Tag Archives: quilt

My Modern Maples Quilt: Finally Finished!

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modernmaples_2014_001It’s been almost 16 months since I started this quilt! I even wrote a blog post about it back in December of 2012! It’s the Modern Maples quilt pattern from Amanda of Hey Porkchop and can be found in the Pretty in Patchwork: Holidays book.

It’s the biggest quilt I’ve made to date, and I think that was a bit daunting. It was supposed to be a gift for my sister two Christmas holidays ago. I felt horrible that it wasn’t finished and finally took the plunge this past week to quilt it and bind it. Perfect timing too, because last week was my sisters birthday and I couldn’t think of anything to make her.

I seriously finished this thing AN HOUR before her birthday lunch. AN HOUR! So I apologize for the lack of awesome photos, I didn’t have time to plan them out. She loved it and put it on her bed right away. That’s always a good sign.

modernmaples_2014_002 modernmaples_2014_003This was the first unfinished project that I finished as part of my time off from Art School Dropout! If this shows anything, I think I made the right decision.

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WIP: My Crazy Scrap Busting Rainbow Hexie Project

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My Crazy Scrap Busting Rainbow Hexie Project by Jessee M {an Art School Dropout's life}Apparently hand sewing hexagons has become a bit of an obsession with me. I love it, and it really calms me every night before bed. I know I haven’t shown more progress with my first EPP quilt and I probably look crazy for starting ANOTHER one, but trust me, it makes sense. Black, White & Gray fabrics are hard to come by and add on to that I’m super picky, so that quilt will be a long term project and will only progress when I buy more fabric.

In the meantime I started the project above. It’s a much smaller hexagon and enables me to use up the enormous amount of scraps I have accumulated over the years. Plus I can trade for more scraps because a lot of people hoard them too.

My Crazy Scrap Busting Rainbow Hexie Project by Jessee M {an Art School Dropout's life}When I first started this project my plan was to just make a pillow, I nice 18″ square pillow. Though once I reached that size I just didn’t want to stop, plus I had a lot of hexies leftover. So I decided to keep going and make either a twin size quilt, or a 90″ square lap quilt. So just like the first hexie quilt, this will be a long term project and can only progress when I find more scraps or buy small amounts of fabric. Which I’m fine with.

My Crazy Scrap Busting Rainbow Hexie Project by Jessee M {an Art School Dropout's life} My Crazy Scrap Busting Rainbow Hexie Project by Jessee M {an Art School Dropout's life}The best part about the random nature of this quilt is any fabric goes. It can be super simple, super weird or just plain solid color. It all goes together!

My Crazy Scrap Busting Rainbow Hexie Project by Jessee M {an Art School Dropout's life} My Crazy Scrap Busting Rainbow Hexie Project by Jessee M {an Art School Dropout's life}I also love how I can be a little silly in where I place certain pieces too! I’ve been enjoying combining phrases with illustrations of people and animals. Like the examples above! I’ve been holding onto that “I’m With Stupid” fabric for many years and never knew what to do with it. I also have this awesome food truck fabric with a bunch of word bubbles that I use throughout.

I’ll need to make over 3,000 hexagons so I get loads of chances to mix this little easter eggs in.

My Crazy Scrap Busting Rainbow Hexie Project by Jessee M {an Art School Dropout's life}Yet again though, since this is a long term project I still need to keep my hands busy while watching tv at night, which means there is a THIRD & FOURTH hexie project I will be sharing with you all soon. I just have to quilt them both, which means they are mostly DONE! (Yes, I am a crazy lady)

Have any of you started one of these projects because you saw my progress on here or on Instagram? If so, please share!!!

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WIP: Customizing My EPP Hexie Quilt

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epp_hexie_custom_001

This quilt is probably something I’ll share updates on every so often. I just keep thinking of neat ways to make it 100% perfect! I put it aside for a week or so to work on another quilting project, but once my new custom hexie fabric came in from spoonflower, I just HAD to start up on it again!

epp_hexie_custom_002Above you can see the fabric. I just printed off a hexagon like grid and doodled a bunch of quick designs using a brush pen. I then scanned it in and made it into a vector file. Then I replicated a few designs in different tones and added a few of my other fabric designs into some hexagons I left blank. I designed it to fit onto a fat quarter, and the hexagons are very specific to the size of my ongoing quilt.

epp_hexie_custom_003As you can see, it’s also very specific to my taste and my life in general. I included an illustration of my house that I did a few years back, plus my Daily Uniform fabric in different tones of black and gray. I want this quilt to be 100% ME, especially since it’s going to take forever to finish.

epp_hexie_custom_004 epp_hexie_custom_005Oh and of course I didn’t spare any time basting all of the new hexies. I just couldn’t wait to see how they would blend with all the previous fabrics I used!

