Red and White Challenge Quilt

title: All I want is red, wah, wah, wah...

creator:  Colleen Charlotte Yarnell

location:  Lewisville, NC

Date:  January 2012

Challenge:  Create a 36"-48" red and white quilt for the Forsyth Piecers and Quilters March16-18 2012 Quilt Show Challenge

Inspiration:  I love the swoon-along happening online in blog land.  It inspired me to create a 24" red and white swoon block.  Then using 3" blocks as the basis for the rest of the quilt created my favorite star blocks.  A 12" wonky star, a 9" Friendship star, a 6" Free hand star, a 3" whirly-gig star, and a 1" pin wheel.  The title comes from the song I would sing in my head as I searched for red and white fabrics in quilt stores.  It was hard to findfabrics with JUST red and white and not a touch of block or yellow.  And there are so many different shades of reds!

Here are some photos documenting the construction and quilting.

Piecing the Swoon block.  I use my Marti Mitchell templates.

Friendship star

Wonky star

Freehand star

Pinwheel and Whirly-gig Star

Laying out blocks to figure out placement.

Piecing the back with leftover fabric.

I machine quilted each of the blocks differently.  I used a pebble quilting for the wonky star points.  

And here are some close ups of the quilting.
I
I used just a little bit of the variegated thread with the tiniest block.  It makes it look as if it is blowing in the wind.  I like how it gives the whole quilt the look as if the blocks are being tossed in air.

The rest of the red background I free motioned quilted with my Sofia last Sunday in a tiny loop.


At the bottom of the quilt I put a piece of Kumari Garden. 

 I love this large scale read and white print.  I decided to do some hand quilting here. 

 I wrote 'read and white red and white' in chalk and then signed Colleen Y.  

I quilted over it using red pearl cotton. 

My only problem was the chalk was not easy to remove.


I hadnt stitched the binding down.

Keep dreaming...Colleen

Pillow made for mom's birthday with red and white scraps from this quilt.  The pattern is a 12" Swoon by Camille Roskelly.

I need Monk!

How can I loose 2 yards of Kona orange! ?!  It is somewhere though not were the rest of my fabric is!  I don't know if I ever told the tale of the etsy store that messed up my order.  This past October I ordered a scrap bag from a now defunct fabric store.  I also ordered a yard of orange Kona at a special price.  Well 2 weeks go by and I get the orange but no scrap bag.  So I convo'd with the store and and realized she sent me two yards of the orange.  Well I wanted my scrap bag and the invoice was correct. So finally they said they would send it to me.  And then nothing for a month.  I convo'd nothing.  I checked the feedback and saw a lot of negative feedback and orders paid for but not received.  It was getting close to the limit for filing a claim so I left negative feed back on the scrap bag only and filed a claim  I think what was most disturbing was the negative feed back the owner had written on some of the customers.  Very mean spirited and a little paranoid and ranting.  I waited until the last minute to file a paypal claim as well.  I wanted to give the person every opportunity to make it right.  It was only around $6 but it was an order not filled.  Do you know you can loose your etsy privileges if you don't handle complaints?  And Paypal will strip you of your account!  Believe it or not I did get a refund through paypal at the very last minute.  I had the convo as my proof and the invoice. So I closed my etsy claim.  That will teach me to order from a store I don't know through the blogs or flickr.  Though I did check the original feedback before I ordered and it was 99%.  

Todaythere was an awesome sale at Karen Gray's.  She carries Westminster fabrics.  She had her $6 wall fabrics (older lines) $4.95 a yard!  Christmas fabrics $3.95!  rayons $9.95!   Valorie Wells linens and decorator fabrics $13.95.  fat quarters $2.30!  books 1/2 price kits 1/2 price!  It was an awesome sale!  Between  my etsy sale money I bought some fabrics to fill in some color needs.  

I also spent the day rearranging my studio.  I needed to put my BL Sofia desk behind my big desk so I could just swivel and do my embroidery.  If I need to machine quilt I will move it to the big desk for more room.  I also made things less cluttered looking.  I hate clutter and  it was getting on my nerves.  Dad would be proud that I hung the green shelf all by myself. I put my sewing notions and box collections from various relatives on it.  I also found the perfect place to hang my Victorian clothes dryer.  And if you look in the picture below you see a round object under the shelf.  That ia a cleat plastic sewing box.  I have my wooden spools in it.  I figured out how to put it on the wall.  I used packing tape to hold it closed and a nail with no head which fit in one of the spool holder holes.  Yeah!  I also reorgainzed my thread and embroidery threads.

Ok so I am tired and rambling.  Good night!

Keep dreaming...Colleen

Have you seen DS Quilts new Aunt Edna at Joann's?  Lucious!

Happy Birthday sewing

My sister Kelly's birthday was this week.  So I was doing some sewing.

I sewed up these goodies.  The clutch is from Noodleheads tutorial.  It was fairly easy, though the gathered part was a bit of a challenge.

Here is what is in the embellished purple linen bag.  A necklace and earrings.  I thought HK would like to show off the earrings.  Notice they all match the pull on the clutch.  Now she is read to got out on the town with her boyfriend.

See the purple linen with the embellishment?  I bought this some where I cant remember.  I have made a few projects for Kelly with it as purple is her color.

Keep dreaming...Colleen



Mom's fingers in Kelly's cake where she caught it as it slid off the musical birthday cake turner.



Resolved to Sew 2012

VerryBerryHandmade is having a giveaway!   Visit her website for details! 

Some of the quilts to finish.

