Magpie Quilts

One of the challenges of selling quilts online is that colors are not always shown true on every monitor or screen. When I get a request for a custom quilt, I will often ask for a paint chip number so I can find the right fabric for that quilt. Matching fabrics to paint chips These fabrics are for a twin sized chevron quilt and I think I found a pretty close match with these Robert Kaufmann Kona solid cottons. Ready to cut! Quilt blocks on the design wall Half square triangles made and starting to lay them out on my design wall. Next time you see this one it will be quilted and bound! --Ann

Once in a while, I end up with a block or two or four left over from another project. Last year I made this wonderful full-size churn dash quilt from a lovely set of pastel fabrics. Blogged here . Churn Dash Quilt - FOR SALE HERE! There were four blocks left over and I put them aside thinking I would make 2 more and make a baby quilt with a little adding sashing and a border.  Baby Churn Dash - FOR SALE HERE! I found this beautiful watercolor fabric in my stash when I counted my inventory and knew it would be perfect with these blocks. The blocks went up on my design wall and I used up every bit of that fabric to stretch this quilt to a good size for a cuddle quilt for a baby. Watercolor Churn Dash Quilt Backed with a matching pale green Minky, this quilt is so much prettier in person!  What do you make with your left overs? --Ann

While doing my year end inventory of fabric and sorting and cleaning up the projects that like to spread out all over my sewing room, I found a few left over half square triangles from a baby quilt I did a few months back. I had set these aside with the idea that I would make another baby quilt with a different layout of the same half square triangle blocks.  Blue & Grey Baby Quilt with Minky back  In this quilt, I used four of the half square triangles to make a modified version of the Broken Dishes quilt block (found here ). Looking good in a wintery photo! A few of the blocks are a little different - some have a colored fabric instead of the white and a couple have a colored triangle filling out one corner of the block (one up from bottom right). Just hanging out!  I took this one in to my local quilt shop My Sewing Room and used their long arm machine to quilt it and I have to say I loved using the long-arm. I loved how easy it was to "draw" my qui...

It never ceases to amaze me what can be found in my sewing room! I think I have everything organized and am pretty sure I know what I have that's in progress and needs to be worked on. Sometimes, I remember a project and look for it and can't find it, but I don't worry too much about it as it usually turns up. Like this mini quilt I pieced a few years ago to match the quilt on our bed.  Red checkerboard mini quilt I made a blue one for my night table and wanted to make a similar one for my husband's side of the bed and quickly pieced a few scraps into an adorable mini quilt, layered it with a backing and batting and set it aside for hand-quilting. I put it somewhere safe and promptly forgot about it! Today I was busy sorting through my projects for a little sewing get-away coming up later this month and ta-da! Hidden underneath another ongoing long-term project I found my little gem! It's coming with me and going to get finished! Blue checkerboard mini qu...

I recently passed 400 likes on my Facebook page and to celebrate, I challenged my readers to post a picture of their favorite mug and I would make a mug rug for the first 5 mugs posted. I ended up with 7 pictures of mugs posted, so I may just end up doing them all, it will just take me a little longer! Here are the first couple done:  I am trying some new techniques to me on these mug rugs (or some that are not used very often). The mug rug above for Brenda is using a curved piecing technique I learned at Quilt Canada when it was here in Calgary in 2010. I haven't used it since, but thought the mug had some cool lines that would work with that technique. And Joyce's mug is a beauty! I had some fabric on hand that I wanted to use, but not cut up into smaller pieces. I also learned to couch a decorative braid at Quilt Canada 2010 and tried that technique here. I wrote out Joyce's name with a disappearing marker and slowly zigzagged my way through her name. In h...