Oh, hey.

It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks and things don't look they are going to slow down in the foreseeable future. I keep thinking that if I can get myself to May 9th, I will be able to breathe a little bit. And, heck, I might even be able to sew something. That'd be fun.

In the meantime, the peonies in the yard are inching their ways towards blooming. Of course, the ones at Whole Foods are already flaunting their wares so, naturally, some jumped in my cart. We've got lilacs, too. And I bought some geraniums for my pots. The sun is shining bright and, as always in the week leading up to the first Saturday in May, the general mood is festive around town. I don't like complaining about the weather or the seasons, but, man oh man, I was ready for winter to go. I needed spring.

I don't leave town again until July. JULY. This is very exciting. I've got some projects I'd like to tackle and farmers' markets to visit. School is winding down and I couldn't be happier about no homework on the horizon. I think the girls are with me on this. Actually, I am sure they are.

I've got a few books sitting here that I can't wait to share with you all. Good quilty inspiration! I'm thinking reviews and giveaways once a week on Fridays until I have nothing left to share. So, I guess I will see you then.

On a complete and total whim a few weeks ago, I decided to make an improv quilt. The fabrics, mostly Shelburne Falls by Denyse Schmidt, just spoke to me as I was wading through the stash. I don't know what drew me to the purple - perhaps the wild violets that show themselves in the grass every spring? No matter! Purple it was! And bonus because I have a dear friend whose birthday was around the corner and she loves purple like I love green. No better time than that! I grabbed the fabrics, pulled in a couple of other prints (a purple gingham, the pink pez, red and pink dot) and some Kona snow (always on hand!) and started cutting.

If you'd like to make something similar yourself, the process is super simple. I cut full widths of the printed and the white fabrics about 14" long. Then I sub-cut them into smaller strips using my rotary cutter without the ruler. I was intentional in making them different widths and a little wonky/angled, but not too crazy. I paired each printed strip with a white strip and sewed them together.

Once that step was complete, I took each print/white pair and sewed it to another print/white pair so that I ended up with "blocks" alternating 2 prints with 2 white strips. I find that making blocks like this to arrange in the quilt top is measurably faster and easier for me. It takes much less time to lay everything out, I have fewer design decisions to make and I make them faster! Once I had the blocks arranged the in five rows (one for each of my friend's children), I sewed the blocks together. Due to the irregularity of the strips, the sewn rows had to be trimmed down before I was able to sew them together into a quilt top. You do lose a bit of height on all of them - two rows ended up being 12" unfinished and the other three were 12.5" unfinished. I was aiming for a 60" quilt so it is good to cut the strips taller than you think they need to be.

After I had the rows sewn together and the quilt basted, I let it sit for a couple of days before quilting it. I wasn't sure if I wanted straight-ish lines or if I wanted to free motion something. In the end, I decided to quilt it with free motion loops from side to side. I didn't mark the rows, but rather used the seam lines as a general guide and that seemed to work well. The quilting was fast! Maybe an hour and a half? A good reminder that free motion quilting often takes less time than straight lines - I always forget that!

The back was pieced with a 60" wide piece of the purple gingham and a strip of other prints along one side. I bound it with a stripe from the same collection that I didn't use in the quilt top. Oh - and one little part of the binding is another print that was a mistake I added as a design element. I think it gives it a little extra charm.

I washed the quilt so it would be soft and crinkly. I loved how it came out and had so much fun making it. I'm already plotting the next one!

A few weeks back, I pulled these Heather Bailey Up Parasol prints from my stash to make the Four Winds Quilt by Amber Corcoran of Fancy Tiger Crafts after seeing it on the store's blog. (Whoa! That's a lot of links in one sentence!) I immediately loved the over-sized flying geese and the simple, graphic punch that this quilt carries. I also loved that it would be a good pattern to use some larger scale prints that don't lend themselves to small piecing. I don't know about you, but I have a tendency to fall hard for those prints, especially florals. In the end, they linger on my shelves longer than their small scale counterparts. This quilt pattern is a great opportunity to let them shine! I found an unknown blue solid in my stash and was super excited to get cutting. Unfortunately, the blue ended up being about four inches too short for my purposes. No matter! I went out and bought a longer cut of a lime-y green and like it just as much, maybe even more.

I cut the fabric one night watching TV and then sewed it up the next morning in the matter of a couple of hours. It's fast to come together and the instructions are easy to follow. The geese are pieced using the no-waste method and you need an equal number of each print. I did find that the cutting instructions called for the setting squares in the corners to be slightly larger than necessary so I trimmed them down before I sewed the top together. I'm not sure if that was intentional or errata, but better larger than smaller! The pattern contains three sizes. I made the large throw size and the top finishes at 64 1/2" square. I'm looking forward to quilting it in the next couple of weeks. I think it'll be a great opportunity to practice my free motion skills.

What other quilt patterns have you used successfully with large scale prints? I'm also wondering about cutting fabric...do you tend to cut everything you need for a quilt and then start sewing or cut as you go, mixing the piecing in? Maybe it depends on the project? And am I alone in loving to cut fabric at night so it's ready to go the next day? I think that may be a weird quirk of mine, but would love to hear I'm wrong.

Happy sewing!