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Bug Jar Quilt

During the big ‘Fall into Fall’ giveaway, I had a visitor comment on one of my other posts. The visitor was Mary of Needled Mom. She left me a comment on my Quilt Show Part 2 post saying that she had previously made the ‘Bug Jar Quilt’ that I mentioned wanting to make. Here is the quilt from the quilt show I went to see:

My own thoughts on this one were “Love this quilt. It is a commercial pattern and I will make it someday. I just have to get the pattern … and the fabrics … and well … the time. But someday I will!”, so when Mary said she had made it before of course I asked her where she got the pattern as I had been looking for it for some time. Mary had made the quilt many years ago for her grandson, but she took a peek through her stash to see if she still had a copy of the pattern. Unfortunately she did not, but she did find an Etsy seller for me that did have a pdf copy of the pattern. Click on the pic below to be taken to the pattern for sale.

I had never heard of the seller, bcheri, before. I am hesitant to buy pdf’s of patterns as sometimes people just scan in their copy, which is obviously against copyright laws. The picture of the pattern didn’t have the pattern makers name on it, so I just wasn’t sure if the Etsy seller was the pattern maker, but I decided to take a chance on it anyway. The pattern is not a reproduction at all. The pdf is not scanned, it is an original pdf pattern. From the pdf itself I was able to determine that, Beth Maddocks of Piece By Number, is the pattern maker and the owner of the Etsy store I bought it from. That came with great relief as I could feel very comfortable using the pattern now. Beth had great service, she had the pattern to me within 24 hours of payment, and she followed up to be sure the pattern didn’t end up in my spam folder. I would highly recommend her as an Etsy seller.

I let Mary know that I had picked up the pattern, and thanked her for helping me find it. She then asked for my address as she wanted to send me a few buggy fabrics she had found in her stash. A few weeks later these pretties showed up on my doorstep:

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Awesome right?! This gives me such a head start on collecting buggy fabrics!! It’s not always easy to find a good variety in a store, so I may do a trade for more buggy fabrics as well, but Mary’s generosity certainly got me started!

I am excited to get started collecting fabrics for this quilt, and even more excited that I may actually get this one done someday. Writing this blog has just been a fun way to share my projects with the world (as my husband only pretends to care), and meeting people like Mary is the icing on the cake!

Happy Quilting!
Rachel

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Honey Bun Bargello

After I finished putting together the top for my Funky Chicken quilt, I had a few blocks left over. I offered these blocks up to a few of the other members of the swap so they could have some extras to play with when making their quilts. In exchange I just asked that they send me a few scraps since I love to play with other people’s scraps for my quilts. Well one girl was nice enough to send me a whole honey bun! A honey bun is a roll of about 40, 1 1/2 inch strips. All the strips come from one coordinating line of fabric. I had never worked with a honey bun before, so I was excited to give it a try. After thinking about a pattern, I finally settled on a Bargello pattern. Here is the top I made.

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I had Kris help me take that picture, of course it was windy out when we took the pics, so getting this just right took a few shots. Just for fun, here are a few outtakes.

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Happy Quilting!
Rachel

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Pure Layer Cake

Recently I won a $25 gift card to the Fat Quarter Shop. I decided to put this to good use to pick up a layer cake of the ‘Pure’ line by Sweetwater for Moda. I have been in love with this line since before it came out when FQS just had previews of it up. This was a great chance to pick it up.

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I enjoy shopping at FQS, they always have quick service and their stuff is well packaged. While I was waiting for my layer cake to arrive, I perused the web for some patterns that would work with a layer cake. I wanted to try and make a quilt with only this layer cake, no extra fabric added. I knew it would be a challenge, but I did find a wonderful pattern on the Moda Bake Shop blog. This is a fun blog where all sorts of people post tutorials for making quilts, many of which are using Moda’s pre-cuts, which is wonderful. I ended up picking the ‘Boxed in Quilt’ pattern by KarrieLyne of Freckled Whimsy. (click the picture to be taken to the pattern)

She wrote the pattern to go with the Lollipop Layer cake, which has a few solids in it, but she mentioned that you could also do a layer cake with no solids, and just move the centers around. This is what I decided to do this with the ‘Pure’ layer cake. When the layer cake arrived, I paired up 40 of the squares, trying to have a decent contrast between the pairs.

