Glibly Blithe - AGF Stitched

Happy Monday, all! We have another AGF Stitched with Kimberly Blog Hop today, hosted by the Fat Quarter Shop and sponsored by Art Gallery Fabrics. This time it's the Blithe quilt!

The Fat Quarter Shop provided the free Blithe pattern, the handy Triangles on a Roll paper, as well as a great video tutorial, and Art Gallery Fabrics provided the fabric goodness. The Fat Quarter Shop also has a Blithe Quilt kit featuring the Chalk and Paint line by Sew Caroline and a backing set available.

I'm happy to be sharing my version the fun Blithe pattern, which I'm going to call Glibly Blithe. It's a happy quilt and whenever I hear the word blithe, I think of Gilbert Blythe from Anne of Green Gables. ;)

I used a lot of Katrina Roccella's beautiful new Avantgarde line for my quilt, with some Imprint and Prisma Elements fabrics thrown in.

Look at this little treasure I found on Katrina's Bauhaus in Dissection fabric. Nice Marshall McLuhan reference, eh? :)

I have to say that the layered triangle design of this quilt is looks more complicated than it is -- I love the clever construction! Some of the larger white triangles are actually made up of a smaller square and two triangles, which gives the quilt the layered triangle look. Using the Triangle paper made making the 6" HSTs a breeze so the top came together very quickly.

Stained Glass effect

For the the back, I used scraps from the front to mimic the Steps Above Prism fabric. A little whimsy.

The flu took down most of my household including me this week so I was only able to finish the top and backing, but I'm so pleased with where this is going. The binding is going to be the Steps Above Prism. Sigh. Isn't it delicious?

I can't wait to see what the others have done with this pattern. Check them out!

Ants to Sugar

Happy Quilting

Kitchen Table Quilting

Like Flowers and Butterflies

Meadow Mist Designs

Old Red Barn Co

Piece N Quilt

Quilt Matters

S.O.A.T.K. Handmade

Sew Caroline

Sharon Holland Designs

Sometimes Crafter

That Crafty Cara

Elven Garden Quilts

Also, Check out Fat Quarter Shop's Jolly Jabber blog for more details about the blog hop.

TGIFF! - Welded Links

Things have been going a 100 miles (or kilometres) a minute around here lately. The joys of September. Even though there's not a lot of time for quilting, I'm happy to say that the start-itis I've been suffering from these last few months is officially over with this project -- must be a TGIFF! miracle.

Of course, it always helps when you have a deadline. This deadline? The AGF Stitched with Kimberly Welded Blog Hop hosted by the Fat Quarter Shop and sponsored by Art Gallery Fabrics.

The Fat Quarter Shop provided the free Welded Quilt pattern and a great video tutorial and Art Gallery Fabrics provided the fabric love. The Fat Quarter Shop also has a Welded Quilt featuring Pat Bravo's Artisan line and a backing set available.

For my version of the quilt, I wanted to play with navies and greys so I picked out fabrics from Katarina Roccella's Imprint, Indelible (Spirodraft Carbon), and Recollection line (Cuneiform Script Cast), as well as a few prints from the Art Gallery Studio Maker line. Mmmm!

I modified the Welded pattern a bit and replaced some of the blocks with background fabric, making the negative space more prominent and giving some asymmetry to the fun on-point block design of the quilt. I'm so happy with how it turned out!

For the quilting, I used a light grey Aurifil and echoed the sewing lines. Simple, but effective and I love the extension of the lines in the negative space. 

For the backing, I took the leftover greys and paired them with the I'm a Maker print (sooo love that fabric!). 

I find the navies and greys make Welded look like links in a chain so I'm calling it Welded Links.

Here's Welded Links enjoying some sun by the Rideau Canal. ;)

Finished size: 60" by 60".

There are a whole slew of fabulous bloggers participating in this hop so be sure to check out what they've done with the pattern.