Now I’m super antsy to get this thing done, I just want to cuddle with it all so bad!!!!!!

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Behind the Scenes: Quilting Pillow Tops… Almost

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Last week was a complete bust when it came to sewing. I started having horrible stomach pains early in the week and was pretty much stuck on the couch until late into the weekend. I’m feeling a bit better this week, but I’m still not 100% myself.

Today I had enough strength to whip up a potholder (which I’ll share tomorrow, along with a link to a pattern) and get the two pillow tops shown above ready to quilt. I would have completely finished them if it weren’t for the fact that I ran out of dark gray thread, and would love some matching teal thread for the geometric one. So these won’t be finished until I make a trip out for supplies, but I still wanted to share them in their half finished state!!

I can’t wait until I can cuddle with them on the couch!!

 

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Behind The Scenes: “My Favorite 80′s Sweater” Quilt

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Say Hello to the brightest quilt I’ll probably ever make (unless someone know where to find good quality neon fabric). It started out as a sketch in muted tones last week, but turned into randomly picking out of my Kona Cotton stash for colors with enough yardage for each piece.

I’m calling it “My Favorite 80′s Sweater” because that’s all I can think of while piecing it! I probably owned a sweater, dress or jacket that looked something like this as a kid.

This thing is seriously forcing me out of my color comfort zone. My zone normally consists of purples, teals, pink and gray… LOTS OF GRAY! And normally it’s just one of those tones mixed with gray, not all of them blended together. I’m also using this quilt to practice different methods of sewing patchwork. I’ve tried out chain piecing, which saved me loads of time, and strip piecing, which also saved time, and I’m getting better with half square triangles (which I now love, instead of fear and hate). Oh and I’m getting better at sewing long straight lines, ha, something I wasn’t that great at before.

While sewing this top together I kept thinking of better ways to do each strip, in case I ever want to sew this again, which was really neat. It’s all a learning process, and I’m loving it! I seriously can’t wait to share the finished piece! I still have three rows to go and then it’s off to someone else who will quilt it for me. So it may be a few weeks.

 

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Which Way Is Up Quilt

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About a week and a half ago, in the middle of the night, I had this idea for a paper pieced quilt. An outline of a house, in black with different tones of blue as the background. Luckily I’ve been finally keeping a habit of having notebooks all over the house, so I jotted it down real quick and went back to bed (you can see the original sketch in the above left photo).

The next morning I woke up before CT and went straight to my computer, I drafted a paper pieced pattern so I could test out my idea. I was very happy with the results, and as you can see from the photo on the right above, it worked!! I was so excited I set out to make 24 more!

Well, after searching through my fabric stash, I just couldn’t find 24 fabrics that matched the first one I did. So I narrowed it down to 12 total. I made each house block 10″ square, which meant I should end up with a quilt about 30″x40″ if I didn’t add a border, and a bit bigger if I did.

I spent a few days finishing up the other 11 blocks, doing four at a time (I feel like I get up to iron less and it takes less time, to me). I was on a roll and was set out to finish this quilt as soon as I could. So last Tuesday I finished all 12 blocks! I laid them out on the floor and didn’t quite like the set up as all house outlines. So I turned a few around, and a couple upside down, and ended up with a bunch of arrows pointing all different directions. Perfect!! I also decided at that point that I was going to add 2″ white strips in between all of the blocks and a 2″ white border around the entire edge. Now it was 40″x50″, a nice lap sized quilt. I needed one of those.

I pieced and quilted the entire thing Wednesday afternoon, and then added binding Friday Morning. I took photos Saturday, and here I am on Monday showing you all my finished quilt…

I’m calling it the “Which Way Is Up” quilt.

I LOVE the way it came out, and I love that each time I use the pattern it will be a totally different quilt! I can subtract the white and do all solids, so the arrows (or houses) will be subtle and surprise you! or I can switch the white and the patterned fabrics? Or I could be super crazy and actually have them all houses!! Ha.

Well, I’m so interested to see all of the different ways you could make this quilt too, so you can find the pattern in my shop!

I’m not including instructions on how to paper piece. I have no idea how to write it out in words… Yet.  If you’ve never tried it, I suggest searching for some videos on YouTube, that’s how I taught myself. Fresh Lemons Quilts blog also has a great tutorial if your not into watching videos.

If any of you do make a project using this pattern, I would love to see it (and maybe even share it on here).

I feel like I’m on a quilting kick now, so expect to see more sewing and a bit less of everything else…

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