My dear friend, Marcia, had a milestone birthday this past summer and I knew that the only thing I wanted to give her was a quilt. I had planned on a nice throw-sized quilt in blues and grays with a spot of yellow to be used for cuddling up on the couch. My plans were foiled, though, when a few weeks before her birthday, Marcia and her husband bought a farm. Maybe she'd want a quilt for the farm? A bed sized quilt? The answer was yes on all fronts.

Marcia went straight to work making a secret pinterest board of quilts that she liked. I added a few that I liked and, after a couple of days, I had a general plan. Squares. Saturated colors. Light gray. It took me awhile to come up with the exact design as I wanted the quilt to be something that reflected my style as well as her preferences. I let the ideas simmer and settled on a design that has structure even though it looks random and that was easy to piece and fun to sew.

With the exception of the light gray and the backing, all of the fabrics came from my stash. I had a fun time choosing which prints to use. I chose them in groups of four prints with some kind of connecting color scheme in each group. Each of the 36 groups was different, bringing the total number of prints to 144! Stash-busting! Jane helped me with some of the fabric selection. She has a wonderful eye for color and after choosing a bunch of the groupings on my own, I needed her artistic viewpoint to balance out my own color preferences (blue and green, anyone?!?).

The blocks were strip-pieced and then all mixed up and sewn back together. It wasn't particularly fast, but certainly more speedy than cutting 900 individual squares of fabric! And it was doable in chunks of time, which is the way I get most of my sewing completed. Once the blocks were finished and sewn into a quilt top, I added borders of the light gray to frame the entire top. For the quilting, I rented time on a long arm and free motioned a figure-eight-ish pattern across the entire quilt, using the squares as my guide. The backing is one of Carolyn Friedlander's widescreen prints and the binding is an Anna Maria Horner print from my stash.

After giving the quilt to Marcia just before Christmas, she and her daughter, Anna, took it to the farm and photographed it on site. It was so fun to have a stream of photos pop up one after another in a series of text messages. I loved making this quilt for her and I hope it keeps them warm and cozy on the farm.

I'm over on the Accuquilt blog this week with a new tutorial for the beginnings of a medallion quilt. Accuquilt has this new die system called the Qube that can be used with their GO! cutters. Essentially, the Qube contains a variety of mix and match dies to make larger blocks. It comes with a variety of block patterns to get you started and all the cutting mats you need. It's such a cool product!

As soon as I saw this product, I knew it could be used in so many ways beyond just individual blocks. Working with the 12" Qube, I have designed a medallion quilt. This month's tutorial includes the center medallion and the first border. Over the next two months, I'll add additional borders to end up with a throw sized quilt. Fun, right? Plus, there is a little mystery involved - I'm not giving away the whole design until the end!

I hope you will check out my Accuquilt Medallion quilt. Accuquilt provided the dies and cutters to me at no cost, but the designs and opinions about their products are all mine. I love how fast and accurate my GO! cutter is. Seriously.

(photo by Danielle Collins)

I am very excited to be one of today's stops on the Good Hair Day blog tour. This new fabric line by Kim Andersson for Windham Fabrics is absolutely adorable - bobby pins, hair bows, products and more! When Kim asked if I would like to make a quilt for her look book last year, I was incredibly flattered and very excited.

I love the saturated colors in this line, especially the blues, pinks and oranges. The prints are whimsical in a very sophisticated way and the coordinating cross-weave solids really made them sing. I made my quilt, Rinse and Repeat, over the course of a week last summer. To highlight the prints, I chose to make a grouping of quarter log cabin blocks laid out on point. The actual "logs" vary in width, giving the blocks more movement, and the quilt has five different quarter log cabin iterations.  Bonus: the peaks at the top and bottom reminded me of a hair comb without being a literal interpretation. The log cabins are sandwiched between two larger cuts of the red and white cross-weave. I just adore this fabric - it the most beautiful coral-pink and so, so soft. I think this gives the quilt a decidedly modern feel with a good nod to a traditional pattern.

(photo by Danielle Collins)

You can find the Good Hair Day fabrics in stores currently and I plan on releasing the pattern for Rinse and Repeat as soon as possible. I will definitely keep you updated on the progress as it happens.

