Category Archives: A2MQG

Round Robin

I’ve never done a quilting bee before, so I’m very excited that the Ann Arbor Modern Quilting Guild has decided to start a Round Robin!

Photo courtesy of Rossie – http://r0ssie.blogspot.com/

I made the block on the left and included some more of the Silent Cinema (grey pattern) and the Kona Snow fabrics.  Rossie added some modern touches, much to my delight! I’m hoping it’ll end up having the look of a modern medallion quilt, rather than a sampler, but I know it’ll be great no matter what.

My block was inspired by this quilt.

This is the block I got in the first round:

Isn’t the center swirl lovely?  Kourtney made that out of 1.5″ finished squares!  So precise and beautiful movement.  I just added the green border and the next border of white with pink corners.  I wanted to frame the swirl and then give the next person some negative space as a clean slate ready for her additions.

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Fancy Fabric T-Shirt “Pockets”

I – like many quilters – am a fabric lover.  I noticed I was avoiding wearing a couple of t-shirts because they had sad, saggy, pockets.  Finally it occurred to me to replace the pockets with some of my favorite fabrics.

Yup – my last scrap of mermaids : )

These are not actually pockets.  If you are really using the “pocket” function for these shirts, I don’t know what to tell ya.    Here’s how I make them:

Authentic 1950s fabric

I just got this fabric recently from an Ebay auction.  It’s said to be from the 50s and it certainly has that feel!  Spoiler alert – if you’re in my guild, you could land a half-yard of this at the next meeting’s swap!  Wouldn’t it look cute with Flea Market Fancy?

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Filed under A2MQG, Clothes, Fabric, Tutorial

Spring Swap

For the latest meeting of the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild, we were asked to bring a hand-made object that was inspired by our theme “Spring.”

I decided this was the final kick in the pants to tackle a project I’ve been wanting to try for well over a year.  Check out this pillow!  I think it’s so cute and awesome. I chatted up the creator and she said that it was based off of a pattern that she no longer had the information on, but gave me the all clear to try and duplicate the design.   So through some photoshop tomfoolery I created a little pattern…

Reversed the image and outlined the shapes… Cut out the shapes on a cardstock and use for pattern pieces.

From fusible interfacing, I made a little-smaller-than-actual-size cut-out of the complete bunny piece and attached it to the background fabric.  Then I placed all of my fabric pieces on the fusible bunny and ironed once everything was properly arranged.

Then I quilted!  I mostly did little blades of grass.  The bunny is hiding.

Then I covered the whole pillow-front with a layer of fine webbing.  I saw this on THIS mini quilt and LOVED the idea, as it not only adds a slightly shimmery dimension to the whole piece, it will also encourage the appliqued pieces to stay in place and avoid some fraying.

Then I placed my envelope closure fabric flaps in back, and sandwiched everything together with a binding.   It’s a little twee, a little frou-frou but I can’t help but love it.

Brenda from Pink Castle Fabrics got the pillow and I got these lovely bean-filled paper weights from Rossie.  I actually use them as stress-relief, squeezing them in my hands as I stare into space and also to (gently) lob at my misbehaving children and spouse.

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Covered Notebook

At our most recent meeting of the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild, we did a Yankee Swap of handmade accessories for home or person.

I made a covered notebook with two matching pens using this tutorial (minus the button).

It features the last of my scraps (almost – still saving a tiny square I just can’t toss) of Heather Ross’s Mendocino mermaids.  It’s a bit of a funny strip – boobs and butts!  But I knew the designer loving fabric fans in the guild would appreciate it.

Brenda from Pink Castle Fabrics snagged it!


after I stole her beautiful scarf made by Emily, that is!  But look at how well it matches my fall coat!

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Habitat Blocks

Why am I so bad at math?!  I’m really not – I took calculus in high school and statistics in college, but yet, I always screw up my calculations while sewing.  These blocks were a disaster of math screw-ups.   Tack on another border, tack on another border, tack on another border… iy yi yi!   Truly unprecedented stupidity on my part… but at least the stakes weren’t too high.

Anyway, here are my blocks for the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild’s charity quilt made out of Jay McCarroll’s Habitat fabric (previously posted about HERE) donated to our group by Free Spirit Fabrics.

 

I like the fabrics I selected from the line and I could see a cool quilt (maybe just a simple patchwork) our of these swatches…

 

 

 

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Kona Solids Challenge Quilt – Winners!

Hello everyone!

