Strip Twistin' the Night Away

I added borders to the Strip Twist Quilt last week, and it is looking good! I love this coral print batik on the inner border.
After piecing the outer border, I had a ton of little triangles left over, so I chain stitched them all together. Now I have a bunch of quarter square triangle squares, but no conclusion as to how to use them yet.


The quilt is actually layered, basted and partially quilted now, but I'm not loving the quilting. I think the stitch ripper and I will be spending some quality time with Strip Twist soon. At least I'll get to enjoy the fabric combos in close concentration one more time. Here are some favortites:

A few WIPs

I'm currently working on 3 quilts, and dreaming at least that many more. I really mean dreaming, I woke up the other morning from a dream where 2 1/2" strips were raining down around my head like cherry blossoms at the end of spring. Heavenly.

I'm posting these in progress pictures to keep me motived to finish these 3 so I can start a new batch.

Here's the first one I started, which is also the least finished. I created this pattern for my 6 year old, and had no idea how time-consuming it is to piece. I have all the rainbow rows pieced, I just need to finish the blue, green and purple Ohio Star rows. The backing will be piece of sweet pink vintage flannel I inherited from DH's grandma.


I borrowed the idea for this quilt from Kaffe Fasset's Glorious Patchwork. That book is phenomenal! I counted more than 30 different fabrics for this quilt, and I am hunting for the perfect flannel for the back. It has to be leopard-print, I think, but not just any leopard, the right one....


And finally, my Quiltville Strip Twist. I've done some more work on this since I took this picture the other day, and it is looking fabulous! I had some serious trepidation while piecing this- it actually drove me to tears, I was so convinced it would be ugly and a waste of fabric. Not so! I'm getting really excited to finish this!

Aloha Mom

The last of the quilts I've already completed is one I made for my mom for Mother's Day. She went back to school for another Master's this year, and being a mainland transplant from Hawaii, she's always cold, so I whipped up a quick tied throw for her to study with. The yellow pineapple and stripey blue fabrics were Hawaiian shirt from the thrift store (yay for 99 cent day!), and everything else came from my stash, except the flannel for the back. I tried hand quilting for the first time on the little pineapple motif, and I'm pleased with the result (as long as I don't look at the back!)

Yellow Frida

My 2 year old daughter likes to be different. Not content with the dominance of pink in our house, she declared her favorite color to be yellow. Accordingly, I started collecting yellow fabric to craft a special quilt for her.

This quilt became a lesson in not thinking too hard about design. I must have done half a dozen sketches for her quilt before deciding to cut into my yellow stash for a rail fence quilt along a few month backs. I added an off center star motif, because I like to be different, too.

I'd like to make this pattern again sometime, since I learned a lot about how the light and dark fabrics read. It would look great with a yellow star and a light and dark blue background!

The back of this quilt is this fabulous Alexander Henry print called "Frida's Garden." At about 20 months, my daughter recognized a framed Frida Kahlo print at a friend's house, so when I saw this fabric, I knew it was prefect for her.

Raspberry Truffle

I wanted to chronologically archive the quilts I've made, but that gets tricky. Do you list them in the order they were started, or completed? This quilt was the first one I started piecing, but also the first UFO that sat in a Ziploc bag for months untouched.

I started it when I discovered Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville site and spent half the night rummaging through my flannel scraps making the four patch blocks. Recently, I found the just right combonation of brown and raspberry flannel to complete it. I cut all the sashings and setting blocks and laid out the top while watching 'Love in the Time of Cholera,' which is such a sweet story that I decided to call this Raspberry Truffle.

My first ever quilt blog

Is there room in the blog world for another quilting mom? I've been pouring over quilt blogs recently, gathering ideas and inspiration, so I decided to start my own. Besides I figured this would be a good place to record the quilts I've made and plan to make.

I've been sewing since I was a kid, and always kept my scraps thinking I could use them for something one day. I finally started quilting about a year ago when I traded some baby clothes for a quilt book on a forum I frequent. My first project was not a quilt, but a patchwork toddler-size pillow cover.


I love the scraps from different projects and how each one tells a story. The pink stars and yellow fairies came from a great little fabric shop in Hawaii, and were a favorite skirt for a while. The yellow gingham was intended for a crib bumper that never came to be. The fabulous Amy Butler Duck Egg French Wallpaper was leftover from making a baby carrier. This has gotten more crinkly and lovely with every washing.