::Blogger’s Quilt Festival:: Spring 2013

A big hello to everyone stopping by from the Blogger’s Quilt Festival!  The festival is hands down, my favorite biannual online event!  I love going through all of the other amazing quilts and blogs that are linked together.

AmysCreativeSide.com

This year, I’m choosing to enter my Blackberry Winter quilt.   I made this quilt for the past issue of Fat Quarterly magazine.  The theme was modern meets traditional.

This quilt took a very traditional (been around forever) HST layout and put my own little spin on it.

I’m choosing to enter this in the home machine quilted category.  This past year, I have really focused on my FMQ skills (and have come a long way! Remember this?)

I quilted swirls and flowers in all of the gray/negative space.  On the big squares, I did really large loopy ovals and again, the swirls and flowers inside of those.  For the small squares, I left them fairly open, quilting just 4 large, connected swirls.

::Quilt Stats::
Pattern:  Blackberry Winter by Kristen Danis
Quilting:  FMQ by Kristen Danis
Fabric:  Shelburne Falls by Denyse Schmidt, Kona Coal, Kona Berry, a Kona blue binding
 
 

See past Blogger’s Festival entries here:

Fall 2012

Spring 2012

Fall 2011

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::Checking In::

Hi!  I wanted to check in here and let you all know what I’ve been up to.   I’ve been so busy on the sewing front, but don’t have anything I can share!  And sewing things you can’t share makes for such a quiet blog!

I have also been sewing up some things for my little Etsy shop.  There’s not much in there, but after another shop update today, it’s getting more full!  I just listed a whole bunch of pleated zipper pouches (like my giveaway day item) as well as card wallets.

And among all of this “must do” sewing, I have a fun little side project going for me!

This will (one day) become a Maple Leaf Rag Quilt from the book Material Obsessions 2.  I’m having fun playing with the tiniest bits of scraps to make this!

So that’s about all that’s been going on in my little corner of the world.  I’ll be sure to stalk all of the lovely pictures and happenings going on at quilt market this weekend.  Are you going?  If so, take some good pictures for those of us #notgoingtomarket.  And if you are staying home and on Instagram, be sure to tag your goings on with #notgoingtomarket.  After all, misery loves company!

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::Giveaway Day Winner::

Well, I suppose you are all wondering who won the zippered pouch from giveaway day!

First, I wanted to say THANK YOU to each and every one of you who entered.  I was blown away by the amount of entries.  And all of the uses for zippered pouches were so fun to read.  It was pretty obvious that we all love our zippered bags!!  In fact, it made me want to make one for myself!

Congratulations, Joyce.  You will be receiving an email from me shortly!

And if you didn’t win this time around, there will be more giveaways here very soon!  And in the meantime, my Etsy shop is freshly full of some pleated zippered and quilted pouches.    with more to come soon! 

 Thanks again!

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::Giveaway Day::

Happy Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day!!

A great big welcome to everyone visiting for Giveaway Day.  This is my space full of finished quilts I have made, tutorials, patterns, giveaways and all things quilting and sewing!

I know you have a lot of fabulous blogs to visit today, so lets get to the giveaway, shall we?!

I love making a good zip pouch.  There are so many uses, that you can never have enough!!

I also like them to be big enough to be really versatile. So I created this pleated pouch to be big enough to carry whatever I might need: makeup when traveling, on the go sewing supplies, my tablet and other everyday necessities.

This pouch has a bright orange zipper with zipper tabs to match the bottom.  This inside is lined with a bright, cheery yellow dot.

The boxed bottom helps the pouch stand on it’s own, even when full!

Here’s my phone to show the scale of the bag. See, this little guy isn’t so little! (yet not too big where it wouldn’t fit in your purse)

(and if you are a quilter, let me know and I’ll fill it with some scraps before I send it away!)

Ready to enter for your chance to win?!

::To Enter::

  • leave a comment telling me what your favorite use for a zippered pouch
  • be a follower (and leave a second comment telling me where you follow:  Twitter: @kd_quilts Instagram: kd_quilts   Facebook  Bloglovin  or other blog reader)

 

Giveaway will remain open until Friday, May 10 with the winner announced on Saturday.  Due to the high volume of comments during a giveaway, I am unable to respond to all of you.  But know that I GREATLY appreciate your support of kd-quilts.  I would love to hear from you again in the future and get to know you better!  Thanks!!
 

