From K - Finished Salt Water Swoon Quilt

This past weekend when I was home for Thanksgiving, I gifted one of my favourite quilts to someone I am especially thankful for. This Salt Water Swoon Quilt was made specifically with my grandma in mind and I was so excited to finally share it with her.

For as long as I can remember, my grandma has had an extensive sea shell collection. Meticulously selected, each shell represents a place, an experience, a trip she has taken with my grandpa. When I spotted Tula Pink's Salt Water line, I knew it was exactly the line I had been waiting for.

She married my grandfather in a time and place when raising four kids and managing a family farm was the rule and not the exception. While I see my grandmother as strong, proud and grateful for the beautiful life she created, my mind often goes back to a conversation we had a few years back...

...my grandma loves to garden and more than anything, she loves flowers. She once told me me that had she been born in another time, she would have simply loved to arrange floral bouquets. Knowing that, Thimble Blossoms' Swoon Pattern seemed like an obvious choice when deciding what to whip up with the Salt Water bundles I ordered.

This is the first top that I have made that I didn't quilt myself. Instead I opted to send this to a local long arm quilter, who also happens to know my grandma. She did a fabulous job I think it reflects my grandma's aesthetic perfectly. Swirls, flowers and hearts all over.

 

For the backing I chose to feature the seashell print in the blue colourway, as that just so happens to be one of my grandma's favourite colours. I decided to bind it in a darker blue print from the same line to help ground the linen background of the quilt top.

Final Quilt Details:

• Quilt Name: Salt Water Swoon Quilt
• Finished Size: queen sized (80" x 80")
• Fabric: Salt Water by Tula Pink (flowers, backing and binding) and a mystery linen from my LQS that looks just like sand (background)
• Pattern: Swoon by Thimble Blossoms
• Quilting: a long arm quilter from my home town

My goal for this quilt was to make it fit her taste and aesthetic, but also I wanted to ensure it was something really wonderful to snuggle under. Although the linen background made for quite a challenge at times, I am thrilled with how soft to the touch it is, and I may just be tempted to work with linen again.

This is my first completed project for the Q4 2013 Finish A-Long - read more about my other goals here.

Linking up to TGIFF and Finish it up Friday over at Crazy Mom Quilts.

From K - Still Swooning

Over the past couple of weeks I have been able to polish off the last 6 blocks for my swoon quilt (you can check out my first three blocks here). In the process, I definitely learned how these mega sized blocks capture the hearts of many.

They're a little bit addictive... I kind of want to make more already! I'm keeping this post light on words and heavy on pictures so scroll on and enjoy.

  

I heart piles of swoon blocks. I'm excited to sash these together in the next few days. I'm having a hard time right now with the layout though. For you fellow swooners out there, is choosing a layout a common struggle?

 

Linking up to WiP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced.

From A - Making lists

Since finishing the baby quilt and getting my Swoon quilt basted, I have found myself a little direction-less on the crafting side of things.

In the last week I've picked up and put down old projects, started new projects and have dreamed up about a hundred more. Despite this meandering, I can't seem to buckle down and make any meaningful progress.

Inspired by Kelsey's crafty To Do list, I decided to put together one of my own. In addition to the hand quilted baby quilt mentioned here, I'm hoping my summer will look a little like this:

1) Get some knitting done. I really like to knit. I went through a few years where I knit almost exclusively. I haven't really touched the needles since finishing a baby gift for a friend back in February. Last April, I bought a shawl kit and decided that it was just the right thing to spur me on.

2) Make a Wiksten Tank or Two. I ordered both the Wiksten Tank and Tova patterns from Jenny back in early February. Both patterns have been sitting untouched in my sewing room ever since. I recently bought some gorgeous Martha Negley feather fabric and some Liberty Tana Lawn thinking I would use the feathers to make a wearable muslin and use the tana lawn to get over my fear of cutting into a prized piece of Liberty goodness.(Finished #1 and #2)

3) Make a Baby Quilt. With most of my friends having their first child this year, it really has been another month, another baby. In an attempt to keep up, I'm hoping to slap together a simple and sweet quilt for a baby boy to be. Like most things that are sitting stash-side, I bought the pattern some time ago and have been trying to find the right mix of fabrics to make it with. I found a fat quarter bundle that I loved over at Pink Castle Fabrics. I thought the colours screamed little boy. I can honestly say that I would have never thought to pair these colours together. Another reason to love bundles. I think it will be perfect. After I receiving the bundle, I added some fabrics and swapped out almost all of the oranges provided in favour of something a little more vivid. (Finished!)

