Rest in Peace

I have the saddest quilt to share.  Our Mad Mod friend Jenn lost her battle with cancer this week. She was an amazing person with so much creativity and energy.  She touched many people and I'm blessed to have known her.

She was diagnosed with metaplastic breast cancer only 1 year ago and did everything in her power to fight it. We made a quilt for her at that time (in one week!!!) to comfort her and she took it to her chemo treatments.  Here is a photo she shared of the quilt in use:

As her life was nearing it's end, she shared with us that she would like to have a quilt/shroud to go with her as she is buried.  We (as a group) scurried to make her another quilt. Her favorite color scheme was blue/green and we made half square triangles.  There are many special nods in the fabrics--kitties and puppies, because she was a big animal lover.  I added a unicorn strip on the back, because she was a special unicorn!

Friday night was our monthly late night sew night at Blue Bar Quilts.  While there, I pieced together a back and then did a pillowcase assembly to finish the quilt.  On Saturday I top-stitched the edging.  The process was incredibly emotional, yet cathartic.  It is so special to put together something with such meaning.

The world is a bit emptier right now, but Jenn is in a much better place, free of pain and suffering.  Her obituary can be found here.

xoxo,

Kristin

Finish! Elephant Parade

Every finish is a happy finish and this quilt had been waiting for too long to be turned into a completed piece.  I participated in a quilt along with Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts starting in Spring of 2015. 

I finished the top in December of 2015, but like a fine wine, it needed to age until it was ready for quilting.  I had a friend quilt this on his longarm with a whimsical allover pattern.

I really hoped to have this finished in Q4 of 2017, but there wasn't quite enough time.  Oh well-- It's my first finish of Q1 2018!!! And it is part of my Q1 Finish-A-Long goals.

xoxo,

Kristin

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts and of course-- Lorna's Let's be Sewcial!

On Ringo Lake...Making Progress (slowly!) + Kings Cross prep

I'm making headway on my Quiltville Mystery Quilt, but I'm not quite to the point of showing a big, breakthrough photo.  Lots of sewing is happening, with lots of small pieces and tons of units.

I have all of the orange/coral flying geese and brown flying geese complete and sewn together in pairs and half of the pairs are joined up to the 9 patches (stacked up in the background).

I haven't kept count of the aqua/brown triangles, but I think I'm about halfway done with them? I can't wait to get started on the next step that adds a coral triangle to these and then I can assemble a block!

My big Lutherdale retreat starts in a few days and (crossing fingers) hopefully I will make big progress on this and have something awesome to share when I get back.

Here is an 'action shot' of my sewing room yesterday.  As you can see, I get a lot of help!!

Speaking of retreat... as usual, I have ambitious goals. Before starting the mystery quilt, I decided that King's Cross would be my big, main project to work on while there.  I think I have all the fabrics accumulated (or at least close to all of them). I have the bolt of Pepper Cory-Pepper as the background and a variety of saturated Moda Grunge for the crosses.

 Here is a sampling:

And here are my fabrics (Grunge Dots) for the lighter, more subtle stars.  I'm not sure how I'm going to combine these... Maybe the cream will be star points and the grey as the four patch centers? Not sure yet!

xoxo,

Kristin

ps

Linking up with Bonnie's Mystery Monday Linkup , Molli Sparkles Sunday Stash, Cynthia's Oh Scrap! and Judy's Design Wall Monday

Finish-A-Long Q1 2018 - My Goals

New Year - Fresh Start - New Goals!!

Q4 of 2017 was pretty good!  I finished 3 quilts from my list and that makes me incredibly happy.  Believe it or not, on New Year's Eve, I was stitching on a binding and hoped to complete it that night.  I had about 2 feet left and was out of steam.  Oh well-- it rolls into the 2018 goals. I'm excited to participate in the Finish-A-Long again.

Here are my 3 finishes:

Charity Chop, Kitchen Sink Scrap and Galaxy of Stars

For Q1 of 2018, I would like to finish the following:

1- Elephant Parade
This is my slam dunk! This is the quilt I was trying to complete the binding on New Year's Eve.  I plan to enter this quilt in the spring to the Sun Praire Quilt Show.

2- Hekla
The top is complete and I'm sending this out to be quilted.  Maybe this can be entered in Quilt Expo this fall?

3- Finding Nemo
This is a panel that I bought at Expo with the plans to donate to Lutherdale's auction. The paneled quilts were very popular!! So, why not?  I added the orange border--it's Moda Grunge Dot, my newest favorite fabric.  I plan to free motion quilt it with fun swirls and outlines.

