Spring Quilt Market 2014: Windham Fabrics Mini Quilts
- At May 23, 2014
- By Kelly
- In Quilts
- 3
It was so fun to check out all the mini quilts made with the new collections from Windham Fabrics!
This one is mine. Ugh! I really wanted to smooth out that wrinkle in the buildings! I promise it was all nice and flat when I sent it off. Should have quilted it more. Silly postal system smushing things up!
Anyway, this is the Ciao Bella collection.
This is the Celestial collection, the quilt was made by Rosemary Cavanagh.
This is Precious Flannel, made by Meriel Aho.
This one is by Erica Jackman and uses two collections – African Surf and Mosaica.
This collection is Born to Quilt and the quilt was made by Kim Moyer.
All these little bitty squares were made by Aimee Gevin. The collection is called Cynthia.
This quilt was made by Terri Carpenter. The collection is called Swim Team.
Here is Far Far Away. The quilt was made by Steffani Burton.
Lots of little squares! This is the Shenandoah Valley collection. The quilt was made by Linda Sinclair.
This is the Governor’s Palace collection. The quilt is by Margaret Schroeder.
This quilt was made by Leisa Mayer. It is from the Think Pink collection.
This is the Cooking Italiano collection and the quilt was made by Alyssa Carrion.
This is made from Windham’s collection of 108″ quilt backs. It is the Modern collection. I love the color pops! The quilt was made by Deb Burton.
This quilt was made by Emily Lang. The collection is American Cowboy.
This is the Ampersand collection. The quilt was made by Allegory Lanham.
This is probably my favorite. (Am I supposed to tell you that?) Check out the pieced work done to create the woman in the lower left. Amazing. The collection is called Bake and the quilt was made by Natalie Cox.
This quilt was made by Joanne Harris and the collection is called Ava.
Finally, the last quilt is made from the Wharton collection. It was created by Joan Radell.
Do you have a favorite?
Kelly
Whew! Windham Fabrics Ciao Bella Mini Quilt!
- At April 25, 2014
- By Kelly
- In Fabrics, Quilts
- 10
By now the folks at Windham Fabrics may be wondering why they thought it was a good idea to let me make a mini quilt. I am trying to remind myself that I am my own worst critic. Yikes.
This was one of those situations where I really wanted everything to be just so and work out just perfectly. Of course, this meant that would definitely not happen.
After I decided what to do with the fabrics, I started to freak myself out by all the ways I could mess up the fabrics. What if I cut them wrong? What if I have underestimated the seam allowances in my calculations? What if I don’t have enough fabric for the back? What am I going to use for the binding? What if, what if… argh!!! Just cut it already!!
Here it is pieced. Does it look like a scrapbook page? (Please say yes, please say yes!)
As it turns out, the words on green were just the right size to use as the backing for the quilt. I decided to use that instead of the brown floral that was sent but was not part of the Ciao Bella collection. The finished quilt is 18″x18″.
The two smaller pictures of the girl are framed to look like the little tabs over the corners of photos in a scrapbook, so they are only sewn in the seam at the corners and then the diagonal is open. Hopefully they look like snapshots?
And oh, the binding was such a nightmare. First I thought it would be neat to make it so the buildings were running across the top and bottom horizontally and then cut the side pieces vertically so they would be upright. I found a tutorial to bind each side into a mitered corner and it seemed simple enough. The side pieces just ended up looking kind of weird because the binding on a little quilt is, well, so little! And I just could not get the corners to work out nicely so after several attempts I gave up on that idea. (But part of me still thinks it would look so neat!) I should have just put a regular binding on, but I still had this other idea with faux piping that Kelly O. stuck in my head.
Making the faux piping binding was simple enough. If you check the link above, the video tutorial is very easy to understand. Putting it on there and lining it all up was just errgh. I tried putting wonder clips on it. I pinned it with pins parallel to the binding. I pinned it with pins perpendicular to the binding. I seam ripped. Oh, did I seam rip. I am fairly certain that in the end, I could have just hand sewn a regular binding on it in half the time I spent sewing and un-sewing that monster.
Here’s the whole thing, quilted and bound.
It is probably good that there was a deadline on this, otherwise it would have taken up residence in my UFO pile a week ago. Even after I had finished it, I was still second guessing some of my choices. But, in the end, it is okay. Hopefully it made its way safely through the postal system and I will see it again in a couple weeks at Quilt Market! I am excited to see what all the others look like.
Happy Sewing!
Kelly
A Little Quilt Project In Progress
- At April 10, 2014
- By Kelly
- In Fabrics, Quilts
- 2
I had to check to make sure it was okay to share this, and it is!
Windham Fabrics put out a call for people to make 18″ square quilts to decorate their space at Quilt Market. My fabrics came yesterday!
Hello Beautiful! Rome in the Spring! How can you not love that?
The main print is larger than I expected to have for a small quilt. Hmmmm. Time to play with these fabrics and see what looks good!
Perhaps a scrapbook page look? The florals are smaller pieces, so I thought I might use them to make triangles over the corners of the “photos”.
I need to introduce them all to the iron and then play with them some more. I could use the white for background, but I like the words if I am going for a scrapbook theme. Then the white can be the edge of the photos. Things look better on the brown background words than the green. I may end up leaving the green words out if I go this route.
Not sure about binding yet, either…