The Carpenter's Daughter Who Quilts

Category: Quilty Love

Get Your Kicks Route 66: Wedding Quilt for Snowbirds

Hi, Today I thought I would share a Flashback Friday quilt finish. I made a wedding quilt for a now permanent snowbirds couple who got married on Valentine’s Day in 2013. The couple are our daughter inlaw’s Mother and StepFather. They were both leaving the cold winters of Iowa and Minnesota for a new home in Texas and since the couple and their families had lived everywhere from California, LasVegas, to Branson, Missouri, it seemed fitting to make them a Route 66 themed quilt as their gift.

My quilt’s focal print fabric is Alexander Henry’s Route 66 fabric. It is such fun fabric. Alexander Henry has to be one of my all time favorite fabric line designers. I had made a quilt before using this fabric for a friend of the family who was an over the road trucker. The guy even had a full arm sleeve tattoo of Route 66 locations so the quilt was loved. I thought odds were in my favor that this couple would like a quilt with the same fabric.

I did my best to pull coordinating colors from the Route 66 print to give the most Wow factor. I knew our DIL’s Mom would like the purple and I liked the teal and soft blue as accents. The size of the photos in the design of the fabric are quite large and I needed to come up with a design with large blocks so it did not chop up the focal print willy nilly.

In preparation of writing this blog post, I searched to find what the name was of the quilt pattern I used. I am pretty sure it was a design in one of the Better Homes and Gardens American Patchwork and Quilting magazines or had been on their blog. The quilt ended up finishing at 86 by 92 inches. I had calculated I had quilted it with over 10,000 inches of quilting.

For the back of the quilt, I pulled all the coordinating solids from the front and pieced in a stripe of the last of the Route 66 fabric. I now see it is from this quilt’s leftover fabrics where I got some of the solids to piece into strips for our grandsons’ Scooby Doo Crossing quilts that I finished last week. This was fitting since this couple are also their grandparents.

I really liked using this pattern and hope that I can find it back. I have another fun Alexander Henry print that could use a large block quilt pattern to show off the fun complexity of the design.

I will be sharing my quilt finish with Finish It Friday, Fabric Frenzy Friday, Link A Finish Friday, Whoop Whoop Fridays, TGIFF, Show It Off Saturday , Lily’s Quilts Small Blog Meet and a few other weekend linky parties.

October 3, 2014
Scooby Doo Crossing Quilt: 2 Quilts Finished

Hi, I would like to share my newly completed Scooby Doo Crossing quilts that I made for my grandson’s 3rd birthday from the Adding Up Nicely pattern by Meadow Mist Designs. I had decided to make a matching quilt for his older brother so they could be used as bedspreads on their new bunk beds. I chose to use a layer of muslin cotton yardage as a replacement to standard batting in my quilts for the boys. It is amazing how heavy it makes the quilts. My sewing machine had no problem sewing thru the three layers or four layers when quilting across the appliqued names on the back of the quilts. I have made quilts before for other children and used muslin or another cotton as the batting and they washed and wore like iron. That is something needed when sewing for little boys. My binding was 2.5 inch strips folded in half and I attached them to the backside of the quilts and pulled them to the front and sewed them down by machine. I know that is definitely not the standard way to attach a binding. I did it once by a fluke chance and liked how flat it lay and it did seem to wear nicely on the quilt.

Here is the back of the quilts with Sawyer and Shaderek’s names appliqued to the center stripes.

For once in what seems like many years, I got my quilts completed two days before our party. It took me 2 hours to whip out the quilting on each quilt that is when I had enough bobbins wound in advance. Since I was not so rushed to take photos, I was able to attempt to be more creative in how I showed off my finished quilts. I managed to not use our bed and I found natural lighting. It is wonderful how nicer the quilts look shown this way.

Here is my Scooby Crossing quilt on the gates to our corn fields and the winds decided to pick up and catch the corners of my quilt.

Sawyer seemed to really like his quilt as much as 3 year old can. He yelled, “Scooby” when he opened it up. I think I saw him lean over and give his name a kiss when his greatgrandma explained that it was his name on it. His brother Shad told me “that his” better not be Scooby. Well, It is! And it has your name on it too! Haha I am sure he will warm up to the idea some day. His likes and dislikes have taken a major turn since he is in school.

