Birds of a Feather

Birds of a Feather in progress

I'm not sure you can even see WHY I chose to call this yummy specimen "Birds of a feather"...but I will explain it to you.  There's a story to this one...

The Turquoise fabric in the center of the quilt is Amy Butler's Belle Royal Garden, and on it there are extravagant peacock looking birds, flowers, and buildings... It really is something to behold, and it took me longer than it should have to take a cutter to it because I just kept looking at it and smiling like a dork. (perhaps while drooling and saying "Ooooo...soooo preeety...")

I purchased said Amy Butler fabric (I may or may not have a slight Amy Butler crush) from a dear soul on Etsy - just doing my part to help the other creatives out there like myself...I would give you the link to her shop, but it seems she is no longer selling...

ANYWAY, I wanted the Amy Butler fabric, and then I wanted a coordinating green fabric to go with it to create this quilt. So I also purchased a green that LOOKED like it would coordinate nicely on my computer...but when I received them in the mail, they did not, in fact, go together at all.  The green in the Amy Butler fabric is a two-toned olive-ey green that is really hard to describe.  The stuff I purchased was lime green with sunglasses on it.  HA!

GUESS WHAT?  I had the PERFECT green in my stash!  WOOT!! It contains both the greens in the Amy Butler fabric AND it looks like feathers.  Or palm fronds.  OR FEATHERS!  I cannot tell you what line the fabric is from, as I received it in a fabric swap from someone who apparently had big plans for it and the rest of the fabrics in the line, and then didn't do anything beyond cutting and sorting.

And that's not all, folks.  I had a gift card for Jo-Anne's that I intended to use to purchase the border fabric.  Because, you know, I certainly don't have any fabric in my studio!  Pshht!  I knew I wanted a light blue to bring out the light blue in the fabric.  I actually had the color in my stash but not enough.  SO, I was ALL ORGANIZED and had some extra blocks to take with me to match this fabric.  I mean, you don't want to end up with fabric that doesn't match, right?  TRAGEDY.  So my husband and I set off sans children to pick up some fabric.  As we pulled into the parking lot, I realized that I set down the blocks...and left them on my kitchen table!  I was flying blind.  DRAT!  I really said drat too.  Because I say silly things like that.

I went back and forth several times about whether I should just save the buying for another day, but I was already there...blah, blah, blah... 

Do you SEE those borders?  The picture does not do them justice.  They both have metallics in them!!  The light blue has little silver swirlies and the navy has metallic silver dots.  (I also may or may not have a slight obsession with dots).  DIDN'T EVEN DO THAT ON PURPOSE! When I bought them, I was 99.9% sure they would work, but told myself that I loved them both enough that if they did NOT work, I would use them for SOMETHING.  In fact, I bought the rest of the bolt of the light blue fabric and will definitely be using that elsewhere.

Birds of a Feather

So I have the borders on here.  The top is DONE.  Next week I will decide how I am going to quilt it and whether that requires me to mark it (doubtful because I KISS), or wing it...sandwich and go.  Should be done soon.  Then I will photograph her and list her in my shop.  Come visit me there at

Lydia's Purple Cloth.  I have one listed that is the same block pattern but different fabrics...but you can only look at it because it's reserved for someone else...But still.  

Okay, enough rambling for me now.  Hope you enjoyed my gawd-awful photography.  If you REALLY want to appreciate Amy Butler fabric, you should go to her design site.  She has great stuff there.  She truly speaks my language.

Peace to you!  

Good Things Are Coming!

Have I ever been busy!  I have finished one whole quilt from start to finish, and am getting another one ready to be quilted by a professional.  Not that I'm not a professional (totally not), I just don't exactly have the facilities to quilt a bed-sized quilt.  YET. OK, Fine. You've caught me.  I really just don't WANT to quilt it myself.

• A: my machine is too small and it is a pain.  
• B: doing it by hand takes FOR. EVER.  I need this puppy done by June, y'all.

I have some pictures of my accomplishments.  First, the FINISHED project:  Ta-da.....

