on using the idea of snap in pouches in future bags. This pouch itself is not perfect, but it gets the job done and the colors compliment the bag well.

The main fabric and the lining fabric are by Tina Givens in her Feather Flocks collection.

The pouch above was done to store tatting and crochet work in my purse so I can take it along with me in a small pouch. I based my dimensions of the bag on how the fabrics would look good cut. Each panel started out as 3" wide by 6" tall piece of fabric. The quilting on this pouch was done up and down but I experimented with my stitch styles. I really like how the fancy stitches turned out on this pouch. 

Fabrics are mainly Tina Givens with a little Anna Maria Horner (the Pegasus print).

I think the collection of pouches turned out really nicely and they were all very quick and easy to make. I especially like the idea of using the more decorative stitches as part of the quilting, so I am sure I will do this again!

Pouches made Spring 2016

1600 Inch Quilt Top / Jelly Roll Race Quilt Top

I have seen pictures of people's 1600 inch quilt tops before, so I decided I wanted to give this try. The 1600 inch quilt, or jelly roll race quilt, is a simple quilt top made from a single jelly roll (set of 40, 2.5" strips of fabric that are WOF long). There are many directions on how to make this online. Mine was done using the 45 degree join with removing 18 inches off of the first strip to offset the seams. You then sew both ends together and cut at the end a total of 5 times. I must say, that first strip you start with (it ends up being approximately 1600 inches long) is very unruly and tangled. I had my husband help me untangle it before I got started!

For my jelly roll, I used one containing Tula Pink's Spring 2016 line, called Chipper. Just looking around online, you can really see how different fabrics will give a completely different result!

This is a great beginner quilt top that produces a good size quilt. My quilt top finished out at 49.5 inches by 67 inches.

Made May 1-2, 2016.

The entire 1600 jelly roll quilt top!

AGF - The Christina Clutch

Art Gallery Fabrics (AGF) has a great tutorial on their blog on how to make The Christina Clutch. When I saw this tutorial, I immediately thought of my sister and set about making her a surprise gift. She likes blues and grays, so those are the colors I focused on for the clutch.

She, like myself, really enjoys the Clover and Crickets by Heather Ross, so I use that for the liner (used is the bright green color with yellow flowers, but it was made in three colors).

The bow is done in Tula Pink's Swarm in Indigo from her Moon Shine collection. The main outside is done from the blue boarder fabric from Heather Givans' Succulent collection (I had a lot of this left over since the boarder is only along one selvage edge and not both like I thought it would be).

All my fabrics cut and ready to go!

This is a very quick project and can easily be done in a day. I followed the tutorial exactly, except that I quilted my outer pieces to batting and a plain cotton backing (instead of adding interfacing). Hence, there is some batting and cotton backing shown above instead of interfacing. The quilting allows the bag to hold shape and I think my substitution worked well!

I also added a little D-ring so a an optional strap could be added later. I just did this using a scrap of the main fabric to make sure everything matched.