Our whole world almost came undone the day after Sawyer’s birthday party. The next day he and his brother attended a friend’s 5th birthday party and the party was held at the swimming pool at a local hotel. It was just a handful of kids and all the parents at the pool. Everything had been well, until somehow Sawyer ended up out of his floatation device and somehow fell into the pool. Sawyer was found floating face down in the water by the 5 year old’s sister who is just 10 years old.. She drug Sawyer out of the pool. He had taken on alot of water and was not breathing. Her Dad had a voice in his head tell him, that he Had to start chest compressions and CPR. Thankfully after a couple of chest compressions and Sawyer puked up a bunch of water and started breathing again. The Paramedics were there in about 4 mins, which they told us was record time. They were so happy to be able to walk in there and find Sawyer crying. This was the best sign. They had unfortunately lost a little boy recently to a drowning at another hotel pool. Sawyer was taken by ambulance to the hospital to be checked out. The Doctors said he was looking good but one has to be so careful about the chemical burns to the lungs from taking in all that chlorine water. Pneumonia can set in within the first 6 to 8 hours and the threat of a dry drowning later. He was life flighted to our university children’s hospital. He did amazingly well and was awake and talking with the wonderful flight nurses and paramedics. He did not cry once. None of us had been allowed to fly with him. Once we got to the hospital, he was found sitting up in bed watching cartoons. He was kept overnight for observations and thankfully showed no signs of pneumonia or any other problems. He did not even need to be on oxygen when he was at the second hospital. Once we were released from hospital we knew we had our Sawyer back. He was completely normal. Talking, singing and getting into things.

Our family truly believes in Guardian Angels after this weekend. We will forever be in debt to our family friends for being there and pulling Sawyer from the pool and getting him breathing again. All it takes is a blink of an eye and life can be changed forever. We are so grateful that we have our precious grandson back and can enjoy many birthdays to come.

I will be sharing my quilt finishes with various linky parties this week. Fabric Tuesdays, Linky Tuesdays , Sew Cute Tuesdays , WOW Wednesdays , Let’s Bee Social, WIP Wednesday, Show and Tell Tuesdays, Needle and Thread Thursday, Fresh Sewing Day, I Quilt Thursdays ,

Finish It Up Fridays, Show It Off Saturday.

September 30, 2014
Logo-Locomotion: A Train Inspired Warm Wishes Quilt Finish

Hi, I thought I would share a my quilt finish in honor of birthday week in our family. It was my Father inlaw’s birthday last week and our grandson’s birthday this week. I did finish up my two Scooby quilts 2 days ahead of time but I will hold off showing them until after the birthday parties this weekend. I will be sharing the quilt I made for my Father inlaw today.

We are a farm family so of course we love tractors. We also love airplanes, well a very specific airplane. My Father inlaw’s Uncle designed and built the Monocoupe airplane back in the 1920’s on the old family farm place. You name it we have it with Monocoupes on it, from books, Christmas ornaments, models to coffee cups. I have blue prints from one of the racing Monocoupe airplanes that was made into a toy model. I need them framed yet for our office someday, but I can envision some sort of quilt with the designs embroidered or maybe having some Spoonflower fabric printed with the designs would be the ultimate fun. Somewhere and somehow in the last 10 years, my Father inlaw and his brother got interested in the Railroad and specifically Speeder Cars, the motorized cars that the railroad maintenance guys run up and down the tracks with. A friend had one, so they ended up with one. A few years later, and I think they now own at least 3 speeder cars between the two brothers. They load them up on trailers and haul them to events all over the Midwest and ride the rails on abandoned rail lines with their group of folks from all over the United States.

It is always hard to come up with an original gift for birthdays and holidays for my Father inlaw as if there is anything he might like, it is likely he may all ready have it. I decided to make him a quilt of his own. I had made him a fleece blanket years ago with John Deere tractors on it. I was on a mission to find something unique or at least different from what others might have, that was railroad related. I do not have access to many large quilting or fabric stores, so my fabric searches always goes online. I came across some rather interesting quilting material that had all sorts of train company logos all over it. With train companies that are no longer under some of the names listed. I do not recall ever seeing this fabric and they were selling it in a 3 yard piece on Etsy. I think I watched this particular fabric item on Etsy all summer long, hoping and praying they still had it while I made up my mind what exactly I could make with it. I finally decided to just go for it and purchase the fabric. I was not finding anything like it anywhere else, the amount of fabric was good and the price was really reasonable. I am not sure if the fabric is vintage new old stock. It was only 36 inches wide. It does not have the large selvage edges like we see today on fabrics. I think the only item I have come across online made with this material was curtains. I almost wonder if this had been curtains and someone cut off the hems. Whatever it was intended for originally, I was going to make a quilt with it.

