Dr. Seuss Baby Quilt

Dr. Seuss is a perennial favorite, so I've been working on a batch of Dr. Seuss themed quilts for the shop.  These always go fast, so if you know a special baby or toddler who needs this one for Christmas, grab it quick.  (Disclaimer:  This post contains shop and affiliate links).

This Dr. Seuss Baby Quilt can be purchased in my Etsy Shop here.

This quilt has 18 different Dr. Seuss themed fabrics representing 8 favorite Dr. Seuss stories and characters including Horton Hears a Who, The Cat in the Hat, The Lorax, Oh the Places You'll Go, Red Fish Blue Fish, The Alphabet Book, Green Eggs and Ham, and Hop on Pop.

All White Cuddle Quilt - Baptism Quilt - Wedding Quilt - Baby Blessing

As a quilter one of my favorite ways to commemorate a milestone event is with a quilt.  So when our daughter turned 8 years old and chose to be baptized a member of the LDS Church  a couple months ago, I made her this All White Cuddle Quilt to help her remember the special day.  (Note: Fairfield World and Shannon Fabrics sent me supplies and compensated me to make this quilt and write about it on the Fairfield website here.  This personal blog post is entirely my own.)

In the LDS Church we believe that the Holy Ghost (or Holy Spirit) is a member of the Godhead and helps lead, guide, and prompt our decisions.  He also acts as a Comforter in times of grief, pain, and/or anxiety.  Since this special girl suffers from severe social anxiety (selective mutism), I thought this physical reminder of comfort would help her remember that the Holy Ghost can also help comfort her soul.

Stair Step Quilt - Cuddle Quilt-in-a-Day - Men's Quilt - Teen Quilt

It's about time I shared a men's quilt.  This is the perfect fast quilt to whip up in time for a Father's Day quilt or as a graduation quilt for the favorite teen boy in your life.  Big thanks to Fairfield World for providing me with product and compensating me for this post as well as to Shannon Fabrics for providing me with the fabric.  This pattern was designed using EQ7.  All opinions, ideas, an enthusiasm are 100% my own.  This post may contain affiliate links to help support my blog and bring you more fun projects.

Of course this pattern can work just as well for girls and women if you choose fabrics to their interest and taste.

Dad's appreciate soft snuggly blankets as much as the rest of us even if they're a bit too manly to let us know.  My husband's favorite use for blankets is to keep warm on chilly nights out star-gazing.  (He has as many telescopes as I have sewing machines...and this one is his smallest by far.)  He's even been known to fall asleep in the yard on occasion while watching the stars. (You'll have to forgive us for the daytime shot...night-time pics just can't show off the quilt well.)  Even summer nights can get chilly.

And the Vintage Automobile Cuddle from Shannon Fabrics is the perfect print to include fort he car enthusiast.

Star Wars Quilt-in-a-Day

You're going to love this simple Star Wars Quilt-in-a-Day Pattern.  Don't feel limited to Star Wars though...this is a great pattern for any theme.  We'll use easy strip-piecing so that you could put this whole quilt together in a day, start to finish.  Thanks to Fairfield World for their continued support of my creativity and for their help bringing you this pattern.  They provided me with batting and have compensated me for this post.  All thoughts, opinions, patterns, ideas, and enthusiasm are 100% my own.

My daughter is a Fan Girl to the core in several fandoms, but one of her newest loves is Star Wars.  She's been asking for a Star Wars quilt for a while, so she was happy to get this one.

But it's also perfect for your favorite Storm Trooper to lounge on while reading a good book.

MATH Quilt Pattern - Free Paper Piecing Pattern featuring Geekery Fabrics

This Free MATH Paper Piecing Pattern makes a great Mini Quilt or Throw Pillow or could be added into a larger quilt.  I tend to collect math and science themed fabrics, and this was a great way to show some of them off.  With Pi-Day coming up soon, I really wanted to do some Math-Geek sewing.

Many thanks to RJR Fabrics for providing me with a bundle of their Geekery Fabrics by Sue Marsh to play with.  And thanks as always to Fairfield World for providing me with batting and compensating me for this post.  This pattern was designed using EQ7. All opinions, ideas, patterns, and enthusiasm are 100% my own. This post contains affiliate links.

Our oldest daughter has never really liked math despite being reasonably good at it.  We pressured her a bit to join math team last year.  (As in...you want us to drive you to volleyball games every weekend...then you'll do math team at lunch.)  Thanks to her wonderful math teacher/coach last year, she signed up more willingly this year, and now thanks to two years with some excellent math teachers/coaches, she says math is her favorite class.  It makes this math-loving-mama super happy.

So when math team ended this year, we wanted to do something special for her teacher...so we whipped up a little math mini-quilt.  It could also make for a great quilted pillow.  We wanted it to be small enough she could display it in her classroom where she has another quilt hanging.

