TGIFF and Sea Glass Star Quilt Top

Welcome to another Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday party 😊 I'm playing catch-up today and posting a quilt top that was finished back in April, but I hadn't taken pictures to be able to share it until now.

I'm doing a Mini of the Month pattern series in the Stash Artists membership this year and the May pattern was a fun one. Meet Sea Glass Star!

I combined a few different inspirations together to create this design:

1. People make art with actual sea glass, gluing the pieces to canvas or paper to create images, sometimes with the addition of painted or drawn lines. Scroll through this Pinterest search to see examples.

2. Ali of Exhausted Octopus makes beautiful sea glass quilts and teaches her method in a class (which I've never taken, so I'm not sure if my method is the same as hers). Her sea glass quilts tend to have a colour-wash effect and don't form an image.

3. The ticker tape-style quilts I've made in the past, like my Ticker Tape Heart Rainbow, creating a shape with square, rectangular, and triangular pieces of fabric.

Put all that together, shake it up a bit, add some hand embroidery, and you get my Sea Glass Star mini quilt.

I have a whole series of sea glass art mini quilts vying for attention in my head. They've been gathering for years while I worked on other things and I'm so happy I finally made the first one. I'm working on another one now for an event in the fall, and I'm really looking forward to sharing that when the time comes.

Believe it or not, I wasn't aiming for my Sea Glass Star to be blue. I tried about a dozen colour combinations in EQ8, but nothing really grabbed me until I tried the light, medium, and dark blues. That immediately had me nodding my head and pulling my blue scrap basket off the shelf. I shouldn't be surprised, since I really love my blues, but I swear I tried to use other colours!

I was happy to see I did have light, medium, and dark blue Aurifil 12 wt thread in my stash. I used 2720, 2735, and 2784 to embroider a simple backstitch to outline the sections of the star.

I ended up doing most of the embroidery while we were on the road, some of it while going to a surprise birthday party for my in-laws, who both turned 80 this spring, and some while going to move Zach out of his dorm room. I wasn't sure embroidery would work well as an on-the-road project, especially considering the dismal state of our roads, but it was perfect. 

Cutting the sea glass pieces was like doing a meditative puzzle. I worked on one section at a time, leaving the paper backing on the pieces until I had them all puzzled together to fill the section.

I used Lite Steam-a-Seam 2 for the fusible, which is slightly tacky, so after I peeled the paper backing off I finger pressed the pieces onto the background and that held them in place temporarily. Once all the pieces in the section were ready, I fused them down with my Oliso project iron.

For the medium and dark fabrics, I tried not to repeat a fabric in a section, but most of the fabrics are used in multiple sections. It was fun to use some of my really small scraps! My pieces range from ½" square(ish) to about 1" square(ish) and 1" x 1 ½" rectangle(ish). The fun thing about making fabric sea glass is there's no wrong shape since real sea glass comes in every possible shape. 

I've made a few blue quilts lately, though they haven't all made to it the blog yet, and my blue scrap basket is still overflowing. I guess I need to keep making blue quilts!

I'm looking forward to eventually quilting my Sea Glass Star. The question now is, when will I take the time to do that instead of chasing after the next shiny new project?

That's my recent(ish) finish! What have you finished lately? Link it up below and be sure to visit some of the other links to celebrate their finishes, too.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Skip Ahead Baby Quilt

Welcome to another TGIFF party, where we get to celebrate our recent finishes!

I always love getting to make a new quilt, and I especially love it when I know the new quilt will be going to a new baby. When that new quilt will be going to a new baby whose parents actually use the quilts I've given them, it's even better! This Skip Ahead baby quilt will be going to a great-nephew due to arrive in a couple of months and I'm looking forward to seeing pictures of him on it.

Skip Ahead is the Stash Artists pattern for July and the pattern includes throw and queen sizes along with the baby size. I was debating which size to make because I really love making throw quilts, but then I remembered little man on the way and decided this was the perfect design for his quilt. And bonus, it used an off-cut piece of my Warm and Natural batting.

For a while I was calling the design Citrus and Blue, but I try not to reference the colours I used in the pattern names since most people probably won't choose the same colours. I do love the combination of citrus colours for the kite shaped blocks and the blues for the squares, but needed to come up with something else for the name. The name Skip Ahead comes from the diagonal paths created by the shapes and how it looks like we could skip along on the paths.

