February 2015 Finishes

I decided this year that I am going to blog all of my finishes for each month. I did blog January's finishes HERE. But then.... I didn't upload my photos for February's finishes until, well, this morning. But anyway, here are my finishes during the month of February!! There are only two, but I do have quite a few more for March, so I'll post those next. :)

But who cares about quantity right?! I love these!!


First up, I made this Celestial Star Mini for Sarah of Pheasantpress.com. You definitely should go check out her site! She is has some amazing paper product goodies!! 

How to: 10 inch Double Border Mini

Did you see my mini that I posted about yesterday? Did you also notice that Heather and Heather are both giving away a free copy of my new Star Fruit pattern? You can enter on their blogs (click their names) or on Instagram for your chance to win a copy! :)

Today I want to show you how I turned my 6 inch finished quilt block into a 10 inch double border mini. Are you ready?! (Yes, I still need help picking a binding fabric. Any suggestions???)

Cut:

Thin border:

       2 - 6.5 inch x 3/4 inch (A)

       2 - 7 inch x 3/4 inch (B)

 

Thick border:

      2 - 7 inch x 2 inch (C)

      2 - 10 inch x 2 inch (D)

Instruction:

1. Create any 6 inch finished block - left unfinished at 6.5 in x 6.5 in. I like to leave on all the paper until I've attached my first border. It adds a little more stability to the fabric and helps prevent shifting.

 2.  Lay out your block and fabric as follows:

 3. Sew both (A) pieces to opposite sides of the pattern:

4. Sew both (B) pieces to the top and bottom of the pattern:

5. Sew both (C) pieces to opposites sides of the block:

6. Sew both (D) pieces to the top and bottom.

7. Create a quilt sandwich by layering top, batting, and backing fabric.

8. Baste with pins or spray baste. I love to spray baste, especially with little blocks like this.

9. Quilt as desired. Minis are especially fun to hand stitch.

10. Square up to 10 in x 10 in.

11. Bind.

And your finished! A beautiful mini to hang on your wall, or use as a snack mat... if you dare. ;) These would make great gifts for Mother's Day, birthdays, swaps, etc!

I'd love to see your minis that you make! Will you tag them on Instagram (#fbpPatterns) or link them up HERE on my blog! You could win a free pattern, fabric, or handmade goodie from me if you do. Just saying. ;)

Liberty Love Pillow!

 

 I am SO excited! I don't even know how to start this blog post. :) The Modern Mini Quilt Challenge that Ellison Lane puts on is one of my favorite events of the year. You make something new, and fun and mini, and then link it up for prizes, or just because. It's awesome! I didn't get to participate last year (I think we were moving at the time), but I did the year before with my Rainbow Lake mini. If you want to enter, go HERE. You have until 5 pm on the 16th to link up.

This year she said to challenge yourself with your mini. Try something new. Well, I think almost everything I did with this mini was something new to me. It was so much fun to make, and a little unnerving as I had NO idea how it was going to turn out. I'm happy to say I'm pleased with how it turned out, and I think I'll keep it. ;)

Here is my pillow in its new home:

now it needs some friends! :)

The pattern is my own, and boy do I love it. I've been playing around with it in Illustrator, and there really are a million ways to use it to create a million different designs. (I'll be releasing the pattern this summer sometime.) :) If you follow me on Instagram (@fromblankpages), I'm sure you've seen me post about it WAY too many times.

The front
This pillow was really hard to photograph withe red in it. I don't know what settings to adjust to fix it, but reds and oranges are always WAY over saturated in my pictures. So I tried toning it down, but now the blues are too bland. I really didn't do these prints justice. :( (any tips?) :)

the back: Black Essex Linen

 

Firsts: 

• I've never pieced a pattern this large. 

• I've never made a pillow with a zipper (I've only done the envelope closure on the back - is that what it's even called?). 

• I have never done this much, or this small of hand stitching. (The only other thing I've hand stitched was my Giant Granny Square Quilt, but those stitches were huge and it went a lot faster.)

 

• I've never used Liberty prints before (I am now totally in love with them and am amazed at how well they go together!)

I think the hardest part was piecing the slices together (my kids called this "Mom's Pizza" as I was putting it together because it looked like a bunch of pizza slices). :) They would say, "Don't step on mom's pizza!" made me laugh.