If you're just starting out with foundation paper piecing, this is a GREAT pattern for beginners...nice big pieces and not very many of them...and each block is a single pattern piece.  I've got two sizes for you to choose from.  I used the 9.5 inch blocks which just requires you to tape the paper pieces together to make the paper big enough. Or if you don't want to hassle with that, you can use the 7.5 blocks that print out on a single piece of paper.

If you're not already familiar with paper-piecing there are lots of simple tutorials online to help with the process.  I like this tutorial.

Here's what you'll need to make your own:

• Fat Quarter Bundle of Geekery by Sue Marsh for RJR Fabrics.  I used By the Numbers in Black, Scientifically Speaking in Black, Atoms in Red, Atoms in Green, Atoms in Blue, and Germ * Amoebas in Yellow for my blocks.  
• 5/8 yard backing fabric (SCIENTIFICALLY SPEAKING - MULTI ALBUS)
• 1/4 Yard Graph Paper in White for binding.
• 2/3 Yard or 1 pacakge crib sized Nature-Fil™ Bamboo Blend Batting 
• Coordinating Thread
• Sewing Machine
• Printed Pattern Pieces

You can download the MATH QUILT Pattern Pieces here.

A Few Notes about the Pattern:

Pattern pieces each have a 1/4 inch seam allowance.  They're in PDF form.  When you go to print them be sure that your printer is set to print them ACTUAL SIZE.

Paper- Piecing Patterns are always mirror-imaged...so when you print them, they will looked "flipped" from how the block appear in my quilt.

To round out the gift we also slipped in our favorite Math Book.  Despite the title, This is NOT a Math Book really IS a math book, but it's also a really neat art book that shows connections between art and math and doodling and has some fun activities.

(Below is a sneak peek my sister-in-law from Bond with Books put together.)



For other fun math and Pi-Day Activities, you can check out this post...

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January Skies Quilt - Free Half-Square Triangle Quilt Pattern - Queen-Sized

Even though I designed this quilt over the summer, I'm sharing it now because it makes me think of January Skies...all sorts of shades of grey, with some yellow sunshine peaking through...with the light sometimes fractured through ice crystals on the window panes.  Through the grey there's lots of promise of a new year starting.

Many thanks to Fairfield World for providing me with their amazing batting and compensating me for this post to bring you all a bit of sunshine.  This pattern was designed using EQ7.  All ideas, opinions, enthusiasm and fabric used in this post are 100% provided by me.  This post contains affiliate links to support my creatively and allow me to bring you more projects.

Christmas is over and I'm ready for Spring to come...but we still have a few months until she shows her face...sigh...

Ravenclaw Blue and Bronze Quilt - Golden Snitch Quilt - Harry Potter Inspired

You might belong in Ravenclaw if you've a ready mind, where those of wit and learning will always find their kind...and now there's a House Quilt for Ravenclaws too.

You can order a custom-made Ravenclaw Quilt in my shop here, or if you prefer to make your own, you can purchase my Single House Quilt Pattern here  (or here for my 2-Pattern Bundle which includes both the Single House Quilt, and the 4-House Hogwarts Crest design.)

Even though most of our favorite Harry Potter characters are in Gryffindor and we don't get to know many Ravenclaws well beyond Luna and a bit of Cho, I've always had a fondness for Ravenclaw.  I've often figured that my 11-year-old-brainy-and-not-so-brave-self would have been sorted into Ravenclaw had I gotten my acceptance letter to Hogwarts (if of course there had been any Harry Potter world back then.)

Urban Scandinavian Modern Half-Square-Triangles Quilt

This quilt has been a long time coming.  With all the quilting I've done over the years, I've only ever made one quilt for my own bed...and that was one I started around 8th grade and finished around 10th grade.  It was time for something more updated and more reflective of my current leanings toward modern quilting.

When P and B Textiles offered to send me some of their new Urban Scandinavian line by Kirstyn Cogan, I knew it belonged in a quilt for my bed.  I really love a good black and white fabric line, and these are gorgeous.  The were kind enough to to send enough queen/king size.  They also sent 1 fat quarter bundle of their original Color Weave collection to use for the pops of color in the quilt.  Many thanks also to Fairfield World for providing the batting and compensating me for this post.  This pattern was designed using EQ7.  All opinions are 100% my own.

The full pattern and fabric requirements for the Urban Scandinavian Half-Square Triangle Quilt can be found on the Fairfield Site here.  I just wanted to share a few extra photos and more of my thoughts behind the quilt here on my blog.

