Fall Table Topper

I am very excited that it is almost fall.  In Texas, fall means that our high temperatures finally break and we are able to spend time outside without sweating to death.  Also, it means that the humidity will finally drop.  I miss the Northeast, where fall means falling leaves and sweaters.

A couple years ago, I bought this fun leaf fabric at the Quilt Festival with the intention of making something for my table, and now I have finally gotten around to it.  It is 18" square, I just sewed together the two pieces of fabric with a piece of batting the middle, then turned it right side out and did some quick straight line quilting.

 

Yes, I know that it isn't super exciting, so I added some pumpkins and pine cones to complete the feeling of "fall".

 

 

 

I have a giant dining room table so it looks pretty small when you zoom out!

 

 

 

Blue Bed Quilt- Finished!

The Blue Bed Quilt is another quilt that I have finished but I only recently managed to get pictures of it.  It was so annoying to quilt because of the bulk and size of the quilt.  I just did a lot of straight line quilting and kept it pretty widely spaced.  It is backed with a white cross-hatch fabric and bound with a fun blue stripe fabric.

Here it is in my bedroom- I love the way that it looks with the blue wall!

The quilt inspector approves!  I love the way that the stars look around the side of the bed...

Next up in this series, curtains for the bedroom - I have been searching high and low for the perfect fabric.  The windows are almost 10 ft high!  I also needed to find a 12+ foot curtain rod to put across the top (there are three large windows in a row), that was a search in itself! 

Plus Baby Quilt- Finished!

The "Plus Baby Quilt" was actually finished a while ago, it just took me until today to take a picture of it!  If you remember that far back, I sewed the quilt top and then I mailed it to my sister and she took care of the quilting.  We decided on straight line quilting, 1/4" from each of the seams in the quilt.  She used a variegated rainbow thread.  I think it looks great!

 

The backing of the quilt is the "hungry caterpillar" fabric with all the white dots on it (it is used for 4 plus signs on the front of quilt).

It's going off in the mail this week, hopefully our cousin will like it!

Texas Road Trip Quiltalong

This summer, I participated in the Texas Road Trip Quiltalong.  This was my first ever quiltalong, and I had such a great time that I can't wait to participate in one again!  The blogs on the quiltalong each were assigned a city in Texas, and they provided information about their city, as well as came up with a block that would represent their city.

I won an Aurifil thread card and thread selection at one of the blog stops (Porch Swing Quilts)- that was so exciting for me because I have never won anything like that before!

I decided in the beginning to make my quilt half size, so that I could use it as a wall hanging to decorate my sewing room.  I liked it when people chose paper pieced blocks for their cities because it made it much easier for me, I only had to print out the block half size instead of doing a bunch of hard quilt math haha.  It finished at 34" square because I added a small white border around the state so that it would stand out from the binding.

Without further ado, here is the finished product- quilted, bound, and hung on the wall!  I made a rod pocket on the top edge of the quilt and then stuck a small rod through and hung it on 2 nails in the wall.

Here is the new view from my sewing machine:

A close up of the quilting- I did circular quilting with my walking foot, starting in Houston, which is where I live.  I considered stopping when I was around 1/4 of the way through the quilting because all the circles looked just like Hurricane Ike when it came through here 6 years ago, but I ultimately decided to just keep going.

And last but not least, a picture of my quilt inspector enjoying the quilt...  I can't take pictures of anything on the floor without him wanting to be involved.

I just want to thank Pretty Little Quilts and My Fabric Relish for running such a fun quiltalong- I can't wait to see everyone's finished quilt tops this week!

Blue Bed Quilt Pillow- Finished!

This is the last post before the finale showing the finished blue bed quilt- yay!  But first, I finished the decorative pillow for the bed!  I had lots of little triangles left over from all of the flying geese in the quilt and I sewed them all together and arranged them in a diamond pattern.  Then I quilted the front of the pillow with some straight line quilting (with my walking foot) before adding the envelope closure on the back.

I made the back envelope closure from my leftover binding fabric- a pretty stripe.

 Yes, I am aware that the stripes don't match up, but who sees the back of a pillow anyway? :)

And finally, because it is impossible to take pictures without a certain someone wanting attention....

Next week, the finished quilt!!!!

Blue Bed Quilt Part 5, without the quilt again!

I have FINALLY managed to finish the quilting on this quilt and I am so excited to be done with it.  Usually I enjoy the quilting more, but I don't enjoy maneuvering queen size quilts through my machine!  Anyway, now on to the binding, I promise you will get a picture soon.

In the meanwhile, I'm working on a throw pillow for the bed with the rest of my leftover triangles from the flying geese in the quilt, here it is on my design wall:

I'm going to make it to cover an old greenish pillow that I had on the bed, it's going to look great all together!

Blue Bed Quilt Part 4, without the quilt!

This post is to update you on the progress of my Blue Bed quilt... I am still working on the quilting.  It is a pain, I really hate quilting queen size quilts!  My back and my arms hurt from pushing and pulling it all through the machine.  I finally decided on some widely spaced stitching in the ditches.  I wanted to do a bunch of fun "modern" quilting, but it was just too much with such a large quilt.

In the meanwhile, my husband and I spent the weekend painting an accent wall in our bedroom!

The blue of this wall is going to go so nicely with the new bed quilt and seeing how badly it clashes with the old quilt gives me a good reason to keep working through all the quilting!  I did make the current quilt on the bed back when I was single.  My husband has never liked the colors, which is why I am now making us the new quilt.  You can see my quilt inspector is inspecting the old quilt too.  He especially likes to try to eat any loose threads...