• Cara of That Crafty Cara
• John Q Adams of Quilt Dad
• Kitty Wilkin of Night Quilter
• Dana Bolyard of Old Red Barn Co.
• M-R Charbonneau of Quilt Matters (oui, c'est moi!)
• Corey Yoder of Little Miss Shabby
• Christina Lane of Sometimes Crafter
• Sinta Renee of Pink Pincushion
• Jess Frost of The Elven Garden
• Erica Jackman of Kitchen Table Quilting
• Svetlana Sotak of Sotak Handmade
• Jemima Flendt of Tied with a Ribbon
• Katarina Roccella
• Caroline Hulse of Sew Caroline
• Riane Menardi of Vessel Quilts
• Megan of Quilt Story
• Kaye Prince of Miss Print
• Natalia Bonner of Piece N Quilt

You can also check out #Weldedquilt and #AGFStitched on Instagram (and Twitter) for more inspiration.

I'm also linking up to TGIFF!, which is over at Simply Pieced this week, because it's been a long time since I've had a finish to celebrate. :)

Going Fractal With AGF Stitched

Welcome to the Fractal Blog Hop hosted by the Fat Quarter Shop and sponsored by Art Gallery Fabrics! The Fat Quarter Shop provided the free Fractal Quilt pattern and a great video tutorial and Art Gallery Fabrics provided the eye candy. Oh, and the Fat Quarter Shop has a Fractal Quilt Kit too!

For my version of the quilt, I picked out fabrics from Frances Newcombe's Utopia line, from Katarina Roccella's Indelible line (Spirodraft Carbon), and from Katarina's Recollection line (Cuneiform Script Cast). It's not a great photo, but I love, love, love how these fabrics play together!

The Fractal Quilt Pattern uses Y seams. Yeah, I know what you are thinking because that's what I thought. Y seams? Usually, it's a no thank you, but the pattern looked so fun that I had to give it a try. Conquer my fear of Y seams, I must!

The pattern uses the Creative Grids Kites Plus template ruler. It was the first time I'd used that template ruler shape for making Y seams and I have to say that I was pretty impressed. The Creative Grids template has a little hole in the ruler where you can mark your 1/4" seam. 

It worked beautifully. Look that that Y seam! :D

And that join! 

The centres aren't all that perfect, but most of them are. Woo hoo! Happy dance!

Despite my vow to 'stick to the pattern', I took a little detour. I decided to do three by three colour wheels and used more of the Spirodraft Carbon for the background. I think the Spirodraft is perfect for the background. 

I also decided not to add pieces to square up the corners of the quilt. I think that will be a first for me.

And there's my little helper trying to hold it up to show the full top. The top finished at 73" by 54" - a great large throw quilt.

Since I changed up the layout of the front, I wanted to use the 'leftovers' for the back with this Utopia print.

This was like putting together a puzzle and I'm very pleased with how it turned out. 

The top and backing layered...

Wouldn't it be fun to do a spirograph-style quilting on this? I have a few fun ideas for the quilting so I better get cracking!

Check out what the other participating AGF Stitched bloggers have done with this pattern:

Katarina Roccella
Erica Jackman of Kitchen Table Quilting
Christina Lane of Sometimes Crafter
Natalia Bonner of Piece N Quilt
Riane Menardi of Vessel Quilts
Afton Warrick of Quilting Mod
M-R Charbonneau of Quilt Matters (oui, c'est moi!)
Jess Frost of The Elven Garden
Caroline Hulse of Sew Caroline
Rachel McKeeman of The Floral Suitcase

I can't wait to see what they did with it!

Oh, and Y seams? No more fear, baby! :)

Happy Birthday, Canada!

Happy Canada Day, Eh!

Hi everyone, I hope the weather is better in your neck of the woods -- raining here. It had better clear up in time for the fireworks tonight. We take our fireworks seriously around here!

Things are looking up. My mom finished her treatments yesterday so now we wait to see how well they worked. Fingers crossed, but it looks like they caught it early. Woo hoo!

School's out and summer has officially begun (not that you'd really know it by the weather lately, but at least it's green outside, instead of white!).

I've even been doing some quilting -- yay!

First, I caught up on my Bee blocks:

For Krista in my OMQG Bee, the Stamp Collection block by Elizabeth Hartman (tutorial). Krista provided the grey solid and we provided the scraps. She wanted scrappy...and she got it!



