Block One for the Arcadia Ave. Quilt Along Done!

I signed up for the Arcadia Ave. Quilt Along at sassafras lane I'm playing a little catch-up and just got the first block done today! Its another foundation paper piece project (can you tell that I am completely addicted to paper piecing?) this time with hexagons.  It's definitely a challenging color study for me. I usually don't do too much low volume and the outer triangles get very washed out with such low contrast to the white print background so I'm not sure if I love it yet. I wanted to go all the way to orange and use more saturated yellows and oranges.

Here's some pics of the block being constructed.

It's growing on me a little. I just might love it the way it is! I'll work on block two and see what happens with the colors I choose. I'm linking up with freshlypieced for WIP Wednesday. Look forward to seeing all your great work.

Steffi's Dresses for A Lovely Year of Finishes- March Goal

My goal for this month is to finish Steffi's Dresses. This is a quilt top that I started piecing two years ago with pieces of my mother's old dresses. When she died in 2002 I was left with all her beautiful custom made dresses that I grew up with her wearing that were all made with gorgeous batik fabrics from different countries in South East Asia. Here are some pictures of  some of the piecing with the fabrics.

I am using a pattern from the book Material Obsession Two. I have the borders to piece on still and then I can baste it. I had ordered some wool batting for it and the LQS just called me to let me know it came in so I figured I might as well jump into the deep end and and make the commitment to finish this very special quilt. I am hoping if it is at all possible I will scan and post a few pictures of my mother wearing some of these dresses as well.

Good luck everyone over at fiberofallsorts with their March goals and I can't wait to see what everyone is working on!

Sew My Stash 2015: Precuts Party

 Here it is. My one and only ever jelly roll quilt top. This is my first time making a quilt with precut fabric and all from the same line/designer/company. I bought the jelly roll from a LQS about five years ago or so. I guess we could probably get a good idea from the fabric line so if you recognize it chime in. It was a Moda Jellyroll. I used a pattern called Floral Bouquet from a book appropriately called Jelly Roll Quilts. I followed the pattern exactly.

The funny thing about this particular jelly roll is that I had taken it apart and integrated it into my scrap stash because it had sat around for so many years and although I had made plans for them a few times, I just never got excited about doing a fabric coordinated quilt. I eventually put them all back together because I decided I wanted to see what they looked like together on a quilt top. I do like the muted colors. I wonder if I'll end up ever getting another jelly roll and if it would take another five years to complete a top with?

I actually stared sewing my stash on my own and started on this one just this month but I only found this link-up last night! But it just so happens I was ready to piece the rows and had the border ready to go. Good luck to everyone in the Sew My Stass 2015: Precuts Party! over at Project Leasa!

Work in Progress: No Nukes Quilt

My work in progress this week my husband's No Nukes quilt that I have been working on for a couple years now. From my living room in the winter when the leaves are gone, I can see the Los Alamos National Laboratory where the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were made. The story of Sadako is my inspiration for sewing 1000 peace cranes. Please check out my peace crane page to read Sadako's story.

45 of the cranes I have sewn so far are in this quilt that I am making my husband for his 50th birthday! I finally basted it with wool batting and started quilting. First I stitched in the ditch around each peace crane and around the letters. Now I am doing an echo around each crane. I have no idea what I'll quilt next so I'm still figuring it out.

This is the day I basted it and my sweet dog Aiko.

This is loosely what it looked like on the design wall last year.

I am very excited to finish this one and so is my husband!

First 2015 Finishes!

I got back in my sewing room over Christmas break and haven't left since! I have three finishes to share. First is the raffle quilt for the kids Montessori Charter School PTA. We are raising money to build the kids a playground at their new building which right now has no outdoor spaces yet for the kids. I am proud to say that the raffle was very successful.

My star quilts have become very popular and I have five orders for star quilts between now and October already which is very exciting for me! I make them really simple and actually the star is strip pieced so it goes pretty quick really because I am not doing appliqué or other settings, just modern quilting. I free motion quilted this one with spirals on my home machine.

This one next is our Pizza Box Challenge with the Northern New Mexico Quilt Guild. We chose fabrics and put them in a pizza box and our boxes were distributed each month to a different quilter who made a block with your fabric. At the end of the year we get our box back and have 12 beautifully pieced blocks made with your selected fabrics. It is challenging for sure to use other people's fabrics but this challenge is meant to be a chance to showcase your skills so you do get to have some beautiful work from other amazing quilters. My daughter who was 11 at the time chose the fabrics with me and helped me make the blocks for the pizza boxes that came through our sewing room each month and also helped me make some extras with our own fabric along the way so we had enough to make her a sweet bed quilt which I am sure she will be taking with her to college. This one is free motion quilted with paisleys edge to edge.

My third finish this year so far is this star that I had already pieced (similar to the raffle quilt fabrics) so I took it out and set it and decided to baste it with wool batting because I had never used wool before. I stitched the star in the ditch which makes a big difference I am learning. I also outlined the star diamonds and did some ruler work for the first time. This was a big break through for me because I never was successful at marking a quilt. I learned that the ditz mark-b-gone pen works really well for me. I free motion quilted some feathers and did some spirals for filler. I also learned doing this quilt that scale is important in quilting and didn't like the loops of the filler to be the same size as the loops of the feathers. But I really love the way the wool batting quilts up and love the quality of the quilt when snuggling under it. 