I am overjoyed!  We had a wonderful guild meeting a couple of nights ago and I got a huge surprise!  The fabulous women of the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild chose my “Dusty Springfield” quilt as the Guild Favorite!  What a hoot!

I received a great gift bag with patterns from Modern Quilt Relish, a pastel Robert Kaufman Charm Pack, and books, some thread, some needles, a wicked awesome seam ripper, and best of all a gift certificate to the wonderful Pink Castle Fabrics!  Yahoo!

It was also such a joy to hear that Natalie won the judge’s choice award!  Thanks to Modern Quilt Relish for stepping in to guest judge – they even wrote us each personal notes with feedback!  So sweet.  Here’s Natalie’s quilt:

Beautiful, right?!

And here are everyone else’s fabulous entries…


1. Carol-front, 2. Brenda-front, 3. Ann-front, 4. Debbie-front, 5. Lisa-front, 6. Lucinda-front, 7. Angie-front, 8. Kathy-front, 9. Ginia-front, 10. LeeAnn-front, 11. Emily-front

Thanks again to my guild!  I love the A2MQG!

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Kona Solids Challenge Quilt

Hello all!

The Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild participated in the  Kona No Prints Allowed Challenge.

Rules:
•    Kona solids only
•    Must use at least 30 of the charms/at least ½ of the charm piece
•    Up to (3) additional Kona solids can be added
•    Minimum of 120” outside perimeter
•    Due date – June meeting
•    Must be quilted and bound

Here’s what I came up with!  All pictures of the quilt are courtesy of Anna!

I used the Dusty Charm Pack as well as Kona Snow, Coal, and Ash.

I call it “Dusty Springfield”

The back got slightly askew when I was basting, which is a bummer…

I made the cross blocks by doing strip piecing and saved a couple of extras for the back.

I was inspired by this gate in April and Andy’s house from the TV show “Parks and Recreation”

Thanks for looking!  This is a judged competition – I’ll let you know who the judges pick!  In the meantime, you can view more of the guild’s challenge quilts in our flickr group!

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Habitat Challenge

Are you familiar with Jay McCarrol’s “Habitat” fabric line?  It recently won the Modern Madness Challenge hosted by Fat Quarterly.   Well lucky for us, Free Spirit Fabrics is hosting a little challenge for our Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild (and other participating guilds) where they will send us six fat-eigths per member of the line, and we are each challenged to create something using the Habitat fabrics and any coordinating solids we choose.   We’ve decided to open our challenge up to crafts beyond just quilts, so I’m looking forward to seeing what the other members create – pillows? bags? We shall see!  I’m thinking I’ll probably still try and make a quilt of some size.

We chose this colorway, photo courtesy of spool:

We’re currently working on a Kona Solids Quilt Challenge that I’ll be happy to write about at the end of June, after we reveal our quilts to each other at our highly anticipated next meeting.

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Name Tags

The wonderful Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild got together last week and it was another amazing experience.   One thing that made this meeting all the better was that most of our members brought name tags they had crafted at home.    I’m terrible with names nowadays and this was a big relief for me.

It was also fun to try some new techniques – which I did while making my name tag:

I used printable fabric for printing out the letters of my name.  Then I cut them out and ironed them on (the printable fabric I used was iron-on-able) to a light-grey background.  Then I made the pink detailing out of a sparkly fabric I was thrilled to use*.  I fabric-glued it onto my background.  Then I glued the edges of the light-grey background under and machine sewed it to a bigger, darker grey background.  Then I put on my free-motion foot and sewed the letters and the pink detailing onto the background with black and sparkly pink threads, respectively.

For the backing, I ironed on some interfacing to the back of another piece of dark gray fabric.  Putting good sides together I sewed the front piece to the back, leaving a hole so I could turn it all inside-out.  I turned it right-side out, pressed the raw edges under from my hole, and then top-stitched around the entire name-tag.  For added stability I hand-sewed a popsicle stick to the back of the name tag after first applying a pin backing with super-glue to the stick.  Fancy!  I really like how it turned out, and it may have even warmed me up to the whole concept of raw-edged applique, as normally my obsessive need for finished edges drives my projects.

My design was inspired by our logo, which was created by r0ssie.

*True story, before I got into quilting I would still occasionally buy fabrics for undetermined projects.  Unfortunately I shopped like a baby bird, mostly focusing on weird sparkly cotton blends that aren’t the best for quilting projects.  So whenever I find a use for these oddities, it’s a little victory : )

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