The One With The Gnomes

I recently participated in a Doll Quilt Swap on my favorite sewing forum. The theme was "Summer" -- so naturally, I went with gnomes.

I promise the actual quilt isn't as wonky as this picture makes it look! (My lawn is the wonky one.)

This little quilt measures about 16" x 20" -- I used some much loved Heather Ross fabric (the gnomes and stripes), Art Gallery solid, and Michael Miller dots for the binding. Then went to it quilting the feathers and a "crossing paths" dense filler.

See, I told you it wasn't (quite) as wonky as that first picture showed; this pic shows a completely different kind of wonkiness!

On the back, I added a strip of stripes, with selvedge, of course, and a bit of Heather's newest line Briar Rose. There are little crickets in among the clover. Definitely summer!

I'll be hanging out with some other fun sewing peeps on Friday and Saturday. My local MQGs (yes, two of them!) are hosting sew days. I've got some utilitarian quilty bits (placemats) and some fun stuff (a swap and a charity top) to work on. Which means there'll be something new to share next week.

What are you working on today?

ko

The One with the Quilted Feathers Tote Bag

My best favorite part of quilting is the quilting. I *love* to push those layers through my Janome and see the designs come together.

Last week I put together a piece of Angela Walters' Right Angles Panel, and a piece of Ikea's nummers fabric just so I could practice my feather quilting. Gotta say, I *love* the results! I cut the panel across the WOF, so the practice piece was about 18" x 42" -- the finished tote is approximately 15.5" tall and 19" wide.

I FMQ'd the feathers on the panel and was thrilled to see them improve in just this short practice piece. That picture above is the front because it's got the best feathers. The photo below is the back. The feather on the left was the first one I'd done on this practice piece.

I joined the feathers together with some "Lazy L" quilting to really make the feathers pop. The handles are cotton webbing, and the gray tabs on the end are just a bit of Kona charcoal to keep the webbing from fraying.

The inside is as much fun as the outside:

I sewed it into a tote and bound the top edge. It's a fun, happy bag that holds a ton!

ko

eta: Linking up at crazymomquilts!