How stinkin' GORGE is this quilt?  If I do say so myself.  I used the Pennsylvania Keystone template from Jeanette Kittlan of the former Endless Mountains Quiltworks.  (TOTALLY have more of this type of quilt coming down the pike) The fabrics from the center of the quilt also came from EMQ - she was going out of business and I pretty much fell in love with both the modern gray and the fun bicycle print.  ADORBS.  The orange border, polka-dot border, and cozy flannel back are all from Joanne's.  I am SOOOOOO glad I decided to go with the orange.  I almost went with blue, but the orange spoke to me.  Plus, I made it for a couple and one-half of said couple claims orange as their favorite color, and the other half claims blue, so this makes the quilt quite perfect, IMO.

It seems every quilt has a story behind it and this one is no different.  Quite early in the process, I was sewing along when my machine beep, beep, beeped...and then all my buttons refused to work.  So from that point on, I only had one stitch - straight, and I could no longer even use the "needle down" feature.  Nothing.  I felt lucky I could use the machine at all.  

Unwilling to switch machines in the middle of a project (because, anyone who sews knows this could be a really bad idea), and unwilling to pause the project while I was feeling inspired and energetic, I plodded forth.  I believe I was sewing on the last border when the machine again beep, beep, beeped and VOILA!  All my stuff works again and I was even able to put a decorative stitch on the binding.  Weird.  

I should probably have that looked at...

The second quilt is much bigger.  I made it for my niece using materials that her mother (my sister) used to make clothes for her when she was a baby/little girl.  Since the fabrics from my sister were very juvenile in nature, and my niece is graduating high school this year, I wanted to temper that feeling with something more modern.  Confession:  Not my favorite choices.  The fabrics for this were chosen YEARS ago, before I discovered my love affair with dots.  I did the best I could with what I had, but if I did it NOW, it would look slightly different.

I designed the layout of the quilt all myself.  It turned out square, even thought I tried to lengthen the ends.  Oh well.  It's the thought that counts right?  As I said before, this is only a top.  I have enough material from my sister to do the entire back, so I will be putting that together soon.

Backstory:

This quilt took YEARS to finish.  I designed it on graph paper.  I cut.  I counted, I measured.  For some reason I got bored and put it aside...when I came back to it, I finished cutting the gray material for the top....THE WRONG SIZE!  Instead of 4.5" strips, I cut 4" strips. To be honest:  I think tears were shet. THANKFULLY, I was able to find more of the exact same fabric at Hobby Lobby (where I got the black and gray fabrics from).  Then I lost the fabric in my ridiculously disorganized home.  TWICE.  I found said material three times, though, and eventually cut it correctly and finished up the quilt.  There were lots of "moments" with this quilt, which could be why I kept putting it down.  By "moments" I mean blocks sewn backwards, needing to stop half-way through piecing to cut more blocks, OH, did I mention that at one point I transferred my "old school" pattern on paper to a computer program...and then my computer crashed HARD, and I lost it...after I threw out the paper copy?  Oh yeah.  Tears, I tell you. Many tears were shed during the making of this quilt.  MANY rookie mistakes.  It will probably be awhile before I attempt to design a top myself again.  But my niece will be able to claim that she has the first and possibly only quilt designed by MOI.  So there.

I actually do not have a picture of the complete top because I am waiting until it is all pretty and finished.  But you can see about half of it here and imagine the rest...;-)

I need to get some close ups of the adorable scrap fabric that will mean so much to her.  Some of it is really adorable.

So that is what I have been up to all these months.  I have some new fabric coming to my mailbox soon...not soon enough for my liking, but it's on the way.  I have plans to make a Keystone quilt in a lavender colorway using a chevron print and a polka-dot print...I also have a wonderful Amy Butler fabric in my stash that I will be using for another one in a burgundy and green colorway...I have a really pretty Amy Butler print coming my way that I will also be pairing with green...  and a sweet mint green rose print that I have not yet paired, but I will most likely go with pink.  I want to do a mint and navy quilt because that is actually my favorite color combo of the moment....but Navy is a hard color to work with on the computer, so I am going to do that one in person.  Hobby Lobby, here I come....All that, and I am also quilting a t-shirt quilt for my sister-in-love.  For the past two years.  See?  FOR. EVER.

And what have YOU been doing lately?