Friday 27 February 2015

Marking Your Space

Bundle Bonanza 1000B-b-b-bonanza! Bundle Bonanza, that is, is on at Sew Sisters this weekend. Great bundles of coordinating fat quarters at delicious prices (yes, I haven't had breakfast yet). On until tomorrow!

***

By some scheduling miracle a couple of weekends ago, we got to spend a Saturday morning hanging out at home instead of the arena. Even better, I could spend it in my sewing studio sewing with my boys. Woo hoo!

I've been promising them placemats for some time. I pulled out the solid scrap bin and had them choose what colours they'd like.

Micah's:


Daniel's:


Patrick's:


Daniel's is finished and with a little luck, we may just finish the other two up this weekend!

Have a great weekend all!

Wednesday 25 February 2015

Welcome Canadian National Fabric!

quilt matters sidebarHappy Wednesday, all! Can you really say that about a Wednesday? Well, I'm going to anyway. Not only am I happy that it is Wednesday, but I'm also happy to introduce a new sponsor to you!

Canadian National Fabric is a Canadian online fabric store based in the Caledon, Ontario area. Bebe and her team have over 1800 products available.

How awesome is their logo? Three of my favourite things - Fabric, Canada and beavers (I'm also a Beaver leader with Scouts for those who don't know).

Canadian National Fabric offers a flat rate $5 shipping across Canada and free shipping if you spend over $50. Hello?! They also offer flat rate shipping to the U.S. and other countries internationally -- check out their site for details.

They offer a cool "Cash for Stash" Points reward program for all customers, where your purchases get you points for discounts towards future purchases. Sweet!

Here are just a few of the gems that caught my eye recently:

Modern Mixers: Cobalt Blue


Riding Hood: Story Grey


Penelope: Aqua Baubles


Classics: Millefiore Pastel


Geekly Chic: Geekly Cameras Blue

oooh, and this:

The Chalk Line: 2129-001


I'll definitely be pick up some of this fabric!

If you aren't already familiar with Canadian National Fabric, I hope you get a chance to check them out. They have a great variety of fabrics to suit everyone's needs. 

Thank you, Canadian National Fabric, for sponsoring Quilt Matters! 

Monday 23 February 2015

Birchen - À la Quilt Matters

Happy Monday all! I'm thrilled to be participating in the Fat Quarter Shop's Birchen Blog Hop today.


We're using Art Gallery Fabrics (woo hoo!) so I chose to use the Prisma Elements line of fabrics for my version of Birchen. I LOVE this line. For my quilt, I chose Zirconia, Apricot, Solar Quartz, Larimar Sea, Pagoda Gem and Sapphire Sparkle, with the idea that the aqua (Larimar Sea), yellow (Solar Quartz) and orange (Apricot) would pop against the darker colours.


I found the most perfect teal Aurifil 4182 and yellow Aurifil 2135 for the quilting. The teal worked beautifully for the back as well. The quilting is very simple for the moment, but I'll be adding in more.


I picked Time is Deer Coal in the Indelible line by Katerina Roccella for the backing. Love! Almost too pretty for a backing, don't you think?

The quilt finishes at 72" by 72".

If you've seen the pattern, you'll probably notice that I modified a couple of things:
  • This was the first time I've chosen fabrics for a quilt entirely online. One thing I missed I think was that there wasn't a lot of contrast between the Pagoda Gem and the Zirconia. Even the Sapphire HSTs blend in that block. In hindsight, I think I'd print the fabric swatches from the site in grayscale to better see the values. 
  • It was also the first time I made HSTs using HST paper templates. Very cool! I'm not sure it was really a time saver, but it certainly made more accurate HSTs!
  • I used three fabrics (Sapphire, Apricot, and Solar Quartz) instead of two for the J/K strip set. 
  • I added in a row of Sapphire and Pagoda Gem HSTs to Block One. 
  • I also switched my block pairings. I originally planned to pair the large Sapphire HST with the Zirconia, Pagoda Gem and Sapphire HSTs, but found it was too dark. 

Such a fun pattern! I can't wait to see what the other blog hop participants have done with it. Check them out on the Fat Quarter Shop blog!

The Birchen pattern is available for free from the Fat Quarter Shop site. They also have a quilt kit available! They've also put together a fabulous video tutorial





Thursday 12 February 2015

TGIFF! - Night Flight

Oh happy, happy TGIFF! all! I'm thrilled to be sharing my finished Night Flight quilt. This quilt started with the scraps from Quilt Fix.

I used the leftover triangles from the 45 degree seams from Quilt Fix to make half-square triangles (HSTs) and then paired them into flying geese units. These flying geese then begged to be put into rainbow formation. Who am I to say no when they lined up so nicely?

We discussed how much negative space was enough and then the quilting options. The 'quick' part of this quilt ended when we got to the quilting though. I really love this walking foot technique, but it definitely doesn't fall into the 'quick' category. I think I spent more time quilting Night Flight than all the other parts of the quilt process combined.





It was so worth it. I'm so pleased with the finished look and the flow of colours in the quilting thread (different colour for each flying geese unit). The walking foot quilting in moon ray formation has all the precision I was hoping for.


Finished Size: 24" by 29"
Fabric: Kona Charcoal, Scraps from a Kona Dark Jelly Roll
Thread: Aurifil (2630 for the grey and many other numbers for the flying geese), Guterman, Coats & Clark



Monday 9 February 2015

Modern Block Monday - Courthouse Steps

Now in my book, Courthouse Steps is one of the most traditional blocks there is. So why am I featuring it for Modern Block Monday? Mostly because I think it's a great block regardless of how long it's been around and because I think many so-called traditional block can be made fresh and modern with the choice of fabrics. Let's go for a little modern traditionalism today, kay?

Jaclyn in my Canadians Quilt Bee asked for this block using this yummy colour palette and using this tutorial from Displacement Activity. I have made this block before, but not the way indicated in the tutorial. The tutorial has you cut the strips wider than needed and then trim down after it's been sewn to the block. This is a great way of making sure the block is accurate. As my 1/4" seams are now more accurate than they used to be, I found the almost 1/2" trim too much so I cut my strips to 1.75" after the first couple of rows.

I can't wait to see what Jaclyn does with these blocks!

Courthouse Steps - February Canadians Quilt Bee Block

I'm on deck to host TGIFF! this week so get those finishes ready and join me!

Friday 6 February 2015

If A Tree Falls - A Work in Progress

Happy Friday, all! December was my month to be Queen Bee for my Canadians Quilt Bee and I had asked my bee mates to make me a red, aqua and grey (or some combination thereof) modern Christmas tree block on a white background. I've now received all of the blocks so I decided to put them up on the wall to see what we've got.


This won't be the final layout, but I'm loving this so far. I'm so pleased with the variety of blocks and the different sizes of trees. Thank you bee mates! :)

I added one block with the 'tree' on its side à la the philosophical experiment of "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Because some of the blocks have different whites, I think I'll add more whites to make it look more intentional and balanced.

Have a fabulous weekend!
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