Blog / wall hanging

When my husband and I went to London last year, I brought along an English paper-piecing project to work on during the plane ride and down time in the city (you can see the start of it here).


In the months that followed, I continued to work on it, and this past fall, I finally finished it.


I used Rachel's Star Blossoms tutorialas my starting point, and decided to make each star monochromatic,...

Not long after posting about the mini color wheel quilt top I started for September's LMP+QG challenge (which I opted to create using only shades of purple), I managed to quilt it, bind it and mail it to one of my good friends (who loves the color purple) for her October birthday.


I opted to hand quilt the piece, using purple floss in the wedges and white floss in the inner and outer borders.


For...

After sending off my set of coasters to my swap partner Erica, I received the most amazing gift from my swap partner Alyssa, who blogs over at Pile O' Fabric. Using fabrics from some of my favorite designers, Leah Duncan and Lotta Jansdotter, Alyssa created a wall quilt featuring a cross-stitch heart, based on the original Salty Oat logo.


Isn't it amazing!? She hand-quilted the entire thing and then hand-stitched the Salty Oat logo in the bottom right corner of the quilt.



Also in the package were two wide-mouth zipper pouches (made from Anna's tutorial, which I've been meaning to try out myself) featuring more of Leah's fabric and linen. They arrived just in time for my trip to Houston and were perfect for holding travel essentials and Quilt Market goodies.



Alyssa put together a great tutorial for the cross-stitch quilt block, if you're interested in making your own.


Thank you, Alyssa!

Each month, my friend Kait and I are making a project from the book, Last-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts ("LMP+QG" for short). You can see previous projects here.


For September, Kait and I decided to make the iconic Color Wheel Quilt from LMP+QG. While I love the original pattern, I decided to change things up a bit since the idea of sorting through my scraps and selecting and arranging 52 fabric wedges in color order quickly overwhelmed me. Instead, I decided to shrink the pattern down and stick to one color. Thanks to this Purl Bee tutorial, based on the Color Wheel Quilt, I was able to print out smaller templates for my mini version.



I typically don't work with purple, but since I decided this would be a birthday gift for a good friend who loves purple, I decided to give the color a shot. Thanks to some creative piecing, I managed to scrounge up 16 unique purple wedges.


Though the piecing is not perfect (there was definitely some bubbling due to all of the bias-cut edges stretching), I love the results and am particularly smitten with the purple---I'm surprised at how well all of those scraps work with one another. I can't wait to quilt it and turn it into a wall hanging!


Coming up next month: Sewing Summit! We'll be back in November with Bird Ornaments.

P.S. Want your own hand-stitched cross-stitch button? I'm sending one to everyone who donates to our team for the Walk to End Alzheimer's and leaves a comment! Details here. 

UPDATE: And here's the finished purple color wheel mini quilt!