Quiltivate

NEW: Quiltivate Tutorials by Crazy Mom Quilts!

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We have a huge announcement today:

Your custom quilt plans from Quiltivate now include step-by-step tutorials by Amanda Jean of Crazy Mom Quilts!!

Famous in the quilt world for her breadth of talent and interest in so many techniques and styles, Amanda Jean excels in making quilts people will want to display in their homes and use every day. Cozy and modern; trendy but timeless, her quilts inspire fellow quilters to just go for it and create quilts they'll love to use.

Some of Amanda Jean's quilts were done as quilt-alongs on her blog, complete with easy-to-follow block or quilt-assembly tutorials. I knew instructions like these were what I wanted to add to the Quiltivate custom quilt plans, so I went straight to the source and asked if she would help. I'm so thankful for Amanda Jean's expertise, and honored to have had her time in creating these block tutorials. I know you'll also appreciate having everything you need to assemble your custom quilt.

Get started now by picking one of these five marked blocks:

When you purchase your Quiltivate quilt plan from one of these five blocks, you'll not only get detailed fabric calculations and full-size images of your quilt's block and quilt top, you'll also now get detailed, step-by-step instructions with helpful images like the one below on how to assemble your quilt blocks:

This is huge news for us - Amanda Jean is such an inspiring quilter and I'm so thankful for her expertise. So what are you waiting for? Plan your quilt now to get your custom Crazy Mom Quilts tutorial!

Tweet to Win Fabric!

Want some free fabric from my favorite fabric shop on the West Coast? Enter to win $25 from HartsFabric.com today!

Q: How Do I Enter?
A: Send a tweet out that says something like: "Design quilts online at www.Quiltivate.com!" and you'll be entered to win. That's it!

You can even click this button to have the tweet created for you: Tweet

If you create your own tweet, be sure to include the word "Quiltivate" somewhere in your tweet so we can track it. 

The cut-off is midnight PST on Tuesday, August 31, so send your tweet now so you don't forget!

Design your next quilt on www.Quiltivate.com - it's a super fun service that could save you hours of math and frustration. Get started now - pick a block!

Finished Gray Lazy

The Gray Lazy, just-for-fun Nine-Patch is finished! It has already come in very handy around the apartment with San Francisco's amazing summer (autumn-like) weather.

Although I have hand-quilted several quilts made by friends, this is only the seventh quilt I've made on my own from start-to-finish! I can think of lots and lots of things I could have done better on this latest quilt, but overall, I think it's a significant improvement over the last six. Here are a few of the things I did differently this time around:

 

Two-Sided Quilt: Instead of doing a quilt top and a quilt back, I made two quilt tops (one with gray sashing; the other with blue sashing). I did the cross-hatch hand-quilting based on the gray side so it's a little bit off on most of the blue side, but the effect is still okay even on the "back."

Flannel As Batting: I actually only used flannel instead of batting because I had flannel on-hand and didn't have enough batting for this size of quilt. But I think this was a serendipitous deal - the weight of this little flannel-batting quilt is just right for around the apartment. I like the warmth of the Warm & Natural batting for wintertime bed quilts, but I may purposefully use flannel for mid-weight quilts in the future.

 

Binding: The greatest improvement I made on this quilt as compared to my previous quilts was definitely in the binding. Three things I did differently:

1. Improv Binding - I wanted to do the binding in the gray fabric, but I didn't have quite enough gray. I had lots of squares of the fabric I used for the blocks left, so I threw in several of those and I'm so glad I did! I might do things like this on all future bindings. 

2. Real Slip-Stitch - To bind my quilts, I machine-sew the binding onto the front of the quilt then "slip-stitch" it onto the back. In the past, I've haven't exactly been carefully hiding the stitches on the back. But I was very careful this time around and it was worth the extra effort.

3. Corners - Another area I've sort-of just hodge-podged my way through before was corners ... and they looked like it. I had to re-do it a few times on the first corner to get it right, but it's great to finally know how to handle binding corners like a real quilter.

It was a fun one to make! And I'm glad to have it to myself to enjoy. 

Now, what's next?

Gray Lazy Nine-Patch Quilt

The for-fun quilt I started last week is all assembled and I even started quilting this weekend! I'm calling this the Gray Lazy quilt because it's just the right size for lazing around the apartment. And it's my very first "just for fun" quilt - no recipient in mind at this point!

I started with a few of the nine-patch blocks I made when I did the Crazy Mom Nine-Patch Quilt-Along last November (all of the fabrics are pre-washed, pre-cut 3" squares from Stitch Simple). I got a bunch of solid fabric in gray and blue from my co-Bay-Area-Modern-Quilt-Guild friend Amy a la Mode at our last meeting, so I used some of it for sashing here (reason #854 to join a quilt guild, by the way: fabric swapping).

 

I did the same thing for the back of the quilt except I didn't have enough gray, so I used blue (also from Amy - thanks, Amy, for dumping your excess on us). I think I like the contrast of the gray sashing better, but it's fun to have a quilt with two slightly-different personalities.