Resolved to Sew 2012

1. Create a quilt for red & white quilt challenge for FPQG show in March

2.  Finish Star Trek quilt

3.  Finish Bloggers Block of the Month blocks

4.  Finish Fat Quarter Stars Quilt Along

5.  Finish Relay for Life Cancer Stars quilt

6.  Quilt Wonky log cabin

7.  Quilt Elongated star baby quilt

8.  Quilt 9 patch diamond quilt

10.  Make a Swoon quilt

11.  Put together Let's Bee together blocks

12.  Put together Block Swap Adventure

13.  Make quilts with old swap blocks
14.  Habitat challenge

Keep dreaming...Colleen

Dad modified and put up some of my $3 shelves in the kitchen.
I can finally display some of my treasures.

Swoon #1

I decided to give in to the need to finally start my Swoon quilt last night.  I loved piecing the swoon block for my red and white quilt.  I had sorted and sorted my Kaffe and Denyse Schmidt fabric until I finally had the pairings that make sense.

I had printed out my pdf pattern of Swoon, but was not going to be making it the way the pattern shows.  I did use it as a guide but I find I am more precise when I use my Marti Mitchell templates from set A, my Companion ruler, and my 6.5 square ruler.  

It has a lot of pieces and cutting out is what takes the longest amount of time.

The sewing is fun and because of the unique corners of the Marti Mitchell templates it makes my point actually all line up nicely.  Cause I sure ain't very precise on my own.  I like chain piecing all of them together.

It is relaxing and I put the Psych series on Roku.  It plays one episode after the other automatically.  I don't like silence so it is background noise.  

I love the way my Swoon block #1 turned out!  I think the fabric pairing is wonderful!  Not sure when I will have time to make the other 8 but will blog when I do.

Keep dreaming...Colleen

Mom and I had an afternoon of lunch, shopping and ice cream on her birthday Jan. 16th!

FNSI or FNPI

I didn't do so much sew in as prep in.  My sewing studio needed to be cleaned up a bit so I could work on my projects.  I needed to put away the rest of the Christmas fabric.  I needed to finish sorting(rereresorting) fabric for my Swoon quilt.  Inspired by GingerMonkey's Swoonalong.  Im using a Kaffe floral paired with a Denyse Schimdt Hope Valley.  

 And I started to plan the fabric to block pair ups for the wonky borders on my star trek quilt.  Dad an I had laid it out so I need to figure out the border colors.  I've blogged about this before.  The blocks are form a 1995 block swap.  

I also worked mentally and on paper about the quilting and embellishment I want to do for my  red and white quilt I finished the top and back for last weekend.

.Oh and I started work on a new blog banner for 2012.  I want to update it with my favorite projects from 2011.  I will unveil it later.

Sew So my Friday Night Sew In was more a Friday Night Prep In.  I hope to do some of the actually sewing today.

Keep dreaming...Colleen

Kalli-cat cuddling with me as we wait for #talknt .
  A  Tuesday night tweet party for quilters.

Please vote for me!!!

Quokka Quilts has a challenge to design a Fat Quarter shop fabric bundle.  I blogged about my choice shown below

Because so many people entered she is asking everyone to vote for their top three favorites.  Please go here and vote for me # 30 Colleen!  Thanks so much!

Keep dreaming...Colleen

My Kaffe and DS fabric choices from my stash for a swoon quilt.

One Thing One Week Challenge

Ok so first off I put the wrong gift down to make for my Mom's birthday.  I cant tell you what because there is a another birthday involved.  All I can say is I did make Mom's birthday present and thus completer Amy's Creative side One Thing One Week Challenge.

I took the scraps from my red and white challenge quilt.  I have wanted to make my mom a new pillow for a while as one I made her years ago is pretty beat up.  I did a mini swoon like the one in my red and white quilt which I put together Friday and Saturday.

Keep dreaming...Colleen

TMQG mosaic for pillow swap

OMG !

Oh my gosh I finished my top and the back!  Yeah! 

The name of the quilt is "All I Want is Red, Wah ,Wah, Wah".

It was the song I would sing as I looked for red fabrics in quilt stores.  I suppose I could of ordered online, but I really needed to see the red in person.  There are some I just did not like the shade of.

I did add one more tiny block.  It is 1 inch.  The rest of the blocks are based on the number 3 partially from the swoon/Bethlehem Star block.  This on is a 3" pinwheel star.

This is a 6" paper pieced hand drawn star.  It is one of my favorite blocks to make.

This is a 9" friendship star.  It is the first block I ever made with HST in it.

A nod to my current favorite modern block is the 12" wonky star.

 

And last of course is the Swoon/Bethlehem Star block. 

I pieced the back from the rest of the red, the Kumari garden and this tiny tight plaid.

Now I just need to figure out how to quilt it.  Of course many ideas are going through my head. 

1.  All over machine quilting in  FMQ swirls.

2.  Straight line quilting all over.

3.  Outline quilting by block with FMQ in the background.

4. Hand quilting with pearl cottons in red and white.

5.  Combination of techniques.

I want to put beads in the center flower with a removable (for washing) felt flower.  I'm leaning toward a mix of techniques.  After the quilt show I'm going to wash it for that crinkle look and use it as a lap quilt for ME!!!  It will only be the second completed quilt I have made for myself, except for a few small wall hangings.

 Keep dreaming...Colleen

Next I need to baste and FMQ the second scrappy star baby quilt. 
The baby was born in the fall so I'm a little late.  Blogged about here.