I chose to use the Warm Wishes quilt pattern and match up my train logo colors with some pretty bright marble tone on tone fabrics.

I really like the black, red and blue marble blender fabrics. They add a major punch of color to the quilt. It ends up being a very manly quilt. I choose blue for the backing of the quilt and I ended up using every last bit of the vintage train logo fabric in the quilt piecing extra in to the back of the quilt.

Warm Wishes ended up being a fun and fast quilt pattern to use. I had seen it mentioned over and over again on the Quilting Board as a favorite quilt pattern. This was my first time using it, and I will most likely use it again someday as it is an easy way to show off your favorite prints. This quilt of course was well received by Dad. I finally found something he did not have.

I will be linking up my quilt finish with Link A Finish Friday, Can I Get a Whoop Whoop Friday?, Fabric Frenzy Friday , Finish It Friday, and Show Off Saturday.

September 26, 2014
WIP: Scooby Doo Birthday Quilts Appliqued Backs

Hi, I thought I would give a quick peek and progress report on my two Scooby Doo Crossing quilts I am making for birthday gift for my grandsons.

The second of the quilt tops was finished being pieced over the weekend. I knew I wanted to feature both boy’s names on their quilts. I have done this on a few quilts before. I made quilts for a former boyfriend of my daughter’s that had his last name on the back like a Chicago Bears jersey, quilts with the children’s names of one of our adopted deployed soldiers but my favorite had to be a Chicago Bears quilt I made jointly with my Mom for a retiring Marine Recruiter with his last name on back like the jersey and all the party guests signed the back around his name. I would have thought by now after making numerous name quilts that I would have all the letters printed out. Nope…was missing a W, which was needed for Sawyer’s name. I forgot which font I used but after a frantic search was able to recreate it. When I look at the photos I took, it appears Sawyer’s S is not sized properly. All my letters were sized the same and it is the same S as used in his brother’s name. Maybe my alignment is just a tad off but since they are all fused and machine zigzagged on, they are not going anywhere. Somehow I notched off one of the top points of my W with the scissors and did my best to fill it in with stitching.

I feel very lucky to have been able to pull fabrics for the entire backs of these quilts from my stash. I found three shades of blue greens to make large striped components to add to the top and bottom of my appliqued name strips. I found 4 yards of black solid that I used to finish off the tops and bottoms of my back quilts. I feel it really pulls everything together. It really makes the names and Scooby prints bright colors pop out. I found the endless sewing of all the long stripes a bit tedious. I was thinking ahead and pressed the separate segments before they all were joined. The quilt backs turned out pretty cool and will make the quilts reversible. I may or may not cut out and applique the numbers 3 and 7 on their quilts yet to commemorate their birthday years.

So today, I have to finish pressing my quilt tops and can start basting the quilts together to prepare for quilting. I found a nice yellow on yellow stripe fabric that I want to use as binding. I am going to get them all cut out today and pressed so they are ready as well. All in all I am still looking good to finish both quilts in time for the birthday party.

Thanks for looking. I will be linking up my WIPs with WIP Wednesdays , Let’s Bee Social , Needle and Thread Thursdays and I Quilt Thursdays this week.

September 24, 2014
Max and Whiskers: A Dogs and Cats Quilt for a Veterinary Student

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I would like to share today the final one of three quilts I made for our graduating nieces last year. I had come across what I thought was a fabric line of some really cute dog and cat prints. It would make an awesome quilt for upcoming veterinary student.

The fabric I chose was called Max and Whiskers by Basic Grey for Moda. I had purchased a layer cake of the fabrics and searched for a quilt pattern that would showcase the cute prints to their fullest. I came across a new to me designer from Australia, Roslyn Mirrington of Bloom. She had designed a neat column based quilt design that you could use a layer cake and make two quilts from. The design is called Abracadabra. The pattern makes a twin size bed quilt and a nice size throw that would work for a toddler quilt. You can change things up for the second quilt by adding a different background and applique a name on it. I do not use too many precuts so when I do, it is important to me to get the most mileage out of my fabric choices.