Stacked books for EP (EP provided the Kona Snow and the tutorial, but you can find a tutorial using a different method on Craftsy):

 

Flying Geese for Dom @ The Running Thimble. I love Dominique's inspiration! (tutorial from Quiltcetera):

 

Now that I'm all caught up, I do some other fun projects. I've started a project with these lovelies courtesy of the Fat Quarter Shop and Art Gallery Fabrics... :D

 


Hope you have a fabulous day and Happy Canada Day to my fellow 0.05% of the world's population. He he!

And the answer is, yes of course. ;)

Birchen - À la Quilt Matters

Happy Monday all! I'm thrilled to be participating in the Fat Quarter Shop's Birchen Blog Hop today.

We're using Art Gallery Fabrics (woo hoo!) so I chose to use the Prisma Elements line of fabrics for my version of Birchen. I LOVE this line. For my quilt, I chose Zirconia, Apricot, Solar Quartz, Larimar Sea, Pagoda Gem and Sapphire Sparkle, with the idea that the aqua (Larimar Sea), yellow (Solar Quartz) and orange (Apricot) would pop against the darker colours.

I found the most perfect teal Aurifil 4182 and yellow Aurifil 2135 for the quilting. The teal worked beautifully for the back as well. The quilting is very simple for the moment, but I'll be adding in more.

I picked Time is Deer Coal in the Indelible line by Katerina Roccella for the backing. Love! Almost too pretty for a backing, don't you think?

The quilt finishes at 72" by 72".

If you've seen the pattern, you'll probably notice that I modified a couple of things:

• This was the first time I've chosen fabrics for a quilt entirely online. One thing I missed I think was that there wasn't a lot of contrast between the Pagoda Gem and the Zirconia. Even the Sapphire HSTs blend in that block. In hindsight, I think I'd print the fabric swatches from the site in grayscale to better see the values. 
• It was also the first time I made HSTs using HST paper templates. Very cool! I'm not sure it was really a time saver, but it certainly made more accurate HSTs!
• I used three fabrics (Sapphire, Apricot, and Solar Quartz) instead of two for the J/K strip set. 
• I added in a row of Sapphire and Pagoda Gem HSTs to Block One. 
• I also switched my block pairings. I originally planned to pair the large Sapphire HST with the Zirconia, Pagoda Gem and Sapphire HSTs, but found it was too dark. 

Such a fun pattern! I can't wait to see what the other blog hop participants have done with it. Check them out on the Fat Quarter Shop blog!

The Birchen pattern is available for free from the Fat Quarter Shop site. They also have a quilt kit available! They've also put together a fabulous video tutorial. 

Sew Sisters Sponsorship Giveaway Is Sew Sweet!

I'm very happy to welcome Sew Sisters Quilt Shop as a sponsor for Quilt Matters. Yay! Sew Sisters is a Canadian quilt shop dedicated to all things quilting -- great quality fabric, notions, books, kits and patterns. This wonderful shop is physically located in the bustling metropolis of Toronto, but it is online everywhere! Judy and Karen, the sisters behind the name, believe you should pay for fabric, not postage so they have some of the best shipping rates going!

I've been a customer of Sew Sisters both in person at the shop and online. I've always been impressed with the selection and prices, and pleased with the service so I'm thrilled to have its support.

Sew Sisters regularly has great sales and also offers weekly giveaways on its Facebook page. Hello!

To celebrate, Sew Sisters is offering a giveaway! Say what? Yes, one of you lucky ducks will win this 10 fat quarter bundle of Minimalista by the AGF Studio for Art Gallery Fabrics. Minimalista and a ton of other fab Art Gallery Fabrics are on sale now at their store!


To enter, just leave a comment on this post before Sunday, May 4th at 9 p.m. EDT and Ms. Random Number Generator will choose a winner Monday morning. For a bonus entry, you could 'like' Sew Sisters Quilt Shop on Facebook and leave a comment below. For another bonus entry, you could also 'like' the Quilt Matters Facebook page and leave a comment below.

Have a good one and good luck!