I chose to use all solid fabrics for the blue squares and all prints for the citrus colours. Some of the prints are pretty subtle, so they don't show up well in the pictures, but they're not solids.

The kite blocks are paper pieced, so I used freezer paper to make mine (of course!). I traced two templates and used them for all of the blocks. I love that the freezer paper templates are reusable! Learn more about the freezer paper technique in this on-demand workshop.

I knew right away that I wanted to quilt wishbones in the kite blocks. It's one of my favourite designs to quilt, especially in a shape that changes widths like this one. Wishbones are so forgiving - they don't have to be perfect to look good and they can be made any size to fit the shape you're trying to fill. They also work nicely to flow from one shape into another when you have a long line of connected blocks.

It took a bit longer to decide how to quilt the blue squares. I wanted something simple that would connect from block to block like the wishbones. I love when I can quilt a whole line across a quilt without needing to break the thread! Eventually I settled on a spiral that enters the block in one corner, spirals into the center, then back out, and exits the block in the opposite corner. I can guarantee you no two spirals are the same! Thankfully they still look good, even with the variations.

Then it was time to quilt the background. "Just quilt a good-size stipple," I told myself. That sounded like a good idea, especially since it would be quick for filling in all that space. Of course, I then proceeded to quilt a very dense stipple, which was not at all quick. Oops! My default is still to quilt very small, even when I'm intending to quilt larger. I do love how it looks, though, so that's good.

With the three different quilting designs, the texture on the back is amazing!

I chose three blue solids to use for a scrappy binding and I love how they frame the quilt without really drawing attention. I also love how the quilt looks with the ocean in the background 😊 We haven't seen any whales yet this summer, but hopefully that will change soon.

If you love scrappy, stash-friendly patterns, like Skip Ahead, and virtual sewing sessions with friends, join us in Stash Artists!

That's my finish, what have you finished lately? Link it up below and then be sure to visit some of the other quilters to celebrate their finishes, too.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

My First Quilt with Maude MacDonald

It's the last Friday in June, which means school is out and we officially have no children in high school anymore. That just blows my mind! Nathan says it hasn't really hit him because right now it just feels like any other last day of school. September will feel different for all of us, though, with him heading off to university and leaving just the two of us here at home.

It being the last Friday of the month also means it's time for another My First Quilt interview! This month my fellow Canadian, Maude MacDonald is sharing the story of her first quilt.

Maude MacDonald is a quilter, author, and designer who creates quilts and patterns, teaches people to trust their taste, and helps creative businesses find a look and voice that actually feels like them. She loves bold colour, old things, and doing things her own way - and believes perfection is vastly overrated while making things meant to be used, shared, and remembered.

You can connect with Maude at her website and on Instagram.

And now, here's Maude's first quilt! It's the first time we've featured someone whose first quilt was a t-shirt quilt!

What year did you make your first quilt? What prompted you to make it?

Winter 2018 - I needed a Christmas gift for my Dad & didn’t have a lot of money to spend.

What techniques were used in that first quilt? Did you quilt it yourself?

I guess it was traditional patchwork- I made my Dad a t shirt quilt with scissors, about 5 safety pins, no clue about interfacing or the process of quilting. I literally just went for it.

Who taught you to make the quilt?

Me and a hope and a dream lol

Are the colours you chose for your first quilt ones you would still choose today?

Oh no! This was a t shirt quilt made of mostly my Dad’s old NASCAR shirts. 

Did you fall in love with quilting right away? Or was there a gap between making the first quilt and the next one?

Well after this one I decided my stepmom needed a quilt for Christmas too, and that led me to the fabric store. After that my mom requested her own quilt and insisted I use a pattern which was a trip around the world, and with the combination of these three quilts I was hooked.

Where is the quilt now?

My Dad still uses it in the winter. It has wool batting so it’s really warm (I wasn’t aware at the time it was wool batting!) 

Is there anything you wish you could go back and tell yourself as you made that first quilt?

Maybe a few structural things, like how to baste or even use a dang rotary cutter! But no- I went for it and completely discovered quilting accidentally and on my own and I think that’s how it was meant for me.

Anything else you want to share about your first quilt?

The first one, third, tenth even wasn’t perfect, but I had fun making every quilt I’ve made and they all are loved and used.

Thanks for sharing the story of your first quilt with us, Maude!