The instructions to Abracadabra are pretty straight forward with two cuts to the layer cakes, you can get creative on where you lay out your squares and rectangles. There is alot of sashing to be attached to the rows. And with careful pinning, the larger quilt went together nicely. I had a problem piecing the smaller quilt. I had to change sewing machines between the time of piecing the large quilt and the smaller one. I was having a problem with the presser foot of my Pfaff not going all the way down to resting on the feed dogs like it should. There must have been a difference in my seam allowance as the first 6 rows of the small quilt went together but some how the last two rows and the sashing seemed to have grown in length and there was no way they wanted to match up. I did not have a person in mind for the smaller quilt so it was no problem to scrap this one for the time being. I had just thought it would make a cute kid’s quilt.

For the back of this quilt, I found a neat dot print that had all the colors of the Max and Whiskers fabrics in a single fabric. I purchased it from JoAnn’s. I pulled a brown solid from my stash and added the golden mustard marble print as a striped accent to the back. The mustard marble also came from JoAnn’s. I finished it off with a light blue. It might have been a Moda solid but I do not recall now which color it was. I like how it shows off the quilting so nicely.

I really like how this quilt turned out. I like the columns and find the differing sizes of squares and rectangles give alot of interest. A little more fancy than just a simple coin quilt design. Our Vet student niece really liked the quilt and has taken it off to college with her. As for the pieces from the smaller quilt, I am thinking of reusing them to design a matching pillow. I have scraps stashed away from the other nieces’ quilts, Chain Linked and Pegs that all could be used to design pillows. These are on my future WIP list for possible Christmas gifts. Fun projects to try out the quilting modules on my inherited Designer 1 sewing machine.

I will be linking up this quilt finish with Anything Goes Mondays, Show and Tell Tuesdays, Linky Tuesday, Fabric Tuesday, I Quilt Thursdays, Needle and Thread Thursdays, Fabric Frenzy Friday, TGIFF, Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? , Link A Finish Friday , and Show Off Saturday .

September 19, 2014
WIP Square in a Square Patriotic Quilt Top Finished

Yesterday, I had a very productive day of sewing. I am continuing to sew on my second Scooby Doo Crossing quilt top made from Meadow Mist Designs Adding Up Nicely pattern. I finished cutting my strips into the needed size and have all but the last strips sewn onto the 32 “H” patterned blocks. These blocks should be finished today. I am still well within time of completing my two quilts by the 27th.

I got to thinking about one of my long waiting WIPs when I took a break from piecing my blocks and decided to pull it out of the bin and see if I could make some quick work of finishing sewing the blocks into rows and finish the quilt top.

My Square in Square patriotic quilt ended up finishing as a larger quilt than I thought I was going to make. Or I should say longer in length. I really enjoyed making the blocks. I took extra time to square up my blocks and it was so, so helpful in piecing them together. All the seams just automatically wanted to butt together. The main focal print of my squares is a white background print with US Flags and a script word of America printed all haphazard over the fabric. It makes me wince a bit that no matter how flipped my cut squares around some of the flags were going to be upside down.

I took a few quick photos of my quilt top finish. I need a better set up to show off my quilt finishes. Alot of times when I have finished a quilt, I am taking a photo before it is rushed out the door as a gift. I end up laying them out on our 4 poster bed to be able to get as much of quilt in a photo. I know it is not very imaginative but when I did not have a helper to hold it what was I to do. This morning the sunlight showed oddly through the windows, so my photos are not the greatest at showing the true shades of blue and red in my quilt. I tried to take a photo of the quilt hanging from the upstairs railing. Please do not pay any attention to our woodwork needing a much needed paint job.

When I pulled out the pieces of this WIP quilt from my fabric bins, I decided to take a couple quick photos of my patriotic fabric stash that I wrote about last week. I had forgotten some of the prints that I had. I was also surprised on what yardage I had of some fabrics. I also had a great find of a mottled blue solid and a mottled yellow tone on tone striped fabric that I can use in designing the pieced backs for the Scooby Doo quilts for our grandsons. The yellow stripe would work great for binding. I am very thankful to find them as I am on a tight budget this month.

I really like the print with the Army tanks and Aircraft Carriers. I think I have close to 2 yards of each of these.

Marines, Army and Bald Eagles. What is not to love. Again upwards of 2 yards a piece.

All sorts of blues and stars galore. And can not forget the Navy Seal print. These fabrics range from under a yard to over 2 yards.

