End of the Year Wrap Up

It was fun to look back on last year's end of the year wrap up so I'm doing it again. It's a good way to see how I've grown and changed over time.

2017

This year has been very productive! So let's start with the stash report. Once again, I didn't do as good as I was hoping, but I am pleased that there was more going out than coming in. This will be the last year of the stash report. I've learned about my spending habits over the last two years. I think I can keep it under control without the report. My goal at the first of the year was to have a net change of more than 48 yards. In November, I was hoping to have 200.  Maybe next year, a shopping trip squashed that goal this month!

Dec In  75
Dec Out  41

YTD In  558
YTD Out  655
Net Change  97

I made 74 quilts, 5 pillows, 6 placemats and 2 table runners this year.  I participated in 4 quilt-a-longs and tested 4 patterns for Myra at Busy Hands Quilts. My goal was to make 40 quilts. I've had a lot of fun quilting this year!

44 quilts - These are my regular yearly quilts. I love making these lap quilts.  These quilt are made  mostly from my stash. I hope I can do this more next year. I have some piles already picked out to make quilts. I just need time to get to them. 

30 customer quilts - These either came from my etsy shop or my friends. I love making quilts for other people because it usually stretches me. I've learned new techniques that I might not try unless someone asked.

 

Goals for 2018

1. Make 40 quilts from my stash.
2. Practice some new free motion quilting.
3. Use the stash as much as possible. 
4. Keep up with cutting and storing the scrap pile.
5. Make some quilts with our old jeans.

 I know these goals are similar to last year, but since I didn't get #2 done, I will try to get to this one this next year.

Happy New Year to all of you!

Best of 2017

 

Cheryl over at Meadow Mist Designs is hosing a best of 2017 linky party! I decided to pick my top 5 by combining the posts with the most comments and the most views.

#5 - King Size Buckeye Beauty

#4 - Scrappy Patchwork

#3 - Stars Over Scott

#2 - Boomerang (there were two of these quilts this year...here is the second one.)

#1 - King Size Rainbow Bargello

It's been a great year and I hope yours has too! Head on over to Cheryl's blog to see what others are sharing.

Snowman and a Minecraft Quilt

Customer orders are done for this month.  I am so excited to take a break for a little bit. Now it's time to get ready for Christmas! Speaking of Christmas, I got the cutest gift ever! You may recognize him from Vicki's blog. It was hard to get a good picture of him hanging in my living room since the whole wall is windows, but he looks amazing!

If you've never heard of Vicki, she is an expert quilter who has been selling table runners with this adorable snowmen on them. This is her table runner below. (She also has a pretty amazing turkey table runner too.)

She also makes quilts, wall hangings, knitted children's sweaters, and handbags. You really should check out her Etsy shop.  She takes custom orders too! Thanks, Vicki!  I love the snowman!

And I'm sneaking in a Minecraft quilt I made for a customer just to keep my records straight. You can find the Minecraft Pattern here.   Email me for the pdf pattern. $10.99 

Merry Christmas Y'all!  

8" Pinwheel Quilt

82 x 102 

One more pinwheel quilt for the year. This one is made from 8" squares and a whole lot of of different fabrics.  It's just like the first one I made here, just with smaller squares.  She did change the binding to Kona Tangerine this time, but the back is still Kona Chartreuse.

I used the Accuquilt 4.5" die to cut all the triangles. There are 640 of them in this quilt!

My rainbow stash has been depleted and now needs to be replenished! Must go shopping!  Linking with Myra at Busy Hands Quilts and Crazy Mom Quilts.

Irish Chain with a Seminole Border

78 x 98 

My friend started this quilt 10 years ago and asked me to finish it for her. She doesn't have much time for quilting and she wanted to give it to her husband for Christmas. She had everything cut for me already so I got to sewing.  I've never made a seminole border before so I was a little nervous if it was going to fit properly.  But it did!

I quilted one of my favorite pantographs on it called Square Spiral. It's a 6" panto. All the fabrics were Moda Marbles.

 

Crossing things off my to do list this week!  I'll be ready for a sewing break soon! (and pie too!)

Custom School Fundraiser Quilt

 50 x 62

When I was asked to make a quilt using kids hand prints, I wasn't really sure how it would work.  I thought I was going to have to cut and send the fabric to my customer and then work with whatever came back.  But she asked for some directions on cutting the fabric and took care of all the hand prints using a 9" square that she was careful to cut straight. I trimmed the blocks to 8.5" trying to center the prints as best I could since she didn't have a rotary cutter.

She choose this dot print for the front, so we used matching solids to border the prints. I picked 2 of each color.

For the back she wanted this coordinating stripped fabric from the Hungry Caterpillar fabric line. I was able to match the seam almost perfectly so you can't see it! It's between a blue and a purple line. i ironed one side first to get the fold in the right place.  I used glue to iron both pieces together. Then I sewed on the fold and trimmed the seam to a quarter inch.

This sure has been a year of making different kinds of quilts. It's getting close to seeing all the different techniques I've tried this year.  Hope you're getting caught up on all your December projects!

Linking with Myra at Busy Hands Quilts

Baby Memory Quilt

58 x 59 

I have been seeing baby memory quilts on pinterest for a while, but they usually look like a t-shrit quilt. I found this one and saved it to my board. I didn't happen to save any of my kids clothes so I was looking for someone to let me try to make a quilt. My friend agreed to let me make her a baby memory quilt and she chose one that had whole clothes on it.

