Cosmos

My Marcelle Medallion quilt is finally finished! If you follow me on Instagram, then you've seen this baby a lot recently. This quilt has been a labor of love, and I am beyond thrilled with the final result. When I started working on this last September, I knew I wanted to stick with a scrappy monochromatic color scheme. I was inspired by this photo on Instagram.

I used Lizzy House's Constellations fabric line for the bulk of this quilt. I had a fat quarter bundle that I pulled from, plus I used all of the blues and low volume fabrics I had in my stash.

For the quilting I decided to do a spiral from the center out. At first I was very nervous about doing it because the throat space on my machine is quite small, but after extensive Google searching and YouTube video watching, I went for it!  

Picture via Hawthorne Threads

 I started the center of the spiral with my FMQ foot, and after I got going a little ways, I switched to my walking foot for the remainder of the quilt. I used the edge of my foot for spacing between the lines of quilting. There was never a ton of quilt to shove through the throat space, and once I got closer to the edges I had it down like a pro! I will definitely be spiral quilting more quilts in the future. 

The thread I used was Aurifil #4655 - Storm at Sea in 40wt. I have used Aurifil in the past, but this is the first time I used the 40wt and I loved it. It produced a really beautiful stitch and the variegated color worked perfectly with the scrappiness of the quilt.

Because I used the Constellations fabric line, and my awesome friend Kristan noted that my quilting looked like orbits :) I have decided to name this quilt Cosmos. I think it is rather fitting, and I am looking forward to curling up on the couch with my Cosmos quilt while watching Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

This wind blown picture ended up being a good thing, because I forgot to take a picture of the back of the quilt. I used Constellations Prism in White. I love that I had to piece the backing but you cant tell because the pattern of the fabric does a great job of camouflaging the seam.

Quilt Stats: 

Name: Cosmos
Size: 60.5" x 60.5" (before washing)
Fabric: Lizzy House Constellations + blues and low volumes from my stash
Pattern: Marcelle Medallion from Liberty Love by Alexia Abegg
Quilting: Spiral from the center
Completed: March 31st 2014

This quilt was my March ALYoF goal & part of my Q1 FAL List

Oh Hey There

Can you believe that this is the first time I have turned my computer on in a week! It actually feels pretty amazing because I was pretty productive and not distracted by Facebook or Pinterest.

I finally got my Marcelle Medallion basted and quilted this week, now all I need to to is bind it!!! If you follow me on Instagram, you've already seen these, but I just wanted to share for now until I take some decent pictures.

I used 40wt Aurifil thread, and I LOVE it! I've heard some people have had issues with it breaking and not cooperating but I didn't have a single issue.

Jeff and I are going out tonight for my belated birthday dinner, so after a couple glasses on wine I will be in a great mood to get the binding sewn on this sucker! I hope y'all have a great weekend!

Craftsy Class Giveaway

I am super excited to share with you a chance to win a class from Craftsy! I have taken several classes on Craftsy, and I have loved all of them. They're super informative and I have learned so much about quilting and sewing. 

My Craftsy BOM 2012 Quilt

Not into Quilting and Sewing classes? No Problem! Craftsy has classes in a wide range of categories, from Food & Cooking to Fine Art, and even Photography! 

I just finished watching Camille Roskelley's first class, Pre-Cut Piecing Made Simple, I learned a ton of great tips about chain piecing, and rotary cutting correctly, plus I finally learned how to properly hand bind a quilt. For some reason I could never make my bindings look pretty when I hand stitched them to the back. 

This week is National Craft Month and this past Saturday, March 15th was National Quilting Day!  In honor of all of this, Craftsy is generously giving away a free class to one of my readers!

To enter, all you have to do is click on this link. If you are not already a Craftsy user, registering is easy, and if you are a Craftsy user all you have to do is log in and you will be entered!

This giveaway is now closed. The winner will be contacted directly by Craftsy.

Enter to win a Craftsy class!

