Favorites

Friday, May 31, 2013

Favorites by Jeni Baker
Favorites, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
1. Pillow top complete. Now to decide how to quilt it. What do you think? #pts10 #pillowtalkswap, 2. constellations quilt, 3. A Safe Cabin, 4. String-A-Hex, 5. Blogger's Quilt Festival Entry, 6. Girly Star Quilt, 7. All Finished!, 8. Scrappy Spring Sprouts Pillow for PTS10, 9. Tula 70 Quilt

Every week I go through my favorite photos on Flickr, and choose nine sewing/quilting related projects to showcase here. These photos and projects are not my own, you can find the original images and creators by clicking the coordinating links! If for any reason you do not want your project featured here, please email me and I'll remove it!

Happy Friday!

Quilt Market - Home Decor Projects

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Nordika Quilted Pillows by Jeni Baker
Nordika Quilted Pillows, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
Happy Thursday! Another day of projects! But not quite as wordy as yesterday, I promise!  By the way, I keep forgetting to say, Nordika will ship in July! AND! It's up on the Art Gallery Fabrics site now, so you can see all the prints! Woohoo!! Next week I'll finally share my inspiration, all the prints, and more about the name!  But for now, onto those home decor projects!

Nordika Garland by Jeni Baker
Nordika Garland, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
I knew I needed a really fun way to share the name of the collection, and graphic garland seemed like the best option.  I used Pure Elements and doubled the size of the letters from my Fun Fun Bunting pattern from Pretty in Patchwork Holidays. I like that it made a statement but still had plenty of whimsy!

I made this runner to go on top of the Expedit unit I knew I'd be using in my booth.  It's a runner version of the free quilt pattern that will be available for this line called Fly Home. Also, your eyes are not deceiving you, I did straight-line quilting on this! And the lines are actually sorta straight, woot!

I love the way these next two pillows turned out, they're easily two of my favorite projects for the booth.  First up, this triangular log cabin pillow.  I've already talked a bit about it, but basically I built log cabins around an equilateral triangle and put them all together on the fly.  This all did happen late at night, so I'm going to tackle this again, more intelligently during the daytime at some point!

This pillow was another late late night project using scraps from making the flying geese for the table runner! Who doesn't love tiny half-square triangles? Okay, I definitely don't love them when I'm trimming, but otherwise they are pretty cute!

Nordika Patchwork Pillow by Jeni Baker
Nordika Patchwork Pillow, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
Please ignore the fact that the form in this pillow is a good 2-4 inches too small for it! This is just a simple patchwork pillow mixing the line with some of the Art Gallery Blenders that coordinate.  I love patchwork, so it was bound to come up at least once in the booth! I quilted it with a heart in each square using Aurifil 50wt thread in #2220.

Nordika Storage Buckets by Jeni Baker
Nordika Storage Buckets, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
Knowing I'd have plenty of Expedit cubes to fill up, I wanted to make some storage buckets! This also gave me a place to hide a few things during the show! I used Ashley's awesome Fabric Storage Bucket Tutorial! I can't believe I waited this long to make any! I made the large size, and I'll definitely be making some more soon!

Nordika Fabric Tray by Jeni Baker
Nordika Fabric Tray, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
Last but certainly not least, I made a tiny tray by altering the measurements of Anna's Fabric Tray Tutorial! It turned out so cute, and was the perfect size to hold my business cards during the show! I can see myself making more of these too.  And I even used the Peltex, and it was okay!  (Peltex and I don't have a great record, haha!)

Alright, that's quite enough for this week I think! Next week we'll see the bags and garments and then we're done with the projects! Thanks for sticking with me and for your excitement about Nordika!

Quilt Market - The Quilts

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Nordika Color Hex Quilt by Jeni Baker
Nordika Color Hex Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
Happy Wednesday! Today's post is the first of a few to share all of the projects made up in Nordika for my Quilt Market booth.  I decided to break the projects up by type, otherwise this would be a very long post! So, how about the quilts first?

As I mentioned on Monday, this Floral version of my Color Hex Quilt Pattern is the first thing I made with Nordika.  I knew I wanted a couple of very bold statement quilts to be the building point for the projects.  The nice thing about this pattern is it takes very little fabric but still packs a punch. It's pieced with half-hexagons, so no y-seams, yay!

Nordika Color Hex Quilt by Jeni Baker
Nordika Color Hex Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
On the original Color Hex quilt I did concentric circle quilting, which I really liked.  This time I did a giant spiral, which was much easier, once it got started! I used a lovely dark grey Aurifil 50wt thread, #2605!

Nordika Triangle Baby Quilt by Jeni Baker
Nordika Triangle Baby Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
Next, a fun baby quilt using equilateral triangles! I mixed in coordinating Pure Elements (I'll do a big coordinating solids/blenders post soon!), using those for the upright triangles and the prints for the downward triangles.  It turned out really fun, and so colorful!