This has to be one of my favorite fabrics. I used the brown wood grain version of this fabric as the backing of the patriotic quilt I made and donated to a Wounded Warrior Foundation auction. I purchased two 3 yard pieces of this denim blue wood grain and eagle print for future backings of quilts. This fabric has such a wonderful hand to it.

I have various white fabrics and shades of blue and red solids that I can put with all these fabrics to make numerous quilt projects. I usually purchase my white and cream solid fabrics by the entire bolt. One has to love those 40-50% off coupons that JoAnn Fabrics puts out. I used my Christmas money from my Dad to get another bolt of muslin at an end of the year mail order sale from JoAnn’s. The bolt still has the plastic on it. I seem to be getting short on white solid, so maybe my birthday money next month will go to that purchase.

Thanks for continuing to read about all my quilting projects. Please consider following my blog on Bloglovin or by email or Facebook.

I will be linking up this quilt with Fabric Tuesday, Let’s Bee Social and WIP Wednesday.

Happy Sewing!

Shelley

September 17, 2014
#LoyalForeverTrue : My Husband’s Long Waited Quilt from Me

Hi, I thought I would give a quick share of the quilt I made for my husband. It seemed fitting today to show it off since his alma mater, Iowa State beat our state rival, University of Iowa at Saturday’s football game. Iowa State continues to lead in points in this year’s Iowa Corn Cy-Hawk Series. Yeah, State!

I have been quilting for over 20 years. My husband has seen a steady stream of completed quilts go out the door. I always would show off my finished work and he would ask who was that one for? I did attempt to make him a quilt back in the 90’s and had the quilt top completed. It was a double Irish Chain in shades of green and gold. There were numerous times the top came out of storage and I would attempt to decide how to quilt it. I just did not care for my fabric choices. I actually did a nice job of piecing the quilt design. All my seams lined up etc. I just did not like the colors. More and more quilts continued to be made and finished and my husband would say he knew how he rated?? No quilt just for him.

Last year for his birthday, I decided to make him a new quilt top and get him a quilt just for him completed. I had seen numerous quilts made with Julie Herman’s Jaybird Quilts Dot Party quilt pattern. I thought it was such a fun pattern and would be a great way to use the Iowa State University collegiate print fabric I chose to make my husband his quilt. My husband is 6’2″ so I needed a good size throw size quilt so he could cover up while sitting in his favorite chair. This quilt pattern uses charm squares or layer cake squares. I cut my own 10 inch layer cake squares from the collegiate print and the yellow solid fabrics. This is my first quilt in a long time that has raw edges. I did stitch around my circles and circle openings with a 1/4 inch seam inside, and also did a quick zigzag around the edges. There still is some minor unraveling on some of the circles here and there.

When I completed this quilt just like I have with all my quilts, I showed my husband. He asked who this one was for? I said I made it for my favorite guy. Well, he is a lucky guy. Yes, I know. I finally found something we both liked and my husband got his own quilt. And I had a happy man. Last summer, I cleaned out some of my old stashed fabrics and donated them to charity. Hubby’s first quilt top became someone else’s treasure.

The motto for the Iowa State Cyclones is Loyal Sons Forever True. When one Tweets messages about ISU they use #LoyalForeverTrue. I thought it would be a fitting name for my quilt.

I am linking up my finished quilt with Inspiration Monday , Made by You Monday , Fabric Tuesday and Linky Tuesday.

September 15, 2014
MPC Pegs Quilt made in V & Co. Simply Color

I thought I would share another fairly recent favorite quilt finish. 2013 was the year of high school and college graduation gift quilts. I made three quilts for our three Nieces who graduated that year. This would be the first quilt I made using the sewing machine I inherited from my Mom. This is the second graduation quilt I have shared so far.

This particular Niece was the only one to have a suggestion on what she wanted as a quilt. She wanted “Green”. All right I thought. This should not be so hard . There are so many shades of green and the only one I have used much of in the recent past was what was considered “John Deere” green. That is not necessarily a girly color. I do know many girls like the color and even like the tractors. My daughter and this Niece would be included in that group. This Niece said she would likely like anything that my daughter would pick out.

