another finish for 2010

Well, it's official! Tonight I finished sewing the binding on the purple zig-zag quilt, and it's done! I chose a lavender, navy and green stripe that pulls together the colors in the quilt top and the backing fabric.

Here's Brad testing the quilt out for me:
When life gets frustrating, finishing something can feel so good. I hope you find a way to get a finish when you need one!

Cheers,
~Phosphorelated

quilting the purple zig-zag quilt!

My poor zig-zag quilt has been languishing lately. I bought several yards of a deep purple print for the backing, and then one day while working on my hexagons found one made from this purple and green print, and I realized it would be an even better backing than the one I bought. I had to piece it together a bit, but I figure that's no problem. So, I got a quilt sandwich together! The batting is a crib-sized White & Warm, and it was just barely big enough.
After a lot of mental back-and-forth about the quilting pattern, I decided to go with a loop-de-loop pattern to contrast with the sharp angles of the piecing.
I used a violet-colored 100% cotton thread from Connecting Threads, and I really like the effect. Unfortunately, I went a little too fast with the free-motion quilting, and in places the stitch length is longer than I'd really like, but I think it'll do. On the up side, I got all the quilting done in one day!

Progress feels good. Cheers!
~Phosphorelated

a zig-zag quilt top!

This weekend I've been sewing away on my purple zig-zag quilt top. Here it is, with all the squares laid out on the floor ready to be sewn together:And, many hours later, assembled and trimmed!
It turns out I'm not crazy about sewing together squares on point (rotated so they look like diamonds, or like the points of the compass), which I don't completely understand since it's really not that different from sewing together strips of squares in the normal way. But it's done now and I love the result!

Next problem: backing. This quilt top is too big for any of the pieces of purple fabric I have in my stash, and I can't decide what I want to do with the back. I want to turn this into a quillow, or a quilt that folds up into a pillow, and that's only complicating the choice of a quilt back. Hmmm. Thoughts (and pictures) as I figure it out.

Cheers,
~Phosphorelated

altering the zig-zag

This quilt is based on a great tutorial from Amanda Jean of Crazy Mom Quilts for making a zig-zag quilt without piecing triangles. Please visit her tutorial for complete instructions; it's her pattern, so I'm just going to show you the small change I made to use 18 prints instead of 9 prints and a solid fabric.

I cut two strips each of 18 purple prints, according to Amandajean's instructions. I arranged them in an order I like, alternating light and dark prints.Then I took one strip of the first fabric (I'll call it A), and sewed it to one strip of the second fabric (B).
Then I sewed a strip of B to a strip of C, like so:I cut the strips into squares as instructed, and laid out the A/B squares according to the tutorial:
Then I lined up the B/C squares so fabric B makes the first zig-zag. In the picture below, the B/C square on the left is in place and the one on the right is displaced a little to illustrate how they are put together:

When you've laid out all the A/B and B/C squares, you get a long line of zig-zags like this:Here are the rest of my strips ready to be pieced into the complete quilt top.
More pictures as I go! Thanks, Amandajean!

Cheers,
~Phosphorelated

a purple zig-zag quilt

Ever since I saw Amandajean's tutorial for making a zig-zag quilt without piecing triangles, I've wanted to make one. I love Amandajean's blog (crazy mom quilts), which is one of the first quilt blogs I discovered and is one I still the one I read most often; I visit at least once a week to see what she's up to. Even though I find that my taste often differs from Amandajean's, especially in terms of color selection, I love seeing what she's up to and am always inspired by her blog. Her quilts always make me want to try something new, or something outside of my comfort zone!

Today I cut fabric to make my own zig-zag quilt. I'm following Amandajean's tutorial, with one small change; instead of using 9 prints and a solid fabric, I'm using 18 different purple prints. That's one example of how Amandajean inspires me even though I want to do things differently than she does -- when I first saw the tutorial, I absolutely wanted to use it, but definitely didn't want a solid in between each of the prints. Fortunately, her pattern lends itself to a little alteration! I'll show what I'm going to do as I start sewing.
~Phosphorelated