A very important quilt (to me) has found a new (permanent) home! **Giveaway?**

Pin It First off, I just realized this is my 101st post!  That's crazy!  I should have a giveaway.  In fact, I think I will!

Riley Blake recently sent me this rolie polie of Lola's Posies by Lila Tueller.  We all love Lila Tueller, right?  I'm not sure why they sent it to me, but I'm definitely not complaining.  If I had the time to do something with it, I would definitely NOT be giving it away.  Unfortunately, in the foreseeable future, I see no future for this bundle of pre-cuts unless one of you does something with it.  So you know the drill!  Leave a comment (any comment) and I'll use that handy dandy random.org thingy-mabobber to pick a winner. I can't commit to a certain day because I'm really freakin' busy, y'all.  But it'll be next week! Sound good?

Now!  Back to the topic at hand!

I sent my Ovarian Cancer Quilt off to California today (that's not it's actual "name", but its actual name is kind of offensive).

California is not its new home!  But it is the home of OASIS of Southern California.  They requested my quilt to display at hospitals in California for the month of September (Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month).

I had to finish hand sewing the binding on just to ship it!  I took a "night off" last night and worked on it from 7pm to midnight.  And today, it shipped.

This quilt was such a labor of love.  I started piecing it (and wanted it to be really simple) when I was home recovering from my hysterectomy. I was in so much pain by the time I got done piecing it, I couldn't walk for a day!  Here it is (from the back side, for some reason - must've been the pain meds) pre-quilting:

I did color trapunto, faux trapunto and dense background filling.

I even included a few hidden messages in the quilting.

So this quilt will be on display through the end of September.  Then it will be shipped back to me.

I made it to donate it for auction to fund ovarian cancer research.  But when a friend of mine saw it, he asked how much I would charge to make one.

First of all, I suck at charging for stuff.  I'm finally growing the courage to charge a fraction of what I should for my quilting, but to be commissioned for a quilt like this?  Yeah, I'm better at giving stuff away.  Not to mention he's a 32 year old bachelor and if I quoted him a price, I would be responsible for his untimely death.

I thought about it for about two minutes and told him that he could have mine.  He's a friend from high school.  Actually, he was more my older sister's friend and just mostly teased me (my nickname was butt chin junior, his nickname was fish lips).  But his sweet mother died last year from ovarian cancer after a 12 year battle. 

I can (and will) always make another ovarian cancer quilt.  For now, this one has found its place in the world.  It will be completed with a personalized embroidered label on the back just in time for his father, whose wife was lost too soon, for Christmas!  And in return, I've been promised a picture of his dad's face when he opens it.

Perfect!

Please, please, please?!?! And some finishes. :)

Pin It Yaaaaaaaay!!  My friend, Melissa all but threatened me if I didn't enter my Rockin' Robin quilt in the Cruisin' With Riley Blake contest (that's a joke, of course.  But she did tell me I had to enter it!).  I'm not sure how many quilts were entered, exactly but I know there were quite a few.  Doesn't matter.  Mine was chosen as one of ten finalists!!

Usually when I enter a contest, I ask you to go vote period.  Don't vote for me, but vote for your favorite.  Nope.  Not this time.  Please, please, please vote for meeeeeeeeeeeee!!   

Okay, really vote for your favorite, it would just be awesome if your favorite happened to be mine.  =]

So the other day when I posted my recent finishes, I totally forgot to show you The Blue One!

I made this quilt and wanted it to be super simple so that I could quilt the crap out of it.  And that's exactly what I did!  I made it for a handsome boy whose favorite colors are blue and grey.  I think I got the job done!

Do you like my Vigilance kitty mounted on the top of my quilting machine?  She's always watching.
 
I did not strip piece this quilt.  I made it from 526 6 1/2" triangle squares.  Why did I do that?  Why did I spend 10 times as long piecing the top as I needed to?  Because it saved me a couple of hours of marking it for quilting.  If there's anything I dislike, it's marking!  And with the triangle squares, I had all of the registration lines I needed to do this:

Each of the triangular curved cross-hatching sections took 90-120 seconds to quilt (yes I timed it).  Each orange peel took anywhere from 2-4 minutes.  I spent a lot of time on this quilt!

Here it is on its new owner's bed.  I surprised him and when he got home from work, he had brand new cotton sateen sheets on his bed, with this here quilt-type-thingy.

For the record, this was the first time I had ever seen one of my quilts ON A BED.  How sad is that?

Anycrap, last night I finished a pretty crazy-awesome customer quilt.  It was pretty basic when she brought it to me, with lots of open space for quilting.  She wanted it quilted like her daughter's tattoo, but basically told me that as long as it had nautical stars, she would be happy.