We took a trip to one of our favorite quilt shops. We wandered the aisles of pretty fabrics and nothing really popped out at us at first. This shop always has lovely quilt examples hanging all over the shop walls and even the ceiling. We did a couple walks around the shop looking up and down and kept circling back to the quilt that was hung on the ceiling right in the front door. My daughter really liked the look of the quilt. I did as well. The big selling point was that they had it made up in “Green”. I usually do not choose to make a quilt up exactly as a store example. We both liked it as it was exactly made. Now please tell us, you have the pattern and the fabrics still in stock. Score!!

The quilt pattern our quilt was made from is Pegs by Kari Nichols for Mountain Peek Creations. I thought it was ironic that the designer’s last name was the same as my maiden name. The fabric that the quilt is made up in is by V & Co. Simply Color line. I shared with the quilt shop clerk that Vanessa of V& Co. had recently moved to Iowa from Utah. Some times just little things like these coincidences make a project extra fun. This quilt is made up from the green and gray prints and solids from this fabric line.

I used a coordinating gray solid as my background that I had on hand. For the back of the quilt, I chose a fun limey green solid as main color and pieced together the rest of my remaining fabric strips from the main body of the quilt. I really like how the quilting shows up.

I really liked how this pattern turned out. Mountain Peek Creations quilt patterns have great instructions. I really enjoyed working with V&Co. fabrics. I hope to soon obtain some more fabrics from the Simply Color line, if they can still be found and also her Simply Style fabric line that so nicely coordinates with the previous line. Of course, the best part was the quilt was well liked by everyone involved. I have been thinking this pattern might be a good one to remake in some of the patriotic prints I have in my fabric stash. I love how the large rectangles can showcase any kind of fun prints.

I will be linking up this quilt finish with Finish It Fridays , Fabric Frenzy Fridays, Link A Finish Friday , TGIFF , Sew Darn Crafty, and Can I get a Whoop Whoop?

September 12, 2014
ScoobyDoo Coming to a Bed Near You: WIP 1 of 2 Tops

I thought I would bring you all up to speed on my current WIPs. I made good progress on my Scooby Doo quilts for my grandsons’ bunk beds. I am using the Adding Up Nicely pattern by Meadow Mist Designs. I have super sized the first patterns blocks from 5 inches to 9.5 inches.

I will admit even after 20 years of quilting experience, I still wrestle with a lot of self doubt when it comes to picking colors and putting them together. I knew that I wanted to avoid using white or cream in my quilt top backgrounds. Our past experience with little boys and food that stains like Pop Tarts or Chocolate milk…eek. (this why I have a stack of I Spy blocks for a quilt for them, stashed in a bin….white background, duh.) Any way, I decided to highlight some of the yellow from the original Scooby print and make it the background for my Plus/Cross blocks. As suggested by my daughter, I chose brown as the Plus/Cross blocks. Brown is a color that is out of my comfort zone. I just have not worked it into many of my quilts.

Here is my completed Scooby Doo quilt top. It is finishing at approximately 63 by 81 inches. I really like how the Brown Crosses pop out of the yellow background. Today, I am cutting more brown fabric for my needed strips. I did not have enough of the first shade of brown, so the second quilt will be slightly different. I am still working up ideas in my head on how to create backs for the quilts. Our little guy Sawyer has not had a quilt with his name on it yet. I am thinking of putting their names on the back to eliminate the battle of No, that one is Mine?

I will be linking up my WIP with WIP Wednesday , Let’s Bee Social , I Quilt Thursdays, and Needle and Thread Thursday.

September 10, 2014
Adding Up Nicely: A Finish and A WIP, Once Not Enough

I have a great love for Cross and Plus type quilt blocks. I have been Pinning all sorts of possible quilt designs using these type of blocks to my Pinterest quilt boards.

I made an Adding Up Nicely quilt using Meadow Mist Designs pattern for a Christmas gift for my Dad this past year. I had a major dilemna in choosing fabrics to make my Dad a quilt. I was not sure what he might like. My Mom had passed away a few months earlier. I knew she loved everything blue and that was what she decorated their house in. They were married for almost 50 years and I am sure she ran the show on how the house was decorated. I did alot of looking at all kinds of fabric lines. I had seen alot of Zen Chic fabrics on Pinterest and lots of quilts made with them and loved them. I came across Zen Chic’s Barcelona line of fabrics. It had a nice range of colors from blues, greens, some black and orange. It was modern and had some really geometric designs. I especially liked the one that looks like a city map. I needed my fabric fast as I had a fast approaching deadline. I chose to purchase from Pink Chalk. I was a first time shopper and loved the idea of a kit of two charm packs and a coordinating set of solids od generous fat eighths (were actually 10 inches wide instead of 9 inches.) The fabric came in the mail in just a few short days so I was ever so thankful.