Thanks for stopping by! 

And be sure to check out all the other minis over at Ellison Lane Quilts!

A Week of Finishes: Mabel's Doll Quilt

A Week of Finishes is all about blogging and finally sharing the things I have finished. I hope you'll join me! The linky will be open until Monday night, March 4th.

The Front

Next up on my list of finishes is this little doll quilt for Mabel's new doll. Since she's the first girl, and we have SO many toys for boys, I've been going overboard to make sure she has at least a few things that are all girl. :)

This quilt is made from leftovers of the car quilt I made for Mabel (I'll show that in the next day or two). I already finished a matching pillow last month, and now I really want to make a little bed for it, even though right now it sleeps in the crib with her. Every time we get Mabel out, we also have to get her doll, doll's blanket, and doll's pillow. She's so funny. I love the little things that are so important to kids!

In an attempt to practice some free motion quilting (really in preparation to finish Mabel's big quilt) I decided to do some swirly flowers. I used some variegated Gutermann thread and I love how it looks on the back! (just ignore some of the top stitching showing through, it took a little bit to get the tension just right). I still need more practice, but I'm getting there. :) I think this little mini will get lots of love. :)

The Back

Do you have a finish, or a few, or twenty that you want to share?! Link them up!!and be sure to link back here in your post (old or new) so others can come join in the fun! :)

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THANK YOU!!! + a few finishes!

THANK YOU 

everyone who participated in my sale yesterday! 

I am overwhelmed by the response and absolutely appreciate all of your support! Thank you!!

It's super exciting to see my pattern at the #1 spot on Craftsy's trending patterns! What an honor. I couldn't have done it without you. Thanks! (I know this sounds cheesy, but I really mean it.)

Yep. I took a screen shot. ;) (nerd alert!)

Anyway, I realized yesterday that I probably should have put my pattern on sale on Etsy as well, as I know that not everyone likes to use Craftsy. I'll do another sale soon! :)

I did sneak in a few pictures on my blog post yesterday of my finished Word of the Year wall hanging, but it wasn't until last night, so I wanted to share it with everyone in case you missed it. :) (Sorry the pictures are dark... I took these at night) (using My First Alphabet pattern)

After I pieced the words, I added a border around the whole thing and simple basted the edges, added the binding and called it good! I was going to do some hand stitching, but for now I like it just like this. :)

The back - with my hanging corners

I have too many little projects hanging around that need to be finished so I can put things away. I feel like I'm going to get swallowed up one of these days when I sit down in my sewing chair! lol. So this morning I finished up a new scrap basket (I desperately needed a new one!) using my blue Heart Art crosstitch heart that I had made earlier. I LOVE it!!

The colors in these fabrics are so gorgeous!!

I used Pellon 71F for the lining to keep it's shape. It works great! Though I should have made it just a little bit smaller for the inside, as it kind of stretches in parts. It's still good though. 

 

And I did a bit of a rough job sewing around the top... I used the wonder clips instead of pins to hold it all in place, and they did not hold it enough. Oh well. It's for scraps...

Ok, well I guess the picture overload makes up for my lack of blogging. ;) I'll have more pictures of another project later this week too!

 

Happy Tuesday!

and thanks again! :)

Doll Quilt Swap 12 - Happy Sunshine Mini

I don't know why I've put this post off for so long. Anyway, here it is! My DQS 12 post! I've decided that I am going to share lots of process photos with you! Since I've had so many deadlines lately, I've been in a bit of a rut of hopping to one deadline to the next, and not a lot of time to just mull over things as I work on them. Fortunately that is coming to an end. I've made a few changes... but those are for another day. Today I woke up at 5 am. blah. So I might as well use the extra few hours before my day to get this finished. (It could be because I went to bed at 10 last night, or 9. I don't know. Does going to bed early ALWAYS mean I'll wake up early? I hope not... ;) ).

Anyway, this swap was super fun! There are so many beautiful quilts going around, and I'm still anxiously waiting to see which one will be mine!! This was another push out of my usual white background and simple patterns. Ok, I don't know if I use many simple patterns. I think I like to make things too complex most of the time. Anyway, part of the rules for this swap are: you can't use a white background. you have to use one of 5 block styles (flying geese, courthouse steps, log cabin, and two others... ?), and I always forgot this rule (glad I didn't break it) you have to have at least 6 blocks. 

