Little Quilts Cocktail Shakers and a giveaway

Hello there, fans of Amy, Sarah, sweet little quilts, cocktails, and Liberty!  Welcome to my stop on the Little Quilts blog tour, where I will happily gush on and on about how much I am enjoying this addition to my quilting library.

I met Amy during my first foray into swapping back in the Flickr Doll Quilt Swap. I was then introduced to Sarah and her beautiful work shortly after when these two talented ladies teamed up for their Dollies on Line pattern company.  Amy's Mrs. Schmenkman Quilts was one of the first blogs I followed years ago and she thrilled me one day with a sweet unexpected gift prompted by a mini quilt I'd made. I knew right then, that she was my kind of people.  Something tells me that I will get to meet both of these amazing quilters next year in person.....

So, if you've been following along this blog tour you already know that the tour is a swap!  Each of us has a secret partner for which we are making a quilt from Little Quilts. Prior to receiving my copy, I had already decided (based on the Amazon "take a look inside" photos) which pattern I'd use. Then my book arrived: cue indecision.  I wanted to make ALL THE QUILTS! Really! That rarely happens with me and books. Every pattern appeals to me. I know this will be my go-to guide whenever a swap comes around because there is definitely something for everyone and plenty of room for customization with fabric choices, fussy cutting and expanding to larger-sized quilts.

planning, planning, planning

Having recently acquired a bumper crop of Liberty tana lawn F8's, I was anxious to use some of them in this special quilt. I paired them with that other British fabric I love, Oakshott Colourshotts. After marking several pages in the book, eventually I returned to my original idea because my little brain just loved the idea of an all-British cocktail shaker quilt: A James-Bond-ish Shaken, Not Stirred table runner.

I think these two kinds of fabric really enjoy each other's company. The foundation piecing for the cocktail shaker shapes is very straightforward and not at all fiddly as far as paper piecing goes. It's actually a great project for a first go at this technique.  Can you spot the teeny Hello Kitties in the border print?

"Shaken, Not Stirred"

The runner finished up at 16" x 31".  Hopefully my partner has a suitably sized coffee table or side board, or even a bar!  Of course, there is always the awkward skinny wall option for hanging a table runner. 

I quilted the runner with a gorgeous blue Aurifil 28 wt thread in a straight line diagonal grid pattern that parallels the piecing. And I used this perfectly-suited Laurie Wisbrun print from my stash on the back!

To see what everyone else is making for their secret partners in our blog tour swap, have a look at the other stops listed below!  If you don't have it already, ask your local quilt shop to stock this wonderful book for you...then organize a swap with your guild or quilting friends!

If you'd like to win a copy of Little Quilts courtesy of Sara and Amy's publisher, leave a comment and let us know if you've ever made a doll or mini quilt before!  I'll close the giveaway October 4th and chose a random winner.  To win, you MUST leave your email address in your comment if it is not linked. If I can't contact you with one click, I'm afraid I have to chose another winner.  Good luck!

September 1: Amy and Sarah

http://mrsschmenkmanquilts.wordpress.com

http://thelastpiece.typepad.com

September 8: Pam Vieira-McGinnis

http://pamkittymorning.blogspot.com

September 15: Nedra Sorenson

http://cactus-needle.blogspot.com/

September 22: Lynne Goldsworthy and Krista Hennebury

http://lilysquilts.blogspot.com

http://poppyprintcreates.blogspot.com/

September 29: John Adams

http://quiltdad.com

October 6: Katy Jones

http://imagingermonkey.blogspot.com

EDITED TO ADD: comments are now closed, and congratulations to commenter #63, Kathy, who has won herself a copy of Little Quilts!

A coordinating pillow, you say?

So SIL is enjoying sleeping under her Brrr! Made in Cherry quilt. It never made it to the spare bed, apparently. Just a day after taking it home, I received an email letting me know how great it looked (with photo), but that "all I need now is some matching pillows".

I happened to have all of my scrap triangles from making the quilt so I put them together with a few solids for an easy peasy 1/2 square triangle pillow top. Because I do what I'm told (usually).

I quilted the pillow front to some fusible Pellon fleece with diagonal lines 1/4" away from the seams.  The backing is made from some of the larger pieces that remained on my FQ shelf and I joined them with a hidden zipper flap.

The binding is also leftover from the quilt; I cut an entire yard of the stripe print on the bias, so I have miles of it. It's machine sewn to the back.  First I sewed it to the front of the pillow with a 1/4" seam allowance as you would for a quilt, then pressed it to the back and secured it with Roxanne's Glue-Baste It (carefully mitering the corners). Then, using my Pfaff's stitch in the ditch foot which has a metal fence right smack dab in the middle of the foot, I sewed along the front of the pillow in the ditch of the pillow/binding seam. You can see the front and back above.  I've tried doing this just using pins to hold the binding in place, but I always end up missing sections on the back. The glue just keeps it all snug and more accurate for me.  There are a lot of tutorials around blogland if you need more details on attaching binding by machine, just Google it.

I gave the pillow to my SIL for Valentines yesterday and I think she likes it. Watch the comments to find out : )

It's only been a year in the making....

Quilt tops abound here at Poppyprint, but finished, bound quilts? Hmmm. Not that often. Like so many others obsessed with fabric combinations in quilting, I am easily distracted by the next exciting fabric line/pattern/quiltalong/block and as a result my UFO's linger. And linger.

Over a year ago, Laurie Wisbrun  and Kaufman very kindly shared a LOT of her sweet, graphic holiday line called Brrr! with me. Around the same time, Chelsea started the Made in Cherry quiltalong on her blog. It had been a while since I made a big quilt and I thought this free Lecien pattern by Sarah Fielke would be an ideal one for Laurie's prints. The 5" square sized allowed the polar bears and large polkadots to shine, instead of getting all chopped up and lost in small piecing. The bright aqua, red and green colours are even more fun on the field of medium grey background.  The quilt is bound with Laurie's adorable stripy/dotty print in the Holiday colourway that I cut on the bias: perfect.

Here's the top getting a good soaking on some white rain that accumulated last year!

I made the top really fast (for me) and showed you last year. Then, I pieced left over large chunks of  Brrr! with some coordinating Kona solids and the back went together lickity split as well.

Then we went on a month-long family trip to France.

By the time fall rolled around, I realized that sometimes the best way to complete a large quilt is to get help. I took the top and back down to Seattle for Krista K2 to work her magic. I'd seen her Baptist Fan quilting on Krista's K3 quilt (confused yet? There are three of us!) and asked her to quilt mine with the same design, with an aqua thread.  The pattern is programmed into IQ, a computerized system that Krista can use on her longarm when she's not working her dreamy free-motion quilting magic.

I just love how incredible this very traditional quilting pattern looks on this decidedly contemporary quilt! I will definitely have more large quilts done with the Baptist Fan.  It is the first quilt I've made that has Polydown batting inside. I've always been a stickler for cotton blend batting, but Krista convinced me that that the quilting texture would really shine with a slightly poufier batting.  Of course, she was absolutely right! Trust the experts.

The polar bears will go to live two blocks away at SIL's house, on her spare bed. She's already said she likes the back better (that's how she rolls) so that's likely the side that will be 'up'. I haven't yet decided what to do about a label, in that case.