Good Luck!

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::Pillow Swapping and a Little VBMQG Love::

Last weekend at the Virginia Beach Modern Quilt Guild, we had a pillow cover swap.  The way we do our swaps is we have an assigned secret partner.  We then make the swap item for that person, using their favorite colors/designs.

If you couldn’t guess, my partner wanted blues, gray and white.  I chose to make a giant wonky star.  I love stars for pillows. Well, I love stars for anything really.

I chose to quilt the pillow cover with loopy stars in the background and pebbles in the star. The pebbles start small in the points and then get bigger at the middle.

It’s finished with a simple envelope style, my favorite really.  If you are ever wanting to make a pillow, but have no idea what to do, check out I’m a Ginger Monkey for her awesome pillow closure tutorials!

The pillow I got in return was made by my friend, Chen.  Can you tell she knows me?!  Perfect colors, a star and some of my favorite prints!  You can’t see the back, but it’s the lavender pearl bracelet, matching the pillow I made for my couch last month! I super love this pillow!!

And this meeting happened to be our 1 year anniversary!  I started this group before I even moved out here and am so thrilled with how it has grown and really come together.  There are some really talented gals in our group!  I don’t know what I would do without it!

To celebrate our birthday, I made a birthday cake, and Chen got makeup bags and samples and we made goody bags for everyone with a handmade pincushion.  A wonderful birthday party indeed!

Happy Birthday VBMQG!!

Posted in Bees and Swaps, For the Home | 1 Comment

::Fat Quarterly Contribution:: Blackberry Winter

This quilt was one of my first finishes of 2013, way back in January.  I couldn’t wait to show it to you all, and now that the newest issue of Fat Quarterly has been released, I can!

I love Shelburne Falls.  I think it is probably my favorite Denyse Schmidt line, and that’s saying a lot considering how much I loved Hope Valley!

This Fat Quarterly issue is all about Traditional meeting Modern, and the fine line defining the two.  When I was thinking about the theme, I knew that Shelburne Falls was the perfect blend of modern and traditional.  These prints are so vintage, like a lot of her work, inspired by feed sacks but the colors she chooses makes the fabrics feel modern.  And the scale of her work always works so nicely in quilts.  She gets it.

I wanted the fabrics to speak for themselves.  The layout I created for these prints isn’t something Earth shattering, but I feel it blends traditional into the modern realm.

I tried out some new(ish) things when quilting this quilt.  I mashed together the swirls I love so much with some flowers and had a lot of fun combining the two designs!  As far as the prints, I wanted them to shine and have their own thing.  In the squares, I did this swirl thing, being a lighter design, to have the squares stand out.  In the open squares I did a loopy circle thing.  But I kinda think they ended up looking like Easter eggs!

Instructions to make your own Blackberry Winter Quilt (as well as seven other quilts, pillows, table runners and more) can be found in Issue 13 of Fat Quarterly.

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::Scrappy Trip Along::

I took the scenic route around the world.  Taking time to enjoy the view, seeing as it sat on my design wall for a good month.

There is something about this quilt that I was so drawn to. When all of the trips started happening, I was in NYC and remember thinking that I could not wait to get home and start one of my own.  And you better believe, the first day I was home I was chopping up 2.5 inch strips!

Aside from the actual quilt, another thing I love about it is the generosity and friendship that went into it.  Whenever I was cutting strips, I would cut double to give to a friend, and vice versa.  Although, I think she cut WAY more!

I found this print for the back at JoAnns.  I typically just use solids on the back of my quilts, but when I saw this print, I just knew it was going to be my scrappy trip back.

This quilt is 5 rows by 6 rows.  I really wish I would have made another row since I like super big quilts, but I wouldn’t have enough fabric for the back.  So I went ahead and just finished it.  It was also a lazy thing, I just wanted it to be finished!

I love the look of the scrappy trip quilts from afar, all spread out so that you can see the square designs.  I’m thinking I am going to start a new one, but a little smaller, to fill one of my walls that really needs some color!

