Bloggers Quilt Festival 2017 Fall Edition

This week starts the Fall 2017 edition of the Bloggers Quilt Festival (you can read all the details here).  I am participating in the Bloggers Quilt Festival for the first time.  For the past few years, I only was an observer but now that I have been blogging since October 2016, I am excited to finally be able to officially participate.  Since Spring of 2009, Amy of Amy's Creative Side has hosted a linky party for quilters to post two of their finished quilts.  It's a great way to discover and follow new quilting blogs and also participants are eligible to win some pretty great prizes from the wonderful sponsors Amy always round up for the Bloggers Quilt Festival. 

I decided I would post my Flutterby quilt which was completed earlier this year.  It is a Jen Kingwell pattern which I modified the size of the blocks so I could use my die cutter since there were over a thousand pieces, some were half rectangle triangles, in this quilt. You can read more about this quilt from my earlier post here and it is my most popular post.  What I like about this quilt is the mix of bright color and low volume prints which seems to be my fabric choices for 2017. Also unusual about this quilt is that I forced myself not to use any of my much loved Cotton + Steel prints. I quilted it myself with narrow straight line quilting which I love and besides wavy organic lines, is the only style of machine quilting I do.

This definitely was the year of making scrappy quilts and I do like a pattern which helps me reduce the never-ending stash of fabric I seem to accumulate.  Apparently, I still need to find some more patterns.

If your visiting my blog for the first time from the Quilt Festival, welcome and thank you.  I am looking forward to visiting the other bloggers who are participating in the Bloggers Quilt Festival and I know I will find new blogs to follow.

Linking up with Amy's Creative Side Bloggers Quilt Festival 2017 Fall Edition

The Kingwell Sew Alongs: Flutterby Quilt Finished and Still Smitten-ing

I previously posted about doing two sew alongs this year both involving a Kingwell:  Flutterby by Jen Kingwell and Smitten by Lucy Carson Kingwell (you can read the post here) which is sort of ironic since I barely recovered from my Gypsy Wife experience and never thought I would do another  pattern by Jen Kingwell.  Though Flutterby is much more simpler than Gypsy Wife, ( I changed the dimensions so I could use my die-cutter 😊) it still was head spinning which could be due to each of the thirty blocks having 36 patches and trying to make sure that each one of the prints were different in each block.  I also had to be careful that the HRT patches were sewn in the correct orientation which  for an angle-challenge person makes the sewing slow.  And then there's the quilt layout where I wanted to make sure the same print weren't in the same vicinity and that's when I finally began to feel dizzy and decided then that there is so much movement in this quilt, it's wasn't going to be too noticeable if the same print is right next to each other.

If that wasn't challenging enough for me to make a quilt with over a thousand patches, I decided I wanted to do 1/2" skinny straight line quilting which there were problems in the beginning, my fault and not my Juki's, and it turned out pretty well despite a few puckers in the backing.  Flutterby measures 60" x 72" and I didn't use any of my much-loved Cotton + Steel fabrics because I felt I've been ignoring the other wonderful prints in my stash. Fabrics were from Zen Chic which was given to me from an exchange with Connie Tesene, several Allison Glass charm packs and other modern and low volume prints.  The Flutterby pattern is from Jen Kingwell's Quilt Lovely book and there are other patterns I may want to do now with Cotton + Steel and my die-cutter but will give my head a much needed rest before  I do.

I've now finished four out of the twenty-seven full hexagons (these measure 10" x 12") needed for the Smitten Quilt and am still friends with Carol who got me started on this project.  I like how these blocks turned out and enjoy sewing them while binge watching Gilmore Girls.  I've now watched 30 episodes and it looks like it's taking me an average of almost eight episodes to complete one block which is pretty slow since each episode is 45 minutes long.  I am finding that I'm getting faster and it's easier for me if I baste through the paper and not tacking down at the corners.  I have one more block left to make of this hexagon type and these might be the easiest out of all the other hexagons.  There's only five and half seasons left of Gilmore Girls for me to watch so in the event I'm not done with Smitten by the end of the series, I have another TV series lined up to watch:  Blue Bloods.  I used to be smitten with Tom Selleck.

Minus 100 Yard Challenge YTD Total:  - 31.375 yards

I still haven't bought any new fabric and we're past the first week of February.  Thankfully, I just received my monthly Cotton + Steel fabric package from Pink Cast Fabric and enjoyed oogling over the twelve fat quarters.  But best of all, I just received a wonderful gift of feedsack squares from a fellow blogger who is also a feedsack lover and am amazed that all of the prints were those I don't have.  As I said in an earlier post, feedsack fabrics and friends go together.  I think I'm going to make it through the end of February because by then I will be receiving my FQS Sew Sampler box.

Sew Strong!