Category Archives: Quilts & Quilting

Fabric (Postcard!) Friday

No fooling, fabric postcards!

Recently, one of my fabulous Talk To Me Tuesday friends, Clumsy Chord, organized a fabric postcard swap over on fabricpostcard

This is a summary of that swap with both what I received and what I sent. It was a huge amount of fun and I loved getting to experiment!

I’ll start with the postcards that I received, because they are FABULOUS! They all make me think of spring, which is lovely, because it’s just what I need right now.

Top (L-R) lovely sunrise inspired card from Kristel (clumsy chord), and gorgeous serged ribbon card from Erin

Bottom (L-R) sweet spring birds by Patti and a very plant/spring inspired card “grow” from Amanda

They’re all fabulous and I have them hanging on the wall in my sewing/craft room!

For my cards, I took the opportunity to play on a small scale with a few different ideas. I challenged myself to use different fabrics and techniques on each one. The results are what you see here!

Postcard backs, before addressing!

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One Cross Stitch To Rule Them All

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Some time ago, the amazing Shae (tumblr, blog, etsy) gifted me with an amazing piece of cross stitch that she designed not only for me, but for my family. She knows we’re big Lord of the Rings fans and ingeniously combined our name with a little fandom awesome and created the gorgeous piece of cross stitch you see.

The edges were unfinished when I received her awesome work and I knew I had to do something fabulous with it. The result is what you see in the top photo.

The fabrics I used were all Fairy Frost from Michael Miller. LOVE FF…love, love, love!

After starting with Shae’s amazing cross stitch, I was able to finish everything but the outside border in one sitting. I added the last border a little later so it would fit the frame of my choice.

I intentionally made the outside border larger than it needed to be. Then, using the glass from the frame I purchased as well as the grid on my cutting mat, I lined up the piece as evenly as possible.

Then, I trimmed!

Not shown – I also trimmed a piece of cotton batting to the same size to help hold the quilt in place inside the frame. The result is what you see above!

On the back of the frame, I made a note of who made each part of the project and when. It’s just a simple note, but it’ll be awesome for future generations of Ofensteins to know!

Before deciding on this layout, I played around with ideas in EQ7 as seen in my pre-retreat post! When it came down to it, what I really wanted were earth tones (with a little sparkle!) and triangles. I love triangles in quilts.

I have so much more wonderful post-retreat projects to share! See you then!

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PoD Week 12

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This is your weekly reminder that The Project of Doom, A Harry Potter Block of the Week Mystery Quilt, is taking place over on Harry Potter Paper Piecing (hp_paperpiecing on Livejournal).

The Week 12 pattern is now online! This week’s pattern is fun and I’m really looking forward to seeing the fun fabrics that can be used for it!

Want how other quilters are interpreting the PoD patterns? You can see related photo posts here.

Previous Patterns:

Links go straight to posts including block samples. If you do not wish to see photos of the blocks, click this link for previous posts.

Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five
Week Six
Week Seven
Week Eight
Week Nine
Week Ten
Week Eleven + corrected alternative block

If you participate, and you’re part of the hp_paperpiecing community (it’s easy, you just need a Livejournal account), you’ll be eligible for awesome prizes every month! There are details on the site…so GO!

*PoD pattern posts go to the PoD page, with the actual block behind a link to keep it a mystery!

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PoD Week 11

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This is your weekly reminder that The Project of Doom, A Harry Potter Block of the Week Mystery Quilt, is taking place over on Harry Potter Paper Piecing (hp_paperpiecing on Livejournal).

The Week 11 pattern is online! I’m really excited about sharing this week and I hope you enjoy piecing today’s pattern as much as I did!

Want how other quilters are interpreting the PoD patterns? You can see related photo posts here.

Previous Patterns:

Links go straight to posts including block samples. If you do not wish to see photos of the blocks, click this link for previous posts.

Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five
Week Six
Week Seven
Week Eight
Week Nine
Week Ten

*PoD pattern posts go to the PoD page, with the actual block behind a link to keep it a mystery!

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Tree Trimming Kit

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I’m happy to share with you all that I will be participating in the Austin Area Quilt Guild’s 2011 Gift of Quilting! I will be representing Honey Bee Quilt Store and offering my Tree Trimming class as part of the program.

With the help of my friend Osie, who also works at Honey Bee, I put together this new color combination especially for The Gift of Quilting. As an added bonus, the kit is available not only to those participating in GoQ, but to anyone!

You can order online directly from Honey Bee or you can stop by the store to pick up your kit.