 
::Quilt Stats::
Size: 5 blocks by 6 blocks *will update when I  go get  my ruler*
 Fabric: Super scrappy, back from JoAnns, binding is Betz White’s Stitch
Pattern: Scrappy Trip Around the World
Quilting:  Straight Lines, apx. 1/4 inch apart, by me
 
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::Any Road You Take:: My Winning Challenge Quilt

We finally had our Madrona Road challenge quilt reveal this past weekend at the Virginia Beach Modern Quilt Guild.  I have had my quilt finished for what seemed like forever, and I have been wanting to show pictures of it for so long!  I wanted my challenge quilt to be completely anonymous so I didn’t post any progress pictures anywhere.

I named my quilt Any Road You Take, kinda playing on the Madrona Road name as well as my journey to VA and my belief that any road you take will lead you where you are meant to be in life.

When I started this quilt, I had NO clue what I wanted to do with this fabric.  I’ll admit, it’s not my favorite.  I like the prints and design, but the colors are not my usual, or even ones that I really like.  I loved the herringbone looking print, so I based my design on that.  I made lots of large triangle blocks and then scattered them every which way.

The quilting was done using straight lines, 1/4 inch apart.  I made an echo of sorts from the pattern.  I made the triangles, but alternated the lines going up and down and side ways to create a distinctinction of each section of quilting.

I chose to use whatever was left to make a super scrappy binding of all of the prints used in the challenge.

And to my surprise, I WON!  My quilt was voted first place in the guild’s challenge.  I was completely shocked.  There were so many lovely quilts.  The members of VBMQG did a phenomenal job with their quilts, and I feel so honored to have won the challenge!  Thank you, ladies!

Posted in Quilts | 2 Comments

::Year of the WIP:: March

 

March felt fakely productive on my quest to have more WIPs.  I would put quilt projects aside to work on little things, like zippy pouches and pillow covers.

I started a new quilt, while my Scrappy Trip is still sitting waiting to be quilted!

This new quilt, based on Sara Fiekle’s Maple Rag quilt from Material Obsessions 2, is going to be a super long term project. But not as long as my crazy hexagon project!

I plan on piecing a few star points here and there until I have enough.  A very no pressure quilt.

There was also another finish, I just can’t share it quite yet.

So that’s it.  As I said, March felt productive, but I don’t really know why.  I’m thinking I will need to start a few more projects for April!

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::My Weekender Bag….and some tips::

Awhile back, I mentioned that a friend and I were making the Weekender bag (read more about that here)  And as I said, I just couldn’t wait to work on it, I just had to finish it.  So I did.

 

As just about everyone else in the sewing world, I got all nervous to make this bag.  Everyone has such horror stories about making it.  Honestly, it’s not hard to make.

I don’t know if it was because I made it using the quilt as you go method with canvas (thus not needing all the crazy interfacing) but it was really not any harder than making any other bag.  I promise.

I did do a few things differently than the pattern suggests.  First was the canvas quilt as you go construction.  This makes the bag just as sturdy as all the interfacing would, and canvas is sure cheaper than all of that.  Although, if you wanted a solid, un-quilted bag, you would for sure need to use the interfacing.

I didn’t insert the fake bottom.  I had full intentions to, but when I was finished, I realized that there wasn’t really a need to make one.  I did use 2 layers of felt in the bottom.  it gave it a good sturdiness that I am happy with.

For the handles, I used the lightweight interfacing, but I also added some cotton webbing.  I didn’t want the webbing showing, for this bag it just wasn’t the look I was going for.  So I covered the webbing with the fabric I had selected for the handles.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE the weight that this gave the handles, as well as the fact that I’m not going to have to worry about the handles wrinkling up with use like a lot of tote bag handles do.

And, one of my favorites, I added bag feet to the bottom.  I just love the sound that the feet make when you place the bag down.  This was the first bag that I had used feet on.  I was happy to see that you inserted them the same exact way that you would a magnetic snap (yay!)

The bag also fits so much more than I thought it would.  It really is my favorite bag that I’ve ever made…….I’m already planning my next one!

 

 

Posted in Bags and Cases | 1 Comment