The Black and White Urban Scandinavian and Color Weave fabrics are a match made in heaven.  (If your local quilt shop doesn't carry the Urban Scandinavian line, the best place to find all the Urban Scandinavian fabrics is Kirstyn Cogan's Shop here.)

Not to toot my own horn...but I fall in love with this quilt all over again each time I walk in the room.  (My bed might even get made around half the time now.  Ha!)

I've recently been learning more about the quilting side of things at my local modern quilt guild meetings, and how different battings create different looks.  So for this quilt, I went with an 80/20 Cotton/Poly batting as a base and then added Nature-Fil™ wool batting over the top.  This gives it the drape of a cotton batting quilt, but the wool makes the quilting lines show a bit more.  A polyester Poly-Fil batting can also be used in place of the wool.

And because it was so large, I hired my friend and fellow Fairfield Master Maker Charisma Horton of to quilt it for me.  She does professional longarm quilting and she did a fabulous job mimicking the pattern in one of the prints and also doing an off center focal point block.  (She does some pretty amazing work if you're ever looking for long arm quilting services.)

And I love this fabric I found for the backing...I just love that it's black and white and the names of colors all over it.

And I think the Urban Scandinavian fabric with the grey squiggles on black is my new favorite binding fabric.  I love binding quilts in black but sometimes it's too harsh...those grey squiggles are the perfect visual texture so that the black binding isn't too glaring.

And just because I had so much fun learning how to use EQ7. (Electric Quilt 7) for designing the pattern, I also worked up an alternative quilt with some of my most favorite fabrics from the fabric line.

For this version you would need:

• 1 1/2 Yards each of Your Four Favorite Urban Scandinavian Fabrics (2 Black/grey prints and 2 White/Black prints)
• 1 1/2 Yards each of 4 Color Weave Prints (Dark Gold CWEA 200X, Green CWEA 200 YG, Purple CWEA 200C, and Blue CWEA 200 B shown here)
• 1 Yard binding fabric
• 2 2/3 108" wide backing fabric

You would need to cut 6 - 17" Squares from each your fabrics (This will give you four extra squares.)  Follow directions in original tutorial for sewing the Half-Square Triangle Blocks and finishing your quilt.

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Easy Half-Square Blocks Quilt - Easy Pre-Cut Cuddle Cake and Layer Cake Pattern

This easy Half-Square Blocks quilt is a great choice for beginners and is the perfect choice if you're working with 10-in precut fabric squares.  The look of the quilt will be completely different depending on the fabrics you choose.  We love how it looks with the Seeing Spots Cuddle Cakes fabric pack from Shannon Fabrics.  This post is part of a Fairfield Master Makers challenge and I was provided with the cuddle fabrics by Shannon Fabrics.  Fairfield World provided me with product and compensated me for this post.  This post also contains affiliate links.

Time:
Start to finish can be done in a day.

Skill Level:
Beginner

Materials:

• 1 Cuddle Cake from Shannon Fabrics.  I used Seeing Spots, but any of their Cuddle Cake packs would work great, or you can make from yardage.  If you're using yardage, you'd would need 4-10 10" cuts of cuddle fabric depending on how much variety you want.  You need 20 10-in squares total.
• 1 1/4 yards Cuddle 3 fabric in Kiwi for backing and applique
• 1/3 yard Cuddle 3 fabric in Midnight Blue for the binding
• Scraps of coordinating cuddle fabric for head, feet, and spots of turtle.  I used Cuddle 3 fabric in Olive.
• 1 package Nature-Fil™ Bamboo Blend Batting 36″ X 45″
• 1/2 Yard paper-backed fusible web
• Basting Spray (505 is my favorite brand, but other brands work too.)
• Coodinating Thread

Supplies:

• Sewing Machine
• Lots of Pins - My favorite are these Extra Long Pins from Dritz
• 12" Square Quilting ruler, cutting mat, and rotary cutter
• Walking Foot for your sewing machine (optional)

Instructions:

Spring Bookshelf Mini-Quilt Tutorial

Bookshelf quilts are easy to put together and leave plenty of room for improvising with scraps and adding fun details.  March is National Reading Month, and this is the perfect way to celebrate!  Books and reading have always been big themes on my blog, and I've even made bookshelf quilts before, but I thought it was time for another one and to try adding titles this time.

This one was inspired by a mini-quilt swap I signed up for.  The recipient said she loved "Tiffany Blue, Hot Pink, and Lavender" and she was also a huge book nerd so I used those colors as my starting point.

I love the new "Scribble Stitch" technique I learned to add the titles and love the poofy look that the  Nature-Fil™ Wool Batting gives to it.

You can find my full tutorial for making your own Spring Bookshelf Quilt over on the Fairfield site.

Here are a couple of favorite bookshelf quilts from the past:
Teacher Retirement Book Quilt

Kindergarten Book Quilt

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