The $22 kit includes the Tree Trimming pattern, all the fabric to make the quilt top as well as the binding. All you need is batting and backing fabric!

Honey Bee Quilt Store
9308 Anderson Mill Rd #300
Austin, TX 78729

Do you prefer to use your own fabric? You can also purchase just the pattern! It’s just $8 for PDF Instant Download from my E-Junkie Shop!

Tree Trimming PDF Instant Download $8

Or, if you prefer to have a hardcopy version of the pattern, but would like to use your own fabrics, you can purchase a copy from my Etsy shop and I will send it right to your door!

As always, happy quilting!

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Pre-Treat Thoughts

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It’s early (for a Saturday morning) and I’m giving myself this much time *holds up fingers* to try and get caught up before today’s Linus meeting.

I’m in hardcore pre-Retreat countdown mode. It’s kind of like going to a conn, the excitement, the planning, the lack of sleep…the big difference is there’s no hotel bill and the only costuming are our pjs.

Common interests? Check. Something to do every second of every day? Check. Food? Check! Fun? Check, check, check!

I’ve been putting together a list of what I’m taking and it just keeps growing. I think a couple of my UFO projects that I’m feeling kind of ‘meh’ about might stay behind.

So far, this is my list (you can several of these on my 2011 UFO post):

To finish:

Bear Paws
Christmas Quilt
HP Swap Quilt*
New York Beauty

*I have taken the HP swap blocks to the last two retreats and not touched them. The real problem is that I have no idea how I want to lay them out, so they just get transported back and forth. If I have time before Wednesday, I’m going to import all the photos into EQ7 and play with layouts. Maybe I can get inspired…

To Be Cut/Pieced:

POD blocks to be made – pre-sorted with fabric ready to go
LotR x-stitch gifted from Shae with mock-ups done in EQ7 so I can decide on the final layout
Green swap squares plus purple for 10 Minute Blocks
Churn Dash Blocks + shirting (need!) and red or brown fabric (also with EQ7 mock-ups)
5 @ The Hive BOM blocks

Needs to be quilted…might take:

Wingless Wyrm
My Kitchen Window
Classic Film

Other:

Rope & Bag O’ Selvage for basket making
Secret Pattern and Fabric for Secret Project
Take triangles from exchange…just in case!

EQ7 Mock Up Layouts for LotR X-Stitch and Churn Dash:

I have a whole set Churn Dash blocks that look similar to this one:

These are some of the layouts I’ve thought about. The first one is my favorite, especially if I can find some shirting I like in the quilt shops we visit on the way down to Canyon Lake.

Any opinions or suggestions on the layouts? I’d love to hear them!

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St. Patrick Shamrock!

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Are you wearing green today? Even more importantly, do you have green fabric?

Good, because I have a brand new free paper pieced pattern to share with you!

I thought a fun and simple Shamrock pattern would be just the thing to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day!

5″ paper pieced Shamrock Pattern

After years of hand-drafting all my patterns in Photoshop, I’ve been learning EQ7. The learning curve is finally getting smaller and I still prefer to color and number my own patterns in Photoshop, but I have discovered that one of my favorite things to do with EQ7 are fun quilt layouts! This one is super simple, but I hope it inspires you to create a little Shamrock quilt of your own!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day…and happy quilting!

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PoD week 10

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Just a reminder, The Project of Doom, A Harry Potter Block of the Week Mystery Quilt, is taking place over on Harry Potter Paper Piecing (hp_paperpiecing on Livejournal).

The Week 10 pattern is live…and we are officially 1/3 of the way through our weekly blocks!

Want how other quilters are interpreting the PoD patterns? You can see related photo posts here.

*PoD pattern posts go to the PoD page, with the actual block behind a link to keep it a mystery!

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UFO Update – Black & Red Afghan

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Remember this, when I posted about the UFOs and such I’d like to get finished in 2011? Well, the end of February saw me finishing these blocks above into this afghan below!

The black/red squares came from a Twilight Crafts swap in 2009. I made all the white ones to give it a checkered effect and to help the black/red blocks really stand out.

I crocheted all the blocks together with white yarn, then crocheted around with black. Once I changed to white yarn, I crocheted evenly around and then continued with the border, most of which is done in hdc. The finishing row is a reverse sc (aka crab stitch), which adds a really awesome ridged texture.

I really like the finished product and have decided that I will keep this one for myself. Quite a few of my friends participated in this swap and it makes me happy to have a little piece of their craftiness!

Remember the stairs? I will have something to share about those very soon!!

14 days until my bee’s annual quilt retreat!

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