The hand-quilting I started was the good, old faithful crosshatch. Seemed like a great idea when I started it, but realized when I was looking over my handiwork last night that my blocks on top don't exactly line up with the blocks on the back, so the stitching on the back is off-point by about 1/4". Oh, well - guess I'll keep this quilt for myself and chalk it up to a learning experience for next time.

One thing I realized assembling this quilt: I am really, really bad at estimating how long assembling things will take me. I told my husband, "I'm just going to add sashing then quilt the blocks together, so this should only take me a couple of hours total." But my extreme optimism got the best of me again. It took me three nights of intense sewing and pressing to do both sides (probably a total of about 12 hours ... not two). Am I super slow, or does it take everyone else this long for a task like this?

It's a super fun and inspiring little project though, and I'm excited to forge ahead on it and start the next thing soon.

Have you started any new projects recently? I'd love to hear what you're up to! 

Forward Momentum

 

I love spending time working on Quiltivate! There are several exciting features in the pipeline for the Quilt Builder in particular ... I'm really eager to share them with you, but I'll wait until we're a little closer to spill the beans. 

But, I did realize a couple of weeks ago that I spend so much time working on stuff for Quiltivate that I've kind-of neglected my passion of actually quilting and making things! So, I'm trying to re-allocate my time so I can get the things done I need to do around the apartment, work on some up-and-coming Quiltivate stuff, and also do some quilting. 

To kick things off, this past weekend I got started with sashing my Crazy Mom Quilts nine-patch quilt-along blocks I created last fall using Stitch Simple pre-cut squares. Instead of making a full-sized quilt like Amanda Jean did in the quilt-along, I decided to use some of my squares to make a smaller, double-sided TV-watching quilt just to have around the apartment. It'll be a pop of color in our somewhat monochromatic living room. Lots of work left to go, but here's a tiny peek:

 

I'm Less Scared of Flying Geese Now

 

I've never really been too worried about the migrating kind of flying geese, but the quilt block version always looks really daunting to me. I'll admit I'm easily intimidated when it comes to quilting projects. In fact, I basically to this point have picked which block I wanted to use based on how easy it looks to assemble. Which explains why I've pretty much done Fundamental Nine-Patch blocks except for my crazy foray into half-square triangles with my little boy's robot quilt using the Flock Block a couple of years ago. 

But, thanks to the first issue of Fat Quarterly, I see now that Flying Geese blocks aren't really as hard as they look! 

 

Fat Quarterly has great tutorials for three different methods to create these feathered blocks ... and all three look really easy! One uses two half-square triangles to make the effect of flying geese; another uses one rectangle piece for the goose and two square pieces for the flying part; the final version is one big square and four little squares and you end up with two Flying Geese blocks. No mitering or voodoo necessary for any of the three methods!

To get the actual tutorials, head on over to Fat Quarterly and pick up the first issue. I'm not even halfway through yet and I'm completely inspired and excited to go try some stuff. it's totally worth the $8. Time to pull out the sewing machine to start my next project!

New Quilt Blocks! April 2010, Week 2

Tuck that Kitty in the Corner and color Joseph's Coat how you like it, then make them into quilts! Play around with this week's five new blocks in the Quiltivate Quilt Builder, then get fabric calculations and make those plans into actual quilts. Check 'em out:

Irish Chain




Jack Knife




Joseph's Coat




Kitty in the Corner




London Roads Variation

100 Quilt Tops Per Year?

 

Guys, this amazing lady is on track to make 100 twin-sized quilt tops this year! Evelyn Schweitzer from Marion, Ohio turns 85 this weekend and has conquered cancer twice but she still whips off 100 quilt tops per year and has done so for the past eight years running. All these quilts are donated to the Lutheran World Relief program and distributed all over the world. Here's how Evelyn does it:

"She works on the quilts about five at a time, sometimes spending one day cutting out the pieces then another stitching them together. It takes about three hours to make a 60-by-80 inch quilt top of alternating squares, but longer, eight or nine hours, if Schweitzer decides to take on a more intricate pattern, like her favorite, Lover's Knot."

Can you imagine having the goal of 100 quilt tops and taking the time to make some of them with this fancy Lover's Knot block? 

 

So many people's lives have been touched by her quilts - what a way to make a difference and do something fun. Yay, Evelyn!
 

New Quilt Blocks! April 2010, Week 1

April showers bring ... more time stuck at home to quilt! Five new blocks this week to celebrate:

Grandmother's Cross




Home Treasure




I Excel




Independence Square




Letter H

Get Prizes for Playing Quilting Games!

I saw this link to a cute game online where you help fill in quilt blocks and Grandma gives you coins for doing it right and fast. The game is called Quilting Time:

Looks fun, huh?

I got to thinking - this is actually super similar to the Quilt Builder on Quiltivate:

The main difference between the Quilting Time and Quiltivate is instead of getting a virtual pot of gold from Grandma like you do in Quilting Time, with Quiltivate every single "player" can walk away with fabric calculations for their custom-designed quilt! How's that for a prize for basically playing a game? 

Check out this actual quilt plan for the Flock block to see how much info is included in each quilt plan: 

 

Get started now on the Flock block, the Capital T block, or pick from over 200 other blocks. Happy playing!