Featured!

Good Monday morning to you! 

Summer is almost upon us. This week is the last week of school for us. Yah! The pool is open and the heat and humidity has arrived. 

Today, my "Tribute Star" quilt is featured on Quilt Story.

 

Go check it out.  

Thank you! 

Spring 2013 Bloggers Quilt Festival {ROYGBIV}

Hi there and welcome to my entry for Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival. Amy has cleverly timed this  online quilt festival to coincide with Fall and Spring Quilt market. So as we drool over all the pictures and social media coming out of quilt market, we can at least "attend" this festival.

Today I'm delighted to share with you one of my favorite quilts I've ever made, my Rainbow Plus Quilt. In fact this rainbow beauty kept me snug whilst I napped on the couch just now.
(Sunday naps are my fav!) And you may also notice, I used this quilt for my blog header. I love it so.

The quilt was made from shot cottons. These are Oakshott cottons. Each fabric is made using a different color warp and weft to give the fabric a unique depth of color. In fact the color of the fabric changed color depending on which way you looked at it.   When I received my bundles of Oakshott Cottons, the colors were so glorious. I wanted to make sure the quilt I made captured to colors completely. Once I decided on the pattern to use, I remember patiently laying (and re-laying) out each square until I found the arrangement that made the colors glow. 

On the top of the quilt, I used 5 different variegated threads. Here I wanted the quilting to echo the rainbow fabrics. But I didn't want to be committed to matching the threads exactly. So, the threads move in color as the fabrics move: from red to orange to yellow to green to blue and finally to purple.

Quilting detail

The picture above shows what I mean. 

In the yellow plus especially, you can see how the thread isn't yellow but it is green in the lower half. In the upper half of the yellow plus, the thread moves to orange. 

I quilted it using organic wandering wavy lines. You can really see the quilting from the back of the quilt. Janice at Better Off Thread found inspiration from my quilting and quilted a few of her quilts like this and wrote up a fabulous tutorial. Janice has dubbed it "Ultra-Wavy Quilting".

rainbow + sunshine = love! 

Stats

Design: Plus Quilt, Jeni Baker

Fabric: Oakshott cottons

Quilted:  Becca Bryan (me!) Ultra - Wavy Quilting

Size: Throw, 76" by 64"

Completed: January 2013

Thanks for stopping by! 

(Vote for me!) 

:) 

Kitchen Progress {WIP Wednesday}

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we are in the middle of a kitchen renovation. I plan on showing complete before and after pictures, but I thought  I'd share a few WIP pictures. I'm so excited about it! 

 

On the left is the pendant I picked out for the over-the-sink light. 

The middle picture shows the backsplash and the pulls and knobs I'm auditioning. 

On the right, you can see our new cabinets, primed and ready for paint. 

And of course there's been a little sewing too. 

From the couch, I've been slowly working on the background piecing for my wildflower blocks. This is not my favorite part of EPP, so I'm plodding through. 

Also, I've sewn a few blocks of the scrappy trip along. Even though they are more work than I thought,  I can see the appeal. They're so cute. I think my daughter will love this quilt. I hope she doesn't change her mind about red being her favorite color, ha! 

I'm linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for Work In Progress Wednesday. 

Sweet Retreat

A few weeks ago I was able to go on a quilting retreat with my guild, the Houston Modern Quilting Guild. It was super fun.

I headed out on Friday evening after my husband got home from work. I felt a bit guilty leaving the kiddos, especially when some of them seemed surprised I was leaving at all. But they were content with daddy, so I didn't feel too bad. 

I had an hour and a half drive ahead of me so I got some treats and planned to turn on some girlie music. But unfortunately I couldn't figure out my hubby's car's music systems so I was forced to listen to his man music and static. Ugh! :) 

Even though I brought an irrational amount of projects, I knew I wouldn't be able to finish (or start) many. Thinking the Scrappy Trip Along trip would be an easy and fast project, I cut and brought all the strips I would need to make one for my eldest daughter. 

I managed only to sew 36 sets of 6 strips together. That's something right? 

My big goal was to get my Tribute Star quilt finished so I could take its picture at the awesome woodsy locale. 

While I was working I was drooling over Safieh's work. I think she's got a great stash and always put fabulous colors together. The retreat was no exception, she was working on lots of great projects including an assembly line of make up rolls. 

We also had door prizes. I was hoping for a stuffie hippo or elephant from Liz who had contributed several to the pot. But I and got two charm packs of Mama Said Sew (oh darn). 

Which was great, but the next thing I knew Liz was offering to make me an elephant stuffie!

And when Liz brought over Lottie the elephant, Safieh brought me a makeup roll! The kindness of friends is so sweet. Thank you girls!

Overall it was super fun, although I was tired. It took me quite a while to recover from those late nights!