Moving Day!

I recently moved this site from http://craftprowler.wordpress.com. If you notice any broken links or lost photos, please let me know! In the meantime, check out my new About and Finished Projects pages.

Riley Blake Challenge – Trivet

At my first-ever meeting of the D.C. Modern Quilt Guild, I received some free fabric as part of the Riley Blake Challenge. The challenge rules are pretty broad: create anything from the fabric in the bundle, using any additional solids or Riley Blake fabrics you’d like, and post your project in the forum by February 17, 2014.

I decided to use the fabric to make something I was lacking: a trivet large enough for my roaster, which matches my [late] great grandma’s.

I adore the Marcelle Medallion design, and I decided to use it for my trivet. I tried paper piecing it this time. It was one of my first forrays into paper piecing, and it worked out pretty well, I think.

(I finished all but the binding of this project well before I started the Sew Kitschy paper piecing BOM. Check out my blocks here and here.)

My trivet includes a layer of Insul-Bright, which is a a heat-resistant batting. I would essentially have a mini quilt if I hadn’t used Insul-Bright. I later saw the Riley Blake blog has a free oven mitt tutorial using the same product, designed by Sew at Home Mummy. I even used the tutorial once before but didn’t manage to get a photo before I gave the oven mitt as a gift.

Another first for me on this project was hand quilting. I love the way it looks but was afraid to commit to doing a whole quilt. The trivet was a perfect size. I used Anna Maria Horner’s tutorial and size 5 purl cotton thread.

I scrounged my ever-growing stash for some backing fabric and was pleasantly surprised to discover I had many Riley Blake prints left over from my original Marcelle Medallion quilt. I picked this one in blue, and I love the star quilting from the front.

 

I can’t wait to see what others made!

Sew Kitschy Cookie Jar

This is month two of the Sew Kitschy Block of the Month (“BOM”), and I’m not sure why I’ve never done a BOM before! Sewing just one block per month is really easy (at least if you’re not participating in multiple groups!), and at the end of the year, you basically have an entire quilt top.

I re-worked last month’s block a tiny bit since I was lazy about lining up the last seam:

Still not perfect, but much improved.

My month 2 block came out much better, in my opinion. It’s a cookie jar. I’m going to embroider the word “cookies” on the jar once I select a font.

 

I’m also subscribed to the Lucky Stars BOM, but I haven’t selected the colors or fabrics for it. I am thinking I might just try to hammer out both years’ worth of blocks once they’re all released and see which strategy I like better. If you’ve had a favorite quilt-along, I’d love to hear about it.