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Each of these pairs will have one fabric for the outside and one for the inside. Then it will be reversed. This allows each pair will make 2 blocks. The layout will be 8×5, and with the blocks finishing at 8.5 inches, the quilt will be 42.5×68. If I add a border on, I think this will make a nice sized quilt.

I had 2 extra squares because the layer cake came with 42 squares and I only needed 40, so I did a quick test of the blocks. You can see how the middles get changed and the two blocks end up being a reverse of each other.

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This was my first time working with a layer cake. I am not quite sure how I like it. The pinking is a bit annoying, though I know without it; these blocks would be a stringy mess. I haven’t actually made more blocks yet, but by the time I am done this quilt, I think I will be very acquainted with working with a layer cake. My son Kolby has already laid claim to this quilt, so I better get cracking on it!

Happy Quilting!
Rachel

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Quilty Inspiration

This week’s quilty inspiration comes from Jacquie at Tallgrass Prairie Studio.

This mini quilt really appealed to me because it is so different from the norm. Jacquie titled this “Three Sheets to the Wind”, which I find so funny! I am drawn to quilts that are not your normal block design, which is why I have been looking at applique quilts more and more. I would love to make something like this little mini someday.

Happy Quilting!
Rachel

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Dear Jane Blocks A-3 and A-12

I have two more blocks done for my Dear Jane quilt. I actually made A-3 some time ago. I like it, but it isn’t my best job in applique. Done is done though!

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A-12 was a pretty complicated block to make. It is labeled as an ‘intermediate’ block. The pieces on this are tiny. Some of those triangles finished at just barely over a 1/4 of an inch!

One thing I learned on this block is that making two of each block is a wonderful thing and a very crazy thing. The purple block was made first and probably took me a good two hours to make. After I finished I really really didn’t want to make another! I waited until the next day and thought on some of the mistakes I made, then started in on the blue and orange one. You can’t really tell from the front, but the seams are way better on the second one.

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With every Dear Jane block I make, I learn something new about sewing and precision quilting. I also learn to let the little imperfections go because sometimes finished is way better than perfect.

Happy Quilting!
Rachel

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Halloween Goodie Bags

Leading up to Halloween a lot of the quilting blogs I follow had some really fun Halloweenish projects. One project that caught my eye was from Wendy at Why Knot?. She made a bunch of little totes to hold treats for her trick or treaters:

Though I really loved the idea, I knew I would never make that many in time, so I decided to just make a couple for two little girls that my son is close friends with.

The pattern comes from The Happy Zombie. She had it published at better Homes & Garden, so the pattern can now be found on their site:

It is a very easy pattern. You end up with 4 little bags out of just 2 fat quarters. I only wanted to make 2 bags, so I just adjusted my cutting accordingly, but I found it very quick to get these together. I used some of my leftover Sweet Divinty fabric that I had won a while back. The only thing I did different than the pattern, was I did a little topstitch at the top of the bag. It’s not really necessary, but I think it gives it a nice finished look. here are my two finished bags:

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And to give you an idea of their size, here they are with a green apple:

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I happened to have some pink ribbon around the house, but you could also make the handles from matching fabric. My husband filled the bags up with little treats for the girls, and when they came by the house to trick or treat they got this special little package. I tried to take pictures of them full, but only discovered after they were given away that my card wasn’t actually in the camera at the time!

I am totally keeping this pattern in my arsenal, I can think of so many great uses for it.

Happy Quilting!
Rachel

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Quilty Inspiration

This week’s inspiration comes from Bonnie at Quiltville.