Thanks to Windham Fabrics and Kim, I have one 5" charm pack of Good Hair Day to giveaway. The giveaway is open to everyone - US and International readers. To enter the drawing, please leave a comment on this post telling me what your first sewing project is for 2016. I will keep the comments open until Friday, January 15 at 4:00 pm EST. Be sure to stop by the other blogs on the tour to see more amazing projects from this great fabric line and for more chances to win fabric!

Good Hair Day Blog Hop

January 2016

 

Mon 11th:

Kim Andersson - http://iadorepattern.com/blog/

Windham - https://windhamfabrics.wordpress.com

 

Tue 12th:

Erin Harris - http://www.houseonhillroad.com

Terri Carpenter - http://thequiltedfox.blogspot.com

Cath Mosley - https://www.instagram.com/cathmosely/

 

Wed 13th:

Adrianne Ove - http://www.littlebluebell.com

Kristen Takakuwa - https://theneedies.wordpress.com

 

Thursday 14th:

Daniel Rouse - http://pieceandpress.blogspot.com

Cal Patch - http://hodgepodgefarm.net

 

Friday 15th 

Stacey Day - https://staceyinstitches.wordpress.com

Amy Gunson - http://badskirt.blogspot.com.au

 

Sat 16th:

Madeleine Roberg - http://domesticstrata.com/blogs/domestic-strata

Darci Alexis - http://darcisews.com

 

Sun 17th:

Miriam Blaich - http://berlinquilter.blogspot.com

Crystal Chadwick - https://theclothalbatross.wordpress.com

 

Mon 18th: 

Pati Fried & Laura Nownes - https://seehowwesew.wordpress.com

Gillian Smith: http://sokath.com/main/blog/category/creative/

 

Tues 19th:

Casey York - https://studioloblog.wordpress.com

Nicole Daksiewicz - http://modernhandcraft.com/blog/

Happy New Year!

It hardly seems possible that we are a full six days into 2016, but we are. For some reason, it doesn't feel like a new year to me. I'm still cleaning up Christmas and the girls have just gone back to school. I had been looking forward to some quality time in the studio (I have plans! That I am excited about!), but the time has not materialized yet. Soon, I think. Actually, I know. I will make the time if I have to.

2015 was a strange year for me creativity-wise. I think it was a bit of a low valley instead of a high hill. I started the year off just having shelved a large project that had been consuming most of my creative time and energy. Last January, I found myself directionless and now, with the benefit of time, I can say that I was truly floundering. I didn't know what I wanted to do and, even if I had, I wasn't sure how to go about it. I gave myself permission to just do what spoke to me and, surprisingly, that was making quilts using kits and other people's patterns with whole fabric lines where I didn't have to make a single design decision. Those quilts were mostly donated and actually showed up on the blog (here, here and here). A couple of those remain unquilted and there are still some kits hanging around the studio. While I know some people look down on quilters that use kits or make something exactly as they see it in a book or on the cover of a pattern, I do not. There is a place for them. For me, having the decisions made for me allows my mind to rest and lets the ideas percolate. Going through the motions of cutting, sewing, pressing is familiar and satisfying even if I am not the one who put those fabrics together in that pattern in the first place. It's restful and I needed it.

Something shifted in the summer. I will thank my first mini quilt for that. All of the sudden it was not so daunting to design something, especially something so small! And from that little bit of kindling, a bigger fire started to grow. I made six large quilts of my own design in the second half of the year, plus two minis! Not too shabby, huh? I haven't blogged any of them, save the two minis, so I am going to start this year doing just that. I do not want to let them go undocumented. I love having a visual record of what I have made with all the details (that I tend to forget) about the project. Some will turn into patterns for sale. I've been slowly working on that this fall, but plan to ramp up my efforts with the new year. I also sewed a couple of skirts, some shirts and a dress. I began knitting again in September. It all feels right.

Some years I have big goals and plans, but I'm taking 2016 as it comes. My one tenet this year is to work hard: at life, at making, at creativity, at being a mom and wife, at being a friend, at being fully me. It'll probably involve a lot of quilts, some garments, knitting or hand sewing in the evenings, maybe some painting. I hope it will be filled with a lot of laughter, time with my family, cooking good food, reading good books, less driving, more walking. I plan on continuing my daily gratitude practice because it has brought an incredible amount of joy to my life the last couple of months. Or, really, made me see that the joy is there, but sometimes I just need to look.

I have a good feeling about this year. Let's do it. Onward!