Summertime Stars/Marvel Comics Quilt

My second quilt was inspired by the Marvel Comics fabrics found at Fabric Worm fabrics that came out with the Avengers movie. I loved them, their bright colors and large scale.  I had to have them, looked at them everyday on line and waited just long enough till they were sold out (mostly, I did purchase some yardage from FW).  Loser!    Then I had to stalk them on Ebay and buy up what I could find at Fabric Depot along with some complementary ditsy quarters that would balance out their large scale.

Now, what to make....something for and super heros lover.  Perfect birthday present for my bedroom, I mean my 8 year old nephew's bedroom.  I missed out on being a little boy who worships super heros.

I picked this pattern from Fig Tree Quilts  that I originally planned to make a 4th of July quilt for myself. 

Super easy to cut out, you just copy the pattern three times and make 3 stacks of 10.

Make the cuts and then take the top star off the stack and put it aside.  It will be the center of the last square. 

The hardest thing to do was to get the large scale super heros to not be cut up too much in the star. 

Then over the actual 4th of July weekend, I spent a bunch of my time off just sewing star after star and listening to NPR.

This quilt is pretty fast to piece together.  Then with the help of my assistant and his armadillo, I laid out the squares trying to balance the obnoxious color and scale.  And not put any patterns that were the same next to each other.   

You will see that I didn't succeed in the final version.  I got two in the bottom corner next above each other, oh well.  It's so crazy you kind of don't notice.  I backed it with black and hand quilted around each star in a contrast color.  I used primary blue, red, green, yellow and also black and white.

This is a feeble attempt to show the quilted stars on the backing.   It's pretty subtle.

The binding was hand stitched as well and I machine quilted along all the seams of the squares. 

Here's my assistant on the final quilt, showing off new hair cut and still obsessed with armadillo.

At the birthday party opening his gift, my nephew Gray.

Nephew suffering through a hug from me in front of quilt.

Happily enjoying quilt on bed. 

At some point I need to make a quilt for myself!

My First Quilt

I got a wild hair this summer to make this quilt.  I had seen it on Very Prairie Blog, and then bought the book "Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts " by Joelle Hoverson.  From this beautiful book I made my first project, and I blogged about it here. 

But I always had this one in the back of my mind as a doable first quilt.  A gift for someone having a baby.  It has lots of colorful bang for your buck.  So I ventured out to JoAnne's with a coupon and found 52 different fabrics to make my color wheel. Well, I had some fabrics from this project, and I used them where the could be fit in.  So I think I actually bought about 45 pieces.   And when I cut it out I cut 2 of each so I have another one ready to go when I want to make it again.

Here are all the pieces laid out on my kitchen counter and butcher block so I can get the look. Love the space in the new house.

You sew the wheel in quadrants.  Here I've laid out pairs and pinned them.

I took photos of each quadrant laid out so I could make sure I put the pairs together correctly

Here is the chaining method I used (learned from UTUBE) to continuously sew the pairs.

Here's what it looks like when you've chained pairs.  I used a leading fabric to start sewing, then sewed right onto my actual fabric. Then I clipped in between.

This is the back side of one quadrant.  I pressed the seam allowances toward the darker fabric where I could.

Meanwhile I did make a little blanket for my baby. A doggie blanket. Just a square of the fleece with binding.  They make a fleece binding now but it's only available in black or white at most stores.

My inspiration was a dog blanket from Old Navy that my other dog used to sit on in the car. Mochi loves this. one and we use it for training "go to your bed."
It has terriers but no Yorkie. Darn.

And in other news, Mochi graduated from "Good Puppy" school this week. He can sit and stay and lay down all with either verbal or hand signals.  He can come when called, walk by my side and "leave it" and "drop it".  The last two are marginal but today when he ran off with the directions to a new quilt I'm planning I said, "Drop It!" and he did.

Then, he waited patiently for his treat which I was glad to give.  No teeth punctures noted on the instructions. I wonder how well that would work with a piece of steak?  Wish I had that one when we found the dead squirrel in the back yard last weekend.

And here's the graduate.  3lbs and all hair.  He's attempting to sit/stay. 

More photos of the quilt coming later this weekend.  AND I bought a serger today (with my yet to be received bonus).  Yay!!!  Can't wait to fire that bad boy up and make some knits......