I looked and looked for directions or a tutorial on how to sew the clothes to the top of a quilt but I couldn't find anything to help me. So here is what I did. Instead of stabilizing the clothes, I ironed stabilizer to the background fabric. I didn't want the clothes to be ironed down.  I cut the clothes in half and top stitched them down in a matching thread.  Although I didn't cut the socks in half, they were thin enough already.

This pink dress was really too big because I couldn't quilt it with all those pleats. I quilted a couple of straight lines under the pleats just to hold it down.

I tried to incorporate some uniqueness by adding sleeves where I could. I had to cut them off and resew them to get the right angle.

I didn't sew down the ruffles on the bottom of the pants or sew some of the ends of the sleeves and socks closed.

Sewing the back of the pants to the fabric was more challenging because of the roundness on the bottom.

I quilted a heart in the inside of both coats since they opened up to the solid fabric.  I also quilted the words "beautiful baby" on the top of the quilt. I intended to quilt something by the socks, but I forgot when I got down to it.

My friend just loved the quilt and was so excited to receive it. I might make some more of these, but I will warn you they do take some time. I rearranged many times trying to get things to fit. Then added in extra fabrics to fill the holes. Next time, I think I would cut some of the clothes into squares and only have a few that are top stitched.

Have you ever made one of these?  I'd love some suggestions on how to sew the clothes to the background.

Splash of Color - Rainbow Scraps

60 x 70

My second Splash of Color quilt is this fun scrappy rainbow!  The pattern comes from the book A Splash of Color - A Rainbow of Black and White Quilts by Jackie Kunkel.  I changed the pattern up just a bit to use 2.5" strips and my 2.5" scraps. You can find my first Splash of Color quilt here.

I loved working with my scraps.  Even some of the white fabrics are from my scrap bin. Some are white with black and some are white with gray.

I used the same dragonfly print for the cornerstones to unify the quilt top. I love the black polka dot sashing!  I tried to find some more, but I don't remember where I got it.

I love this quilt!  But I already have a colorful quilt on my chair. So you can find this one in my shop.

Thanks, Myra for hosting this fun quilt along! Go here to see what others have made.

Splash of Color - Black and White with Yellow

95 x 95

My first Splash of Color quilt is this black and white with a touch of yellow. I love this color combination. I have made this quilt before in a lap size, but this time it's a queen.

Blocks are a huge 19" finished. So this quilt comes together quickly. I've added in a few fabrics that have yellow in them.  I tried to use multiple fabrics for the yellow strip, but it just didn't look right.

Simple meandering quilting on a simple quilt. The black prints in this quilt didn't seem to make a good binding so I just used black Kona cotton.

You can find this quilt in my shop. Or you can make one for yourself with this free pattern.

I love this quilt a long because there was so much freedom to choose.  Freedom to choose the pattern, freedom to choose the fabrics and freedom to choose my splash of color!  You can see what others made for this quilt along here.

Outlook - A New Pattern From Busy Hands Quitlts

54 x 72

Meet Outlook, a new pattern released today from Myra of Busy Hands Quilts.  The pattern comes in several sizes and is available in her pattern shop. I used some fun fabrics from my stash to make a large lap size. You can use yardage or a layer cake to make this pattern.

I found a bolt of gray fabric in the closet (that never happens!) so I used it for the background and the backing. I love that it completely matches.

My quilt is for sale in my shop.  You can see Myra's quilt on her blog today. And all her patterns are on sale this weekend!

Regatta Quilt Along

Roseanne from Home Sewn By Us is hosting a quilt along to make the Regatta Quilt by Daniela of Block M Quilts. The quilt along will start in January.  I really like the original colors of Daniela's quilt so I picked these 19 Kona Cotton Colors. 

In case you really want to know what colors they are and you can't read them here they are:

Navy, Windsor, Cadet, Regatta, Copen, Evening, Denim, Blue Jay, Candy Blue, Cornflower, Blueberry, Cloud, Lake, Aqua, Ice Frappe, Pond, Aloe, Sage, and Delft.

I am getting ready early so that if I need to make a Kona Cotton order between now and then I will have my list ready.  I am also thinking of doing this in another color way.  Do you have any suggestions?  Maybe red, orange, and yellow?  Myra - I know you'll say, "Rainbow!"  But I'll leave that for you so you can join too!

Crazy Quilt

48 x 60

This quilt is really called Crazy Quilt. It's a pattern from the book Childhood Dreams by Susan Bennett Gallagher. Someone asked if I could make it for them and sent me the book. Sometimes I say yes before I realize what I am agreeing to! The quilt calls for 4 solids. I used Kona Navy, Amethyst, Bluegrass, and Malibu.

The pattern requires you to copy and enlarge 111 pieces and then sew them together according to the pattern layout in 4 sections and then the borders. There are some ridiculously small pieces hiding in there!   I used some pins to mark a quarter inch to check if I was placing the pieced in the right spot before I sewed. There was quite of bit of seam ripping at first.  But then I was surprised how nicely my points lined up once I got the hang of it.

She wanted the quilt to be bigger so I added a 6" border.  After I had already pieced the colored border I thought I should have just made those wider then the navy border could have been smaller. But it was too late at that point.

I was going to quilt it with some modern lines, but everyone in my house said I should meander it. I was shocked! I used a dark monopoly thread so it wouldn't be distracting.

This quilt reminds me of an art piece. I think I could be persuaded to make it again. I love that customers challenge me to try new things. It's good to be stretched!

Linking with Busy Hands Quilts and Crazy Mom Quilts.