4- St Nick
Another panel I found at Expo.  This is a kit with borders and it is still in it's packaging.  Maybe I can assemble this at my January Retreat and ask a friend to quilt it? It too, it destined for Lutherdale's Auction.

5- Legendary
I have a plan on quilting this, but it's pretty ambitious for me to find the time in Q1.  Never the less--it's good to have it as a goal!

6- Midnight Star

Now we are entering the very ambitious stage.  The top isn't done. It's been languishing on my design wall.  I want to swap out 2 of the smaller stars and I'm just a wee bit stuck.

If you would like to join the Finish-A-Long fun, head on over to any one of the eight bloggers who host:

Marci - Marci Girl Designs
Sandra - Studio Sew of Course
Leanne - She Can Quilt
Izzy - Dizzy Quilts
Ella - Throw a Wench in the Works
Felicity - Felicity Quilts
Karen - Capitola Quilter
Lynne - Tinking Along

xoxo,

2017 Year in Review

Time moves fast and I'm always amazed by this.  It doesn't feel like it was very long ago that I summarized 2016 and here we are at the start of 2018.

This year has been amazing in terms of time spent sewing, projects completed and blog posts written!  I credit joining the Finish-A-Long and Sew 15 Minutes September as 2 boosts to my year.  I had a lot of UFO's gathering dust and I am excited to mark them as complete.  Also-- making several baby quilts is a great way to create something from start to finish without dragging on forever.  Three of my completions this year were baby quilts.  Here is a summary of my finishes.  It's fun to look back on them...

Baby Clara's Mint Diamonds

Baby Noelle and Cora's Twin Pink Diamond Quilts

My Lion Quilt 

Project Linus - Bonus baby quilt

XO quilt for my co-worker's newly adopted daughter 

Peacock String Quilt for Lutherdale's auction

Kitchen Sink Scrap Quilt - for Dane County Foster Program

Chop Up Quilt - for Dane County Foster Program

Galaxy of Stars Quilt for Lutherdale's auction

Ten quilts complete this year!!!  All but one are being gifted/donated.  I have ambitous goals for 2018, too.  It will be interesting to see what I can accomplish in the year to come.

Other big highlights of 2017:

Participating in Gudrun Erla's workshop in April.  I didn't get a selfie with her and I'm regretting it.  She was incredibly motivating and I want to make tons of her quilts.  Here is the block I made during the workshop for my Hekla Quilt.

Participating in making a Gala Quilt for the Lutherdale Auction.

Having my itty-bitty, humble Strawberry Quilt fetch $1,000 at the Lutherdale Auction (with matching funds from Thrivent)

Spending the day with my new besty, Mary Fons!!! I ❤ her!!!

Exhibiting my Lion Quilt at Expo!!

Meeting Tula Pink!!!  She is absolutely amazing!

Participating in my first ever Quiltville Mystery 

And in very sad happenings, losing Nancy Zieman.  She was such a force in the quilting community, but especially here in Madison.  I met her several times and she was always sweet and gracious.  

Here's to another wonderful quilty year full of creating, celebrating and spending time with others.  This was my 'most used words on Facebook' collage.  It's a great little summary of my year!

xoxo,

Kristin

On Ringo Lake - So many clues!!

With the holidays, I've been falling behind a bit with the Quiltville Mystery Quilt. But let's be honest-- there is a lot of sewing to do each week!! It's hard to keep up period!  I was plugging away in the days before and after Christmas on Clue #3.  It was a lot of units!

I'm happy to announce that I've got them all complete--Woooot!  Time to focus on the other clues!

Clue #5 is the same as Clue #2-- oodles of small flying geese, this time in brown, not coral.  I couldn't bear the thought of drawing hundreds of lines corner to corner...again.  So I splurged on Bonnie's ruler, The Essential Triangle Tool.  I was a little bit intimidated and wasn't looking forward to having bias edges.  But as I have been using it, I'm becoming more and more comfortable with it.  The cutting is a little slower on the front end, but boy-oh-boy is it faster on the back end!  No trimming!  And much less waste.  Look at the pile of trimmings in the above picture!  It adds up!

Here are a few of my Clue #4 units. With their funny shape, you see why I was hesitant to use this ruler?

And Clue #6-- the brown flying geese from Clue #4 joined up with the original ones. Super cute!

Bonnie was releasing the clues "Rapidfire", one per day! But today she revealed the final setting.  I can't wait to see how my quilt will look!

xoxo,
Kristin

Linking up with Judy's Design Wall Mondays and Lorna's Let's bee Sewcial and Cynthia's  Oh Scrap!!