Oklahoma Tornado Relief: Moore Love

I'm sure you've seen the devastation in Moore, OK on the news.  It's really sad for me since Oklahoma City was my home for a year after optometry school, where I met my boyfriend, where I met so many friends.  The people are so friendly and these challenges are disheartening.  My friends are all safe, but I just found out today that two of my former co-workers lost everything in the tornado.  

The Oklahoma City Modern Quilt Guild is collecting quilts for victims.  If you'd like to help, you can find more info here.  Please mail completed quilts by June 30.  You can email okcmqg@gmail.com for the address.  Of course my prayers go out to all the citizens of Moore and those affected by the tornado.  

May Ima Bee Blocks Part 1

Marilyn wanted us to make Alaska Homestead blocks for her this month using orange, gold, yellow, pink, and brown.  I never would have put these colors together myself, but they sure look great together!  These blocks are 9.5" I believe.

It's funny how interconnected we all become through the internet.  I've never met Marilyn in person, but we have a mutual friend in the Austin Modern Quilt Guild!  Maybe someday we'll meet in person :)

Quilter's Favorites

Geta from Geta's Quilting Studio is hosting a lovely link up in the quilting community to help us share our favorite quilting tips.  So, without further adieu, here are some of mine!

List a few of your favorite quilting notions. 

 - I don't feel like I use that many notions when I'm sewing.  Pins?  No. Fancy rulers?  No. No.  I do pin baste my quilts together and I love using the Kwik Klip to save my fingers some stress.  

image from JoAnn fabrics

Any advice for a successful color scheme of a quilt ?

 - I'm still branching out into creating my own color schemes.  I used to exclusively use Moda Precuts because they are a fast and easy way to get a variety of fabrics that coordinate beautifully.  Now after making many quilts with the precuts, I've started experimenting with my own color palettes.  Sometimes it works, sometimes I don't love the results, but now I know for next time!  
   Pinterest is great for color inspiration too.  Lots of quilters I follow have a color palette board that I pin my favorites here.  Design Seeds is a great website that uses a photo to create a color palette for you.  I could spend all day on their site!  

Image from Design Seeds

Some thoughts about thread and needles, batting, fabrics ?  

 - I usually use Gutterman 100% cotton thread for all aspects of my projects. I also usually use Warm and White quilt batting.
   Never underestimate the importance of a fresh, sharp needle!  I gave myself quite the headache on my Weekender Bag and all I really needed to do was change my needle...  

Tips for easy piecing

 - I rarely pin things together when I'm piecing, so it's very important to me that all of my pieces are cut the proper size.  Measure twice, cut once!  Depending on what I'm working on, I may press seams towards the dark side so they nestle together well and I don't have to pin things together, or I press seams open to reduce bulk if I have a lot of seams coming together at one point.

If you enjoy other quilt techniques than patchwork, could you share some tips with us ? 

 - When making my Weekender Bag, I tried quilt as you go, and definitely think I'll be making more projects this way!  It was fast, fun, and a great way to use small scraps.  

Do you have free tutorials on your blog? Share the link.

 - I have a tutorial for a flat iron cover here.

The sewing machine - share a few things you love at your sewing machine; what makes it special? What features do you think are the most important to a sewing machine used for quilting? 

 - I use a Bernina 440 with the BSR (Bernina Stitch Regulator) for free motion quilting.  I love it!  My stitch length is very consistent when FMQ and it makes my work look a lot better.  That's Carlton.  He's a lot bigger now and probably wouldn't fit...

Work in Progress Wednesday

I've been plugging away at making what feels like a zillion hour glass blocks using my vintage sheets stash.  I finished all of the cool hourglass blocks yesterday and now I need to sew them into 9 patch units.  This is going to be a great version of Elizabeth's Planetarium quilt!  Here's my first post on this quilt.  

Playing around with vintage sheets

When I first started sewing again a few years ago, I had a very small fabric budget and was scared to actually cut into expensive fabric store fabric.  What if I messed it up??  The first blog I started reading back in the day was Oh,Fransson! and Elizabeth had a great quilt using vintage sheets.  I started finding them at thrift shops and even participated in a couple rounds of vintage sheet swaps on Flickr.  I didn't get around to using a lot of them before I moved, so I gave some away and kept my favorites.

Fast forward a year or two and I was cleaning out my sewing area.  I found my favorite vintage sheet bundle and the Planetarium quilt from The Practical Guide to Patchwork was the perfect use for these great pieces!  I am very impatient and couldn't make 160 hourglass blocks before putting together one whole block.  So here's what I've come up with.  The original quilt used solids to frame the blocks, but I'm on a fabric diet and decided to use my stash.  I love Lizzy House jewels!  Only 15 more blocks to go... :)

May Blocks for Munki in the Middle Bee

I'm doing a small bee swap featuring Heather Ross fabrics, including Munki Munki prints from her pajama and clothing line.  I didn't really have any HR prior to this, so I've been collecting bits and pieces here and there when the price seems right.

Here's what I came up with for my May swap partner.  She wanted a churn dash with the HR in the center.

This block has a pink VW van piece in the center, a V&Co Simply Color teal ikat print for the churn dash, and the background is a white and black polka dot print. 

I may make up a copy of the second block for myself to keep :)  Both the telephones and the number print are from the same Munki Munki nightgown dress that I bought on eBay just to cut up.  I felt the Michael Miller blue and teal polka dot was a great accent for the churn dash!

I'm in another bee that has 2 people on the schedule to receive blocks for May, so I'd better get busy on the others!

Unsewing

Sometimes when I'm at work I have free time throughout the day where I've decided to be productive with hand work, like making a zillion hexies.  Today I decided to finally "unsew" all these extra pieces from various projects so they can go back in the scrap bins to be reused.  Most of these are from strip piecing my Irish chain quilts or the DS Quilts no HST zig zag quilt.  These precious lovelies may turn into a pillow, or maybe I'll get crazy and just start sewing and whacking things into submission a la Jacquie Gering!