While deciding on what to do, I saw this lovely progress shot by SewHappy45, and inspiration struck! Here's what I came up with!

Flying geese with flair!

Then came the fun part... turning it into fabric! Ok, well making it with fabric. I wish I were magic! But then that would take all the fun out of it wouldn't it?!

I ended up taking a few pictures along the way. I was really bad at sharing progress photos in the swap this round, so I will share them here. (did you ever notice that button on my sidebar "I took the process pledge"? Well, here's my attempt to share the process.) I played around with Instagram for a while (they released it for Android, and I mostly like it, love the filters, but it really messed up my phone killed my phone? I think. Yeah, I'm getting a new phone today. SO glad we got insurance for our phones. Mine is toast! (it was either Instagram or the fact that I found Jacks with it and the cover was swimming in drool (though the cover was not on my phone, so still unsure). Either way, my boy has turned into a dog. lol. Anyway, I don't use Instagram anymore. Kind of sad about that, but whatever. I found a different photo app - Vignette, and so far it's pretty cool.) Anyway, here are my photos:

Fabrics and colors picked!

Organizing the chaos, aka, which fabrics to put where

Coming together!

SO CLOSE! :)

ready to sew together!

I was basically beging my partner to hate it at this point! lol. It's funny how your perspective and thoughts on a project can contrast so strongly from the beginning to end of it. I was SO nervous about this when I started (as in picking fabrics and pre-cutting). I really doubted that it would turn into anything desirable, but went with it anyway since that's what I had to work with at the moment. Boy was I wrong. And boy am I glad I made it despite my initial thoughts on it. 

My least favorite part was connecting the weird triangle shapes. Reminded me too much of my Kaleidoscope quilt that I struggled with. ;) But it actually came together quite well!!! It was A LOT easier than I thought it would be. I think the things that really helped (in contrast to my Kaleidoscope quilt) were:

• my blocks were all squared up
• I pinned the pieces together at ever point that needed to match up.

lol. Ok, that was an awesome list. I'm so glad I used bullets. lol. Anyway, I think that's all that I did different and it worked great!

Here it is!!

The Back:

The quilt finishes at 18.5" x 18.5". I made up a variation of flying geese and paper pieced the entire front. The solids are all Konas, the prints are a mix, some Hope Valley, Amy Butler, Michael Miller... The back is a 9 patch of Amy Butler prints. The binding is a text print: Authentic by Sweetwater - a last minute addition to my cart on a recent fabric shopping trip. SO glad I bought it. I think it finishes it off perfectly. Definitely adds to the 70's retro feel of it. ;) LOVE that!

I did a simple double lined quilting just on the edges of the geese all the way around. The thread matches the corresponding fabric color.

As I finished it up I laid it on my bed to show the Mr. I realized how awesome it would be to make a lot of these and do a quilt for our bed!!!! That would be incredibly insane (do people really make whole large quilts out of paper pieced blocks???), and I would probably want to never get out of bed, but I would love it!!! I will have to think about that. Maybe when I have nothing else to do. lol. :)

I think this is the best shot of it. It really does look better in person!

Whitney received this over the weekend! I got her email this morning saying she loves it! She said she smiles every time she looks at it! Yay!! :) I'm glad it's loved. And I agree, I would smile every time I looked at it too. Thus the name, Happy Sunshine. The name really has nothing to do with the design or how it looks, but more to do with how it makes you feel. So happy, and so bright, like sunshine. I wish I had captured that better in the photos. 

I also sent off my usual, a postcard of Utah (I've read a few comments of people saying they like getting a little something from where the sender lives, and thought a postcard is easy enough to send to everyone.) I also sent off some chocolate covered cinnamon bears. I've heard that these can only be found in Utah (and maybe the surrounding states???) Anyway, these are our favorites!!! I picked up a box for us as well, and they were gone in a day or two. Three if we were lucky. ;) Whitney said they disappeared pretty fast too! Maybe something to look forward to for everyone coming to the Sewing Summit!! ;)

Thanks Whitney for being such a great swap partner!!! (she now has two of my minis. The other can be found here.) :)

p.s. linking up at Canoe Ridge Creations (maybe next week. There is a HST linky party going on over there if you're interested.)and Quiltstory Tuesday.