I got to do some thread-play, y'all!!!!!

I decided that feathers, funkiness, and contrasting (even metallic) thread was the ticket for this sucker.  I LOOOOOOVE it.  But I emailed her pictures and haven't heard anything back so uh, I kinda hope that, you know, she doesn't hate it.  Here it is!
Le front:

Le back:
(Don't mind that in the picture, one of the stars at the bottom right corner is missing its silver reversed echo, I fixed that this morning!)

And close ups of the quilting on the front:

Those pictures suck pretty hardcore and for that, I apologize.  However, the quilt is pretty radtastical if I do say so myself!

Now, I've GOT to get back to work so I can make some progress on my super secret project tonight! 

PS- PLEASE VOOOOOOTE!!!!  =]
The link is here! 

Getting around to the "official" reveal

Pin It It occurred to me upon receiving a couple of emails from the other designers of our Rockin' Robin Quilt-Along that I never posted my finish!  I posted a picture in the Flickr group, and I may have posted a picture to Facebook (I don't even remember anymore), but I never posted anything here!

I have to say that I'm very impressed with what I've seen in the Flickr group, from all of you that have participated and played along with us.  Originality is bursting out of you people!  It is so fun to see everyone's interpretations of the blocks and rows that we designed.  Seeing you take it and make it your own is so awesome.

Anyway, here is the finished product of *my* efforts.

This is MY QUILT.  Nobody can have it!  It is helping to ease the pain of not yet having time to quilt the top I made for my own bed.  Award-winning quilter has Sears comforter on bed:  tragic.  Anycrap, I love this quilt.  It's so bright and cheery and I couldn't wait to quilt (read: finish) all of those bubbles all over it, which makes it even more fun!

If you are participating in the quilt-along, don't forget to add your pictures of your finished top (it doesn't have to be quilted) to the Flickr pool for a chance to win some awesome prizes!

Speaking of contests and prizes, since we can reveal our quilts now, I entered this quilt into the Cruisin' with Riley Blake contest.  I was browsing the other entries, and found that someone made a quilt from my tutorial I wrote for Riley Blake.  How cool is that!?

And, since I'm sharing this finish, I suppose I'll share a customer quilt finish or two with you.

This first one is Linda's.  It's beautiful.  It was a total pain to quilt and I was in thread-shred hell for days, but it was worth it in the end for how pretty it ended up being!

Annnnd here's the back

Then there's this one.  It was pieced by a cute 12 (?) year old and I quilted it for her for the fair.  She won Grand Champion (?)!!  It is now off to the state fair.  I haven't talked to her and am only relaying the information I've heard, but I'm sure she's super stoked about it!

I really want to show the one that I'm working on now (well not right now) but I refuse to show it until it's done!  It's crazy awesome.  Pink, black and white.  It's like the lovely lady that made it is after my heart.  I'm hoping it will be done tonight, but there's no telling.

I'm also making progress on my super-secret project and it kills me that I can't show that one.  But soon enough!

Oh!  And BeDazzled got another ribbon!  It won second place in Milwaukee.  YEEHAW!

That's all I've got.  My brain is fried, my body is tired and I'm suffering from Chronic Yawn Syndrome.  Is it November yet?!

Rockin' Robin Quilt-Along Week 5: Hexagons!

Pin It Hello all!
Today is the reveal of the final row in our Rockin' Robin Quilt-Along.  I've never done anything with hexagons before, so I was super excited to get to incorporate them into a quilt of my very own!
This week's row(s) was designed by Jen of ReannaLily Designs.
She gives excellent instructions for turning your applique, and also a template to cut your hexagons from.

Of course, being the results-driven, time-lacking person that I am, I chose to cut my hexagons with the Accuquilt GO! cutter.  Not much difference in size at all, and a total time saver.  Considering I did quite a few more hexagons than the original design of the quilt called for, I needed all of the help I could get!

I'm also lucky that I'm a longarm quilter...  I just fused on my hexagons and didn't do any kind of applique stitch around them.  Instead, I just did a straight stitch about a quarter inch in from the edge while I was quilting it on the frame.  Raw-edge to the core, people!

 

I cannot wait to show you all my completed quilt, and also see the other designers' completed quilts (Okay, I've actually already seen them but YOU haven't!).

So hop on over to Jen's blog for the tutorial and template.
Don't forget to also check out the other designers and what they did with this row.  VERY versatile!
We have Melissa at Lilac Lane
Heather and Megan at Quiltstory
And AnneMarie at Gen X Quilters

As always, don't forget to add your progress pictures to our Flickr group.  How else will you win any prizes?!?!

Happy sewing!