The Sisterhood of the Traveling Quilts

I have some very exciting news! This month I started a very unoriginal but ridiculously exciting new quilting bee: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Quilts!

Lately, I have been following along with a few traveling/round robin bees via blogs and Flickr. I have also seen little articles here and there in books and magazines and decided I have to jump right in and find some friends to join me!

This first round includes the wonderful blog/Instagram/quilty friends I have made this past year. We are all about the same experience level which works out great! These wonderful ladies are:

Ashley of Wasn’t Quilt in a Day

Jessica of Quilty Habit

Kim of Robot Mom Sews

Laura of Little and Lots

If you don’t know them already you should seriously check out their blogs and see the incredible work they do and read a lil about their obsessions ;)

The first month is about to begin. We will each make our “quilt starters”. These can be a few blocks, one block, or any large piece of quilty goodness! I won’t tell you what I’m doing just yet but these are the beautiful fabrics!

Once completed, the blocks will be bundled up with up to a yard or coordinating fabrics to a fellow quilter. The next quilter has free reign to make something fabulous to add on! And this will continue until a finish quilt top is sent back to the original quilter.

This will be an incredible creative journey for all of us. We hope to stretch our quilting skills and learn so much more. Nothing is off limits: applique, sketch stitching, 3D elements! Join us on this journey won’t you?! Follow along at Flickr and our blogs and maybe you will join us on round 2!

A Lovely Year of Finishes – January Goal Setting

This year I have decided to participate in the A Lovely Year of Finishes linky party. Hopefully, this will help keep me on track with all my quilting projects.

 

So this year they only want us to link up one goal so it’s easy to judge. It was a little difficult for me to choose from all my unfinished projects.

Cat Quilt

My goal is to finish my version of the Catvent Quilt Along hosted by Elizabeth of Oh Fransson.

I love this quilt! It’s relatively fast and super fun because you are not making 100 copies of the same block. This quilt is also eating up all my scraps! Yippee!

 

2014 Quilty Goals

I decided to share some of my goals for 2014. Some are very lofty and others I can easily do right now:

• Publish a quilt (fingers crossed)
• Create a portfolio/ submit designs to fabric houses
• Keep a minimum of $200 of merchandise in stock on my Etsy shop
• Market my Etsy shop (Bet you didn’t know I have one?!)
• Blog once a week (try to keep a schedule)
• Make more quilts and sandwiches to practice FMQ and binding
• Finish all WIPs so I can stick to Making Life Prettier’s rule of 2
• Have a perpetual scrappy binding
• Organize scraps a la Sunday Morning Quilts
• Send bee blocks early
• Use up scraps (i.e. Tone-It-Down, Catvent Quilt Along)

What quilting goals do you have this year? Did any carry over from last year?

I’m going to also share with you guys my favorite finish of this year:

 

The beautiful pink and orange string quilt I made for my little cousin! I cannot wait to see her smile this Christmas Eve when she opens the box :)

Good luck finishing any last minute Christmas gifts!

I’m linking up to 2013 Inspiration Palooza at The Champ Life

Bloggers Quilt Festival: entry two

this is my second entry into the bloggers quilt festival hosted by Amy at Amy’s Creative Side. I’m entering this quilt into the baby quilt category.

I have this gorgeous pink baby quilt. This is a traditional pattern, Amish Irish Chain. It is basically the exact same as an Irish chain with a nine patch taken out of the block to form an X or +.

This baby quilt is backed in ridiculously soft white flannel with pink polka dots! This is my first time quilting with flannel so I was sure to search for lost of advice! I found this post at Sew Katie Did most helpful. I made sure to pre-shrink my flannel backing. It shrunk a lot! 45″ fabric to 40″! It was a pain pressing all the wrinkles out of the flannel once it came out of the dryer because you can’t use steam :/

I quilted the top with Rachel’s chrysanthemum quilting tutorial. I was impressed with the results of the quilting and how surprisingly easy it was to do! I think the cute flowers definitely make this baby quilt extra girly!

Because I used both flannel and batting, I decided to use a wider double-fold binding. I normally do a 2.5″ and decided to make it 3″ its a little big so I think next time I will do a 2.75″. I just didn’t want to have any of my pre-binding zigzags showing.

I also included a little label. I made this with a leftover swath of the lace elements I used on the front and a Prima pen.I like how it sticks away slightly from the binding :)

This quilt featured Art Gallery Fabrics: Lace Elements in pink lace and Coquette in fashion scent peach.

Bloggers quilt festival

Bloggers Quilt Festival: scrappy quilt entry

Hello everyone!

Welcome to spolgarquilts my little part of the internet where I share all things quilty.

I’m entering this gorgeous scrappy quilt I made for my little cousin. Previously blogged about here and here and here.

This is a full size bed quilt made with strips of golden yellow, pink, white, bright pink, and cute little owls! I foundation paper pieced 49 blocks.

The back is pieced from Sarah Jane boats and mermaids, some scraps from the front, and patty young orange running stripe. I placed the orange in such a way that when you full down the top of the quilt its visible.

I hope you like my quilt! Be sure to check out everyone else’s!