The instructions to Adding Up Nicely were great. I needed 80 charm squares to make the twin size quilt. I chose a nice medium gray solid for my sashing strips with a white background. I had one potentially big problem when sewing this quilt. It was all operator error and none of Cheryl’s instructions. I was using a new to me sewing machine that I had inherited from my Mom. I made the big mistake of not checking IF my seam allowances were right on to the needed 1/4 inch. I made up my cross blocks and they turned out nicely. The seams matched up nicely. Well, my blocks ended up smaller than my 5 inch charm squares. My seam allowance was just slightly larger so I kind of freaked out. I had to get this quilt top made. It was my major gift to my Dad. It had to work out and it had to be done like yesterday. I did not have time to completely unstitch all my blocks, so I had to do the unthinkable, and cut down my beautiful Barcelona charm squares to 4.5 inches. After carefully rotary cutting my charm squares to the needed size, my squares matched up nicely to my pieced blocks.

I chose to get creative with the coordinating solid color strips for the backing of my quilt. I pieced them together and sliced them up and pieced back together. I set them in with black solid and the matching gray from the front of the quilt. I really, really like the back of this quilt. My Mom had over 25 bobbins prewound for this machine in various colors. I decided to use every last one of them in the piecing of this quilt. I used the matching gray color as my needle thread. All of the other colors as bobbin colors did not show through, but I knew they were there and it was another way to include Mom in the quilt. I chose to just do simple Xs quilting through out my blocks. I love how quilts come out fresh from the wash and dryer. Love the wrinkly quilty goodness! I would have liked to get better photos but I was rushed to get it wrapped up and out the door for our Christmas Eve party with Dad. He loved the quilt even the back. He even asked great questions about the fabric choices. If I put the fabrics together myself, etc?

I am ever so thankful to have figured out my seam allowance problem, by talking over with Cheryl. With this machine, I have to use the inside of pressure foot and move the needle over a step.

Because I liked using this pattern for this quilt, I have decided to use it make quilts for my grandsons’ bunk beds. My youngest grandson is obsessed with Scooby Doo. I found this neat Scooby Doo fabric online, but was most happy to find it in my local Walmart store. I purchased what I think was the end of bolt around 5 yards. The Scooby dog pattern ended up larger than I had originally planned for in using this design. I guess the design looked smaller on my computer screen. Cheryl at Meadow Mist Designs helped me enlarge the Adding Up Nicely block design. I am going to be enlarging my blocks up from the finished size of 5 inches to a finished size of 9.5 inches. This gives me a better way of using my grandson’s beloved Scooby Doo fabric, and not chop the poor dog up to pieces. This fabric has a lot of teal in it with black background. I usually use alot of white in my quilts, and I have learned it is impossible to keep clean with little boys. I chose to pick yellow as my cross blocks since there was so much of the teal and my daughter suggested pulling up the brown color of Scooby as the other color in my cross blocks.

I have my cross blocks all pieced for the first twin size quilt. I discovered I did not have enough of my brown so I had to search for more. I was not able to get back to the store I purchased the original brown solid from, so have chosen as close as a shade as I could for my other grandson’s quilt top. I have my new brown fabric cut out into the needed strips, and am in process of making additional blocks needed for the second quilt. I hope that these quilts will be used as bed spreads for their new bunk beds. I am looking to use a non standard choice for my quilt batting. I started quilting over 20 years ago, and for some of my quilts for nieces and nephews I chose to use a lightweight cotton fabric as batting. It was a way to save some money at that moment. I ended up enjoying the finished product. The kids quilts ended washing and wearing like iron. I did not have too much trouble sewing through the three layers of cotton. I have made quilts for my littlest grandson for each of his birthdays. He sleeps in a pile of blankets. I thought I might change things up and make these quilts more like a thin bedspread coverlet.

I will be posting updates in the future as my Scooby Doo Adding Up Nicely quilts progress. I have a deadline set of September 27th in time for little guy’s 3rd birthday party.

I am linking up with Can I get a Whoop Whoop? linky party , Sew Darn Crafty Linky Party , Anything Goes Mondays , Fabric Tuesday and

Show and Tell Tuesday.

September 6, 2014