Nordika Triangle Baby Quilt by Jeni Baker
Nordika Triangle Baby Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
Still can't get away from the loopy quilting, what can I say! Let's just call it a signature!

Nordika Wonky Crosses Quilt by Jeni Baker
Nordika Wonky Crosses Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
This quilt really stretched me, creatively.  I love order and symmetry and this type of quilting means letting that go a bit.  This might actually be my first large "improv" quilt.  But, you can hardly call it that because it's actually rather calculated. I was inspired by the Add it Up Quilt from Quilting Modern by Jacquie Gehring and Katie Pedersen. It was such a pleasure to meet them both at Market!

I created the cross blocks and then squared them all up to 5".  Then rather than lay the quilt out and figure out how to piece the negative space, I simply cut up a ton of 5" squares from the white and randomly pieced each row.  Then laid the rows out and figured out a suitable layout. 

Nordika Wonky Crosses Quilt by Jeni Baker
Nordika Wonky Crosses Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
So, if you're slightly afraid of piecing a quilt with lots of negative space (me!), this method was a bit easier for me, and did not take much weird quilt math! I'm so happy with the result and I'm glad I stepped outside of my comfort zone to make this quilt! I quilted it using a meandering loop design that I really ended up liking!

I backed it in the only black vintage sheet I've ever found!

Nordika Baby Quilt by Jeni Baker
Nordika Baby Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
Next up, a peek at one of my new patterns! Hopefully coming next month.  This is a baby version of the full quilt! This is a very quick stitch!

Nordika Baby Quilt by Jeni Baker
Nordika Baby Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
I used a new-to-me quilting design this time! I had always loved seeing quilts done with the Serpentine stitch but never knew how to do it on my machine.  I found this tutorial that walks you through programing it in as a custom stitch on the Janome Horizon and it worked great! I'll be using it a lot I think!

Nordika Arithmetic Quilt by Jeni Baker
Nordika Arithmetic Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
These last two quilts were sewn up in a whirlwind! They were cut, sewn, quilted, and finished in a week and a half! I knew I'd be close on time, so I turned to two of my quick patterns! This first one is the Arithmetic Quilt Pattern! I made the throw size using 4.5" squares.  It was fun to see how well this came together, despite how busy it ends up being! It's such a stark contrast to the wonky cross quilt!

Nordika Arithmetic Quilt by Jeni Baker
Nordika Arithmetic Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
Pretend I quilted it really fancy!  The quilting is the hardest part to do under short deadline for me.  I can only quilt for an hour and then I need to rest and ice my shoulder and wrist.  I'd love to get a quilting frame for my machine or a longarm one day, wouldn't that just be lovely? :)

Nordika Side Braid Quilt by Jeni Baker
Nordika Side Braid Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
Finally, the last quilt! This one came together quickly and first, then took a disastrous detour and finally in the end was finished just in time.  I used my Side Braid Quilt Pattern.  The top stitched up super quick, and I was so pleased!

The problems started from there.  I did not use enough pins while I was basting, and I knew I wasn't doing a good enough job but being pressed on time, did it anyways.  I paid for it when it came time to quilt, I had a giant line of puckers all down the back.  I ended up unpicking quilting for about 5 hours, and re-basting then re-quilting about half the quilt. 

Nordika Side Braid Quilt by Jeni Baker
Nordika Side Braid Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
I wasn't sure if it was going to be finished in time, but it was, thank goodness!

Phew! That's all the quilts! Tomorrow I'll share the pillows and other home-decor items!

Have a great day!

George's Quilt Market Tour

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Happy Tuesday! Before we get to all the projects from my Quilt Market booth later this week, I wanted to give you a quick tour of the other Art Gallery Designer's booths!  George came along (in pillow form), to show you around! Spot him in each booth!

He spent most of his time hanging out in my booth, of course!

Here he is in the Pure Elements booth! There were so many pretty quilts in here and these gorgeous butterflies are made with Pure Elements fabric too!

Next, he visited one of the new designers, Bonnie Christine! She was sharing her Reminisce collection! I love that quilt.

Then it was on to Leah Duncan's booth, showcasing her new line, Tule.  She had so many pretty garments made from the collection!

Onto Angela Walters' booth, showcasing her second line, Legacy.  The focal quilt was amazing, with painted details!

Next it was a quick stop in Pat Bravo's award winning booth for her Carnaby Street collection! So many sweet projects!

Around the corner he visited Bari J's booth, showcasing Bijoux! Such a dramatic booth, loved those skinny quilts!

Finally he stopped by the Art Gallery Fabrics' booth! How awesome is that dress?! There are