Yeah for finishes!

Itchin' to Stitch

Wow. It's been 15 months since I have posted on this blog. I have been really thinking about how to reconnect with it again. I have had some profound experiences since I was last on here and spent some moments reflecting on what the quilting community is to me and my place in it. I cannot slice up my life and isolate my quilting, at least for this post. So if you would please indulge me and allow me to share some of my last 15 months before I get back to my sewing room.

Shortly after my last post, a super typhoon hit my mother's homeland of the Philippines. There was a need for midwives just like myself who were trained in assisting childbirth without technology in an out of hospital environment. I did two one-month trips, the first being only three weeks after the typhoon and I spent Christmas and New Years away from my children. The second was during the month of March. I spent my time there helping deliver babies, averaging 3 births a day including breeches and twins! After my trips to the Philippines, I came home exhausted and emotionally vulnerable and then and our family (of six) moved into a new home and it took a few months to get settled. 

One Sunday in early June, we received a call for my daughter's best friend. She was told that morning that her older  brother had been shot and killed by the local police department because they mistakenly believed he was armed. I am broken-hearted over what is happening to our youth. His name was Victor Villalpondo and he was 16 years old. 

Only a week later, a dear friend who was like a mother to my husband ended up in the long-term ICU. She just passed away last Tuesday. She was a 67 year old woman who had lived 48 of them as a quadriplegic, and the last 7 months intubated with a tracheotomy tube and on a ventilator. For the last seven months I participated closely in supporting her family and caring for her in the hospital and at home. She passed on last week and I've been sewing ever since. Its keeping me company while I get used to not having Linda's physical comfort so on my mind. We will be burying her this morning. Her name was Linda Pedro.

Making quilts has been such a comfort to get back to. I have been making quilts since my daughter was born in 2001. Then my kids got bigger and so my quilts got bigger! 

I finally got my sewing room up and running again after a family move back to our old home after three years in town. I started sewing again during the kids school break and haven't stopped since. I put together our Pizza Box Challenge blocks, made some drawstring bags this time quilted and Pendelton.

I also set out to finally mend our oldest son's bed quilt. This was the first bed size quilt I made in 2004 when our oldest was 10. He's been missing it since I took it from him last year to repair some worn areas and replace the frayed binding. He finally got to take it home with him when he left after Christmas along with  his new peace crane pillow.

I had to sort through so many unfinished projects and reconstruct some of the cut fabric and pieces to make sense of what I was up to in my old sewing room. I ended up with a table of things to finish and got to work mostly finishing up the quickest stuff first. Pillows and pillowcases, bags, etc. Now I am finally back to piecing, quilting, and designing. I am working on Mateo's No Nukes quilt and I started a foundation paper piecing flow that I am getting a little addicted to. Plus once you get your scraps color-sorted and accessible it's hard not to start a new one right away!

Thanks for letting me tell my story. I am so grateful for life today and happy to be back on this blog.

A Few Finished Quilts

Wednesday again! And I missed a few Wednesdays cause I was too busy sewing and kid-caring.

I finally finished the not-so-beautiful beauty called  Bear Grease! 

These Bear's Claw blocks came together when I was practicing half-square triangles and the fabric store didn't have anymore of the green chambray that I used. So I set them in a black and white chambray and I didn't really love it. So I pressed the top and put it away. Fast forward several months when I am ready to rent the long arm and I needed to quilt a top that I wasn't too attached to. The Bear's Paws were perfect. I could go to town FMQ on the long arm for the first time and I wasn't going to cry if it wasn't "perfect". 

It also happened that many things were happening in the weeks that I was finishing this quilt and my husband, who is the Bear medicine in our family, is always telling me to slap on some bear grease. In other words, stay protected and don't let it get to you. I sure needed bear grease this last month and so the cozy quilt Bear Grease was born.

It was long armed on a Gammill that I rented at a LQS a couple hours from home. My husband wanted leaves and berries on the quilting because that is what bears eat. I was pretty surprised at how good the quilting looks for being my first time. And it is a sweet family quilt that now lives on the couch.

Bear Grease back

I also finished a sweet baby star quilt for close friends that had their baby boy last week.

Vincent's Star Quilt

I finally launched my Etsy store Chona Homegrown . I sold my first quilt last week and already have one commissioned for December. It's nice to feel my quilting is appreciated by others!

I finished up the scrap baby quilt I have been working on. I sample FMQ the whole thing and tried some new things like feathers in the border. Yes it was difficult at first. It was eventually possible. I just hope I keep getting better with practice.

And for the WIP that I am working on today...

I decided to jump in and do a Swoon quilt. I have four of the nine blocks done and I am still deciding if I will piece it as the full 85" square bed quilt or only five blocks on a bed quilt so that I can use four of them for big Swoon couch pillows cause they would look so good in the living room and the couch is in a sad state.

I got a couple more Heather Ross baby hexie quilts in the works for SF Art Market and my Etsy store.

I have been wanting to do a New York Beauty for many years so I finally started piecing the points with scraps. This one is going to be awhile.

And as always, there are a stack of Peace Cranes by the machine ready to be pieced into my first Peace Crane bed quilt. This one is a keeper for Mateo. Gotta be.

That's my quilt story today. Thanks for stopping by my sewing room!