4) Work on some quilting. I've always had a few follow through issues with crafts. With knitting, it is the finishing stage, blocking things and weaving in all the ends. When it comes to making quilts, I seem to always get tripped up, sometimes for months, when it's quilting time. I have two large quilts basted at this point. The first is my Swoon quilt and the second is a cute little number I basted just before starting this blog. I'm really hoping to get some of the quilting done on these so I can get the binding on them and start enjoying them.

5) Next up is a receiving blanket using this tutorial from Anna Maria Horner's blog. I bought enough flannel and voile to make about 6 of these sometime last winter in a period of baby gift desperation. Here's hoping I get at least one of them finished up this summer. (Finished!)

So how am I doing with the list? So far so good. I started working on some knitting and the zig zag baby quilt fabrics are in the wash.

Stay tuned.

From A - Half a Swoon

I've been off work and away on vacation this past week. After some quick negotiating with my significant other, I packed my sewing machine and the fabric for my Swoon quilt.

Since I'm generally an early riser, I was able to spend most of my mornings sewing while my Mr. slept in. I finished up the last four blocks and pieced them all together into a finished quilt top. Vacation weeks are the best for making big progress fast! Here are blocks 6, 7, 8 and 9.


I found it very difficult to settle on a final layout and spent days agonizing over it. I even started sewing blocks together and then ripped them apart, moved things around and started again. I ended up with this and am glad I took the time to play with it until I was happy!

I used my original inspiration to guide the layout. The block with the most vibrant purple was placed in the centre of the quilt as a focal point and the blocks with hints of green and lighter purple were placed in the four cardinal points to help move the eye around.

Since I'm planning to use this quilt on a Queen sized bed and had tons of background fabric left, I decided to make a wider border to better frame the blocks. I settled on a 6.5" border all around. The finished quilt should end up at about 88" square.

The background fabric I'm using is an old Anna Griffin print that has a lace scallop close to the selvedge. There is a significant colour difference between the lace scallop and background. While assembling the sashing,  I made an effort to stagger the WOF joins to distribute the darker portions of the fabric throughout the quilt top.

I'm working on my backing now and am aiming to get this basted sometime next week.

Hope all of my American friends had a safe and happy 4th of July!

From A - Swoon-ing along

I managed to finish up a few more Swoon quilt blocks last night while snacking on these.

I've been sewing my Swoon blocks production line style in batches. My trusty kitchen counter was a huge help. Here are five blocks worth of half square triangles ready for action.

And the designated Swoon block assembly area in the spare bedroom (with a little preview of blocks to come).

If you're thinking of making this quilt, I would strongly recommend that you make all of your individual pieces, organize them into blocks, lay them all out in block form and then just start chain piecing until you can't stand it anymore.

I would also suggest that you substitute the flying geese construction method set out in the pattern instructions with the one found here. You'll have to modify the cutting instructions a bit but it saves time and oodles of fabric.

Without further ado, I give you blocks 2, 3, 4, and 5. Individual photos of the blocks can be found on our flickr stream.

I decided to add a little shot of green in Block 4 to emphasize the soft green in my colour scheme. I was also worried that the butterfly fabric would blend in with my background fabric. I'm glad I did. I think it really makes the block pop.


Now only 4 more to go!

From A - Inspiration to Reality: A Swoon Quilt

I am a process crafter. Most of the time, I don't care whether a project ever gets finished. I make things because I want to try a new technique, see how something will come together, or just blow off some creative steam.

Because of this, I love learning about other people's creative process. How did they choose materials? What inspired them? What inspired the colour scheme? Since there must be others out there like me, I thought it wise to contribute to the "process" conversation by documenting my own.

After seeing countless renditions of Camille Roskelley's popular Swoon pattern, I decided that it was time to jump on the band wagon and give it a whirl figuring that my guest bedroom could use a nice quilt to spruce up the otherwise sparse decor.

Struggling with fabric choices, I turned to Design Seeds a.k.a. my absolute favourite source of colour inspiration and found this little gem.

I love the differing shades of purple from the softest lilac to the deepest plum set off against the cream with hints of grey and dusty green with just a hint of turquoise.

Then I found this quilt and fell totally in love with movement and sense of chaos created by using geometric prints in the outer star portion of each block.

I settled on these fabrics:

Yesterday I managed to finish my very first block. I am blown away by how much the relationship between the fabrics changed as they were cut and pieced together. Two fabrics that appeared to be relatively high contrast to me in fat quarter form really blended together when pieced. I really had to be careful with the positioning of the outer spokes of the star to try and maintain enough contrast.

Here's a better shot of the spokes.

Only 8 more to go!