Good luck! This giveaway will close on March 21st, and Craftsy will notify the winner directly by email.

Too anxious to wait for the giveaway to be over? Then head over to Craftsy now and check out their awesome sale going on! Get ALL online classes at up to 50% off for a limited time only. You won't see hundreds of classes with prices this low again soon. Hurry, offer expires March 17 at midnight MT. 

UPDATE: The Craftsy Endless Creativity Sale has been extended! Offer now expires March 18 at midnight MT.

 I just bought Camille Roskelley's second class, Playful Piecing Techniques, and I am looking forward to watching it soon!

**This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links**

WIP Wednesday

This week hasn't been super productive. I ordered some 40WT Aurifil to quilt my Marcelle Medallion, so until that comes in I have been working on a cross-stitch project that I have had in progress for a while.


I have been able to get quite a bit done in the past few days. I took this with me to Louisiana and worked on it in the car on the way there. That was a very productive 6 hours :)


It doesn't look like I did much work, but there are so many different colors that I actually feel fantastic about the progress I did make.I finished the grass!! haha

So while I anxiously wait for my thread to arrive, I am going to be stitching away on this. What are y'all working on this week?

Home

Well this past weekend I have been out of the loop because we went to Louisiana to visit Jeff's Grandparents. We had a fantastic time and ate way too much food. So I'm going to catch up on some blog reading and recover from my food coma. I'll be back tomorrow with my WIP Wednesday post :)

This is my favorite picture from our weekend away :) I love these two boys. 

How were y'alls weekends?

ALYoF - March Goal

It didn't take much thought for me to decide what I want to do for my March ALYoF goal because my lovely Marcelle Medallion is waiting in the wings. I ordered the backing last week and it came in a couple days ago!

I ordered 5 yards of Lizzy House Constellations Prisms in White. I adore this print from that collection and I think it will make a fantastic backing.

Wish me luck! I already know how I am going to quilt it, so it's just a matter of basting and getting to work!

Lucky Stars Quilt Along

I shared my Lucky Stars quilt finish the other day as a part of my ALYoF goal finish, but I wanted to give a few more details of it over here :) I absolutely loved being a part of the Lucky Stars Quilt Along over at Quilt Story last summer! Heather and Megan did a fantastic job organizing everything, and the pattern for the quilt is so darn gorgeous.

I made my version of the quilt with a FQ Blogger Bundle I bought over at Pink Castle Fabrics. The name of the bundle was Blueberry Bushes and it was put together by the wonderful Holly from Bijou Lovely. I love all of the fabrics in the bundle, especially the Pearl Bracelets and the Color Me Retro prints.

I finished the top of the quilt last August right in line with the quilt along, I even won a prize for finishing! But then it sat, and sat, and sat because I was stumped on how I should quilt it. This quilt is roughly twin sized so I was scared about doing anything too crazy, but I finally decided to do straight line quilting.

I love the effect the straight line quilting creates but I despise how long it took! I kept having to switch the direction I was sewing because I was having some issues with the quilt top pulling and getting distorted. After I figured it out, I was able to get in a groove and I busted it out in a couple of multi-hour quilting sessions.

I made the binding with leftover strips from making the blocks. Hooray for having leftover fabric :)

Speaking of leftover fabric. I knew I wanted to do something interesting with the backing so instead of just piecing the two pieces of backing together, I used the leftover 2.5" squares from the patch blocks to make a strip to run down the back. I LOVE it! And I am proud of myself that I could actually get it straight up and down.

I made this quilt for my little sister Emily. She is a wonderful, amazing, & strong young woman, and I can't believe that she is going to be 21 this year!

Quilt Stats: 

Name: TBA aka I have no clue yet
Size: 62.5" x 76.5"
Fabric: Blueberry Bushes Blogger Bundle from Pink Castle Fabrics
Pattern: Lucky Stars Quilt Along from Quilt Story 
Quilting: Straight line
Completed: February 2014

This was part of my Q1 FAL List