Life in Color Photography

I am part of two quilt guilds: Portland Modern Quilt Guild, of which I’m a founding member, and Corvallis Modern Quilt Guild. It’s no secret that traffic around Portland has gotten bananas. That makes it harder for me to get up to that guild every month. I like Corvallis because it’s an easy drive and one of my best friends lives there, and is in the guild! It reminds me of when Portland was really small, and not the largest Modern Quilt Guild in the world! We made 8.5″ raspberry kiss blocks for our guild president in Corvallis when she was expecting her first sweet baby! I quickly because obsessed with the blocks and made too many. They sat for a while but finally I whipped up some more to make this baby top. I used Quilter’s Dream cotton (affiliate link). I pretty much only use Quilter’s Dream battings now, they are consistent and so easy to work with. They hold up great and I have had great results with all I’ve tried. I gifted it to my kids guide. I’m still homeschooling the girls but we work with a charter that oversees their work, gives us some funding, has field trips, does the testing, etc. It’s a great combo for us. And one thing that makes it awesome is our wonderful guide, but we won’t have her next year as she takes a leave of absence for her third sweet boy! I decided this quilt was a perfect send off for her since I’ve rarely remembered a “teacher’s gift” or anything (props to those of you who do!). She LOVED it! Woot!

I am really trying to make myself buy more low volume prints. I love the contrast with the bright colors, which I have a hard time passing up at the quilt shop!

Love, love, love how this one turned out. I was highly inspired by this quilt (as you can see!) so the idea was not mine. I loved digging through my scraps and hacking away at them ruler free for an evening or two. I did use a ruler to square up the blocks. The whole thing went together quickly. I used Dream Puff batting (affiliate link). I’m a late convert to poly batting. It took me a while to figure out that I must baste very well to make this an easy quilt. But it’s worth it. The batting is a crowd pleaser! In fact I forgot about this quilt because my older daughter has squirreled this away to her bed. I guess that means I need to make another. Luckily I have plenty of scraps, I even buy scrap packs from shops, they’re my favorite!

I am realizing that I really need to put all my projects on the blog – otherwise I forget about all the details. I have recently started a list in Evernote of what quilts I’ve made and where they were given. But it’s woefully incomplete! I must to better. To that end, check out my Polaroid quilt! My friend Sarah and I made it for our friend who just had her first baby.

I used my normal tag and added a more complete tag since this quilt was an epic amount of work and I felt the need to be credited for all eternity, hahaha. I reached out to the couple I made this quilt for and they said this type of tag with the button has held up well. I really, really love the gel fabric pen (affiliate link) I use, it doesn’t bleed at all.

I used this tutorial for the “shadow” and really like how it turned out. 1,581 pieces is a lot though. So Bj wants one and I think I will stretch it out to be a multi year project!

Have you heard of the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show? It’s not a bunch of relatives hanging quilts together but a town called Sisters in Central Oregon that one day a year goes crazy and puts over a thousand quilts all over town outside! It’s super awesome and this year I was lucky enough to go check it out. Not only that but earlier in the week I took a class by Carolyn Friedlander in a coordinating event called A Quilter’s Affair. Somehow I just found out about this even though it’s been going on for forty years! In addition to all this awesomeness I stayed with a group of awesome women at a legitimate RANCH and sewed all weekend. So pretty much THE BEST THING EVER. Want to see what I worked on?

First of all the light in this place. THE LIGHT. I would challenge you to find people more in love with light than those living in climate’s like the valley in Oregon where there is so little light to be had in the winter (and fall and spring). WE LOVE IT. I whipped up this #RainbowPicnicSewAlong so quickly. I changed it a little bit. I had a 6″ (finished) square die for my Accuquilt so I used that. Making the quilt 10 x 12 blocks (60 x 72). I’m excited for Rachel to post the next steps, I bought my canvas backing today!

Hand-sewing outside. Yes please! I’m making little sweet patches for a much loved thrifted quilt with my new found needle turn appliqué skill.

The Moda Building Blocks was fun for a while (it was a local shops block of the month club) but I had such trouble with my seam allowance. I decided to call this good after making a few filler blocks and will be quilting this and donating it this fall.

Swoon Quilt! I had a bunch of these blocks cut out since the last Craftcation so I made myself sew them up. It actually wasn’t so bad once I got going (and read the directions!). And I really love how it turned out so there might even be more swoon blocks in my future.