If you have never visited Bonnie’s website, be sure that you do. She has some of the best ideas for making quilts with scraps. I have a thing for optical illusion quilts. I especially enjoy it when, by placement of color and design, the quilt looks way more complicated than it really is. That is why this particular quilt appealed to me. It looks like it is made up of quarter square triangle blocks set on point, but really the blocks are 2 half square triangles set in rows. If you click on the picture there, you will find instructions to make this quilt. It really is super simple, but creates a really eye catching design.

Happy Quilting!
Rachel

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Basic Grey Origins

When I did more paper scrapbooking, Basic Grey was always my favorite paper. I love the distressed, worn in look that Basic Grey is famous for. Not too long ago I discovered that Basic Grey is now turning their designs into fabric. Wonderfully pretty, distressed fabric. I have not had the chance to actually try any of their fabrics yet, so I am not sure if I will love the distressed look in a quilt, but I recently picked this up.

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It’s a layer cake of Basic Grey’s line, Orgins. I am not quite sure what I will be doing with it yet, but right now I am just petting it. I have never owned a layer cake before and it just looks so darn pretty!

Any suggestions for a layer cake friendly quilt pattern? I am thinking of one called ‘Ashcombe’, but not sure yet.

Happy Quilting!
Rachel

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Halloween Napkins

After the ladies in the Bee Creative swap helped me make my Halloween quilt, I had a lot of fabric leftover. There wasn’t really enough to make another whole quilt, but I wanted to find something fun to do with it. I have had a few napkin tutorials saved in my “someday” files for some time. I decided to finally give it a try with my Halloween fabric.

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The tutorial I chose to use came from Film in the Fridge. She had a great tutorial for making a napkin with rick rack around the edge.

I chose not to do the rick rack, but the basic instructions for the napkin are the best I could find. I didn’t use her sizes, I basically cut a 1/4 yard piece of fabric in half to get my two pieces. I also pieced some extra strips I had to make them a bit more interesting. the basic name of the napkin making game was to use up scraps.

Here are a few individual shots of my napkins:

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Happy Quilting!
Rachel

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Baby Blanket

This is my son’s baby blanket.

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I made this 7 years ago when my son was born. Ihonestly knew very little (make that, next to nothing) about quilting at the time. I had only made a few other quilts before this one, so I decided to use a pattern that was simple to make and that I had used before. The pattern is called ‘Yellow Brick Road’. I would highly recommend it for beginners.

At the time, I didn’t know how to do a regular binding so I wrapped the backing to the front on all my quilts.

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The backing was a cute dinosaur fabric that I had, and I still have pieces of that hanging around my house.

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Here’s the part of the story that I am completely ashamed of though. This was not the first blanket I made. I put together another quilt, one that had much cuter fabrics than this one. I had the top finished, I basted the backing, batting, and top and then attempted to quilt it on my domestic machine. The thing was, I didn’t have a walking foot, didn’t know I needed one, so the quilt ended up all bunchy and weird looking because it wasn’t feeding through right. No big deal right? Just unpick and tie it like I had all my other quilts right? Well stupid, stupid me didn’t realize that unpicking was even an option. I threw the whole thing away. Yes, you heard me right. Only because my machine sewing was bad, I chucked this great quilt in the trash. I did not even remember this story until I took pictures of this quilt to share with all of you and the horror came flooding back to me. I absolutely cannot believe I was so stupid. I can only hope that someone way smarter than me rescued the quilt from the trash and unpicked it, like I should have, and made some child happy with it.

Even though I detest frogging, I certainly would have done it instead of wasting so much fabric and batting. I do not even have pictures of the first quilt, but I do remember that the fabrics were more boyish. I wanted the quilt done before he was born, so the I just grabbed whatever fabrics I had on hand. I can absolutely promise you I have never thrown away another quilt. My son loves this quilt, though he is not attached to it like a lot of children are to their blankies. I had a blankie that was basically rags by the time I was his age. He doesn’t ‘need’ this to sleep, but he will sleep with it. In fact he’ll sleep with it and 10 other quilts. He doesn’t have one favorite blanket, they are all his favorites.

Happy Quilting!
Rachel