Lady Bugs, My Beginning Quilt

I started teaching a beginning Quilt class last weekend. The funny thing is I always said I would never ever teach beginning quilting.  Never say never! Sew Special Quilt Shop had been asking me to teach a beginning class from the first day I went in to talk to them about teaching in the shop.  After teaching a few classes I realized, there was a need for a beginning class!

I havn't made a sampler quilt in a long time, but I really enjoyed it!

My favorite part of making this quilt was quilting it.  At first I was a little overwhelmed, I am not sure I ever machine quilted a sampler quilt. First things first, it was time for a new pair of quilting gloves!  I swear by these gloves and can not imagine machine quilting without them.

Not knowing where to start I decided to start with quilting the red sashing.  As I was quilting the sashing I started to get ideas for the blocks.

 I quilted in all the fabrics except the white background fabric. I felt like quilting the quilt in this way gave me boundaries.  It was so much fun deciding on what to do with each block.

 In all the smaller triangles in the quilt I quilted the same pattern throughout.  In the larger triangles I did another design.


I quilt the squares the same way.  In the smaller squares I quilted the same flower throughout, and a different design in the larger squares.

All in all I love how the quilt turned out.  I taught my first class of a four part series last Saturday! I think this will be a huge learning experience for me and my students.  I truly feel blessed to be able to share my knowledge and joy with my students.

Happy quilting :)

Happy Mothers Day Weekend!

Happy Mothers Day to all the Mothers, Grandmothers, Aunts, and Sisters out there!  I have decided on this Mothers day weekend it will be a quilt weekend for me!  No cleaning, well maybe dishes, and laundry but cleaning bathrooms, hardwood floors, vacuuming and mopping are not on the to do list. What is on the to do list this weekend is quilting and enjoying time with my family and that is it!

I started the weekend off right, ordered pizza for Friday night dinner and then started quilting.  I have had fabric set aside for my great niece Saylor's quilt, I have been having a hard time deciding on a pattern.  So much fabric and ideas, so little time!  I am still undecided which one will be Saylor's Quilt, but I seem to be making more of the 4 patches with the half square triangles blocks. I guess we will have to wait and see.

The other quilt I and working on this weekend is my quilt for my beginner quilt class starting next month. Yikes, I need to get the quilt done, Sew Special is already advertising it and people have signed up. The top is done, it is ready to be basted and quilted, so that is the plan for the rest of the weekend.  

Happy Mothers Day, Happy Quilt weekend!

Bella's Block Party!

The first class I taught at Sew Special Quilts was Bella's Block Party. I love this Quilt!  I used a Moda Jelly Roll, Block Party by Sandy Gervais for the blocks.  It amazed me I made all 24 blocks from one Jelly Roll. I think this quilt looks harder to make than it was, you sew your strips together then cut out triangles from your strips.  Why a Jelly Roll works so good for this pattern is, most Jelly Rolls have two different color directions making it hard to use all of one Jelly Roll in a quilt.  This pattern works because you separate the two colors, I used the oranges for half of the block and the greens and blues for the other half.  I believe what really makes this quilt pop is having high contrast between the two halfs of the block.

I like the way the borders are done, it looks like the quilt is framed, I could not be happier with how this quilt turned out!

The pattern was out of the book Smash Your Precut Stash, This is really a great book, the directions are well written and easy to follow.

I have been able to see a couple of the quilts made in the class, I love seeing finished projects!  Bring on the show and tell!

My favorite thing is seeing my beautiful niece, who the quilt was made for, sitting under it!

Simply Colorful

Today I am teaching a class at Sew Special Quilts, a nice little shop close to my house. We will be making this Simply colorful quilt. There are a couple of fun things about this quilt. First, the pieced blocks are made from one 5" charm pack! Second, this is a great quilt to do the square in a square block, if you have never done that before. I broke this quilt into two classes; the first one we will work on square in a square, the second putting the quilt on point and the borders.  If you have never put a quilt on point, this is a simple little quilt to learn on.

This quilt ended up darker than I had originally planned on it being.  The fabric I bought for the setting blocks clashed with the green in some of the pieced blocks.  I asked my class only to bring in the charm pack today so we can talk about fabric for the rest of the quilt before they buy it.  I am so excited about the class today, I love teaching and sharing my ideas and knowledge. Bonus, I teach at a great shop, and the ladies are always so great.