Quilt for a cure, raffle for Cystic Fibrosis

I'm so excited to announce my first raffle for a cause. I have made this beautiful lap quilt with the intent of raffling it off for the Cystic Fibrosis great strides walk here in Portland Oregon. You can donate to my walker page here where for every $15.00 you donate will enter you in a drawing to win this quilt. Donate and enter as many times as you would like. The winner will be announced on May 7th and all donations must be in by May 6th.

Here's a close up of the quilt.

I tried to capture a picture of the whole quilt. However when I spread it out over the couch our cat Zeek thought I built him a blanket fort.(see lump in lower left corner)

Remember donations must be made to my great strides walker page. Please be sure to include contact information so should you win I am able to contact you.


Thanks for stopping by ♥ Olivia

Block of the Month: Garden Walk

I first saw this block on an episode of simply quilts. Boy I sure do miss that show. On the show is where I first saw Eleanor Burns and her magical methods of piecing and ironing.  I have since become quite a fan of hers. I would love to visit her San Marcos Store and if I ever get the chance to meet her in person I just might fall over with excitement. Anyways back to the block. I was so in love with her methods that I purchased her book Egg Money Quilts which features the pattern Garden Walk or as some know it 54-40 or fight. Below are some examples I pulled from EQ7.

It's always interesting to see the different color variations. Sometimes the color variations are all that's different. Like below the first one is 54-40 or fight and the second one is Garden Patch. All of the pieces are the same but the colors and their values are different. Eleanor's garden walk is slightly different yet from these variations. 

These next 2 are just variations. It's always interesting to see the breakdown of the block. 

I have been working on my own Garden walk blocks using Eleanor's templates and I just love it. I can't wait to see the finish product!
Thanks for reading♥ Olivia

Pink Umbrellas

This is a quilt I finished, ages ago it seems. I used up all I could of this light green fabric with pink paper umbrellas on it. The finished size ended up being 63" X 76" so a very generous lap size quilt.

On this project I had decided to skip the corners, although it may have been in part to not enough of the pink fabric to make the setting corners. I like this type of finished edge anyway, it ended up being super easy to bind (nice gentle curves).

Thanks for reading♥ Olivia

Little Love Notes

I finished! I had mentioned a little while ago I had several projects in the works and this little charmer was one of them. I saw Jenny Doan's You Tube video and simply had to make one. Too cute and I already had the fabric. I used some scraps I had laying around so my finished quilt is 30" square. I seem to like things square. Anyway I can't wait to display this next Valentines day.

Thanks for reading♥ Olivia

Chevron quilt

Finished! I started this project wanting to use up these fabrics, my stash has grown and it's time I whittle it down before I purchase new fabrics. I have some strips left from where I did not have enough of all four fabrics to make another round or set for more rows. This came from an Eleanor Burns Pattern Zig Zag. I just love her patterns so easy to follow and really this was fun and easy to put together. I was trying to make mine bigger more like a queen size and it did not work out.I got it about wide enough I just did not have enough for the length. I used roughly the equivalent of 2 jelly rolls for this quilt. I don't think I'll ever do that zig zag border at the top and bottom again; that was my idea and not part of Eleanor's pattern her version finishes much more simply.

Below is a closeup of that pesky border. mostly it was just very time consuming and the valley's were a bit tricky.

I quilted this on my machine at home using a chevron pattern.

whirligig quilt

This Whirligig quilt was from an Eleanor Burns Pattern I loved making this I actually used scraps instead of full strips and this is only a small/baby quilt size but it was so much fun, someday I'll make one bigger. This has been sitting in my to be quilted pile for quite some time and after trying a few practice sandwiches I decided to quilt this free motion. This is my first completed free motion project. I was so excited by how this turned out that I had to share. I followed this guideline for how I was going to free motion quilt from Pinterest. There are some great tutorials and very encouraging words out there to beginners who want to give this a try. I can't believe it took me this long to take the plunge into free motion quilting.



Thanks for reading♥ Olivia

Quilt labels

How many of you add labels to your quilts and what information do you include?
Only as of recently have I added "Handmade by Olivia 2013" on a small corner in the back of my quilt but the many other's that I've given away as gifts through the years have no labels what so ever. I saw this neat idea to easily add a little label to the back corner of your quilt and that's what I've been using on my most recent quilts.

Here's how I did some of mine this year.
First I square up one of my corners(this is after you have finished quilting but before you add your binding)

 Then I take a 5" square of fabric that matches my quilt (not necessarily the backing) and fold it diagonal. I then cut from my batting scraps a triangle that will fit inside my folded square. Next I embroider on what I want my little label to say below I simply put "Handmade by Olivia", I didn't add a date to this one because if I give as a baby quilt it would be nice for it to have the baby's birth year. Kinda not sure if I shouldn't have just put 2013 after all that is when I made it. What do you think?

 Anyway's so next I just sewed about 1/8" away from my edge just enough to tack it down, since when I add the binding I will sew ¼" all around; firmly sewing it down.

I kinda figure I could hand sew a date if I wanted to add the year. What do you think? What kinds of information do you include in a quilt label? How important do you think labels are?

Thanks for reading♥ Olivia

A baby hounds-tooth quilt

Lately it seems everyone is having a baby. I usually try to have some small quilts on hand, at least one girly and one neutral or boy made from my scraps. This time however with several girls in the works I needed to make some quilts fast. I did a quick sketch and pulled some fat quarter bundles from my stash that were reserved for just this occasion.

To make the hounds-tooth pattern you need 2 or 4 fabrics, this is for my easy version I have seen quilts with more but it would take some care and planning.
Next you'll cut 2¾" strips I used one fat quarter of each fabric (make sure you have enough to cut out matching 6½" squares).

 Next sew pairs of strips together...

 Iron them open...

 Now sew these two strip sets together. Sew on both sides to create a fabric tube.

Next we cut our 6½" squares. One way to do this is with your regular square ruler. using the diagonal line down the middle you can place that on your stitch line and cut.

 Or if you have the quilt in a day 6½" triangle square up ruler it works perfectly.

From the fat quarters I got 3 blocks from every "4 strip set" giving me a total of 18 blocks from my 4 fat quarters. As you can see below from that strip set two of my blocks are identical and one is different you'll need equal amounts of each block type to complete the quilt.

To get equal amounts you simply need to flip your strip set over so for example fabrics A and B are on the top for half of the triangles you cut and fabrics C and D are on the top for the other half. We have to do this because the fat quarters only give us 3 blocks per set since it's an odd number  we have to flip the set to make it even. If you are working with yards of fabric you might get 4-6 blocks out of your set and need not worry. I would open up your blocks and make stacks to ensure you have a even amount.

 Next I cut 6½" squares out of my four fabrics with the other fat quarter bundle. You can get 6 squares from each fat quarter.

I used only 4 squares from two of the fabrics and 5 squares from the other two fabrics below is what I had left.

Here's my layout. As you turn your stripey squares and match up your fabrics the design easily begins to fall into place.

And here's the finished quilt! This ended up being 34"square.

 Here's how the back turned out. I ended up using those leftover squares plus some other additional fabrics to create this pieced back.

Thanks for reading♥ Olivia

Chevron yoga mat

Wow it may seem that I am finishing things quickly but some of these projects have been in the works for a while so I am not really that fast. Besides I like to take time and make things that are quality not quantity. Today I have finished my chevrons quilt (which I had intended for it to be a yoga/stretching mat) the final dimensions are 23½" x 51". I wanted this to actually be longer but since I was using scraps I went as far as they would take me. I am also thinking now that nicer weather has come our way this would be a nice sunbathing blanket perhaps the perfect fit for a lawn chair or chaise out on the patio.

Without further ado here is my quilt... these first pictures are before washing the quilt.

 I did a close up to show the detail of my machine binding I did.

 This shows the back, I used more of the scraps here.

These next photos are after I washed my quilt, it adds such a charming look to the finished product.

 here's the back again. I almost love it more than the front.

What do you do with your scraps? What kind of scrappy patterns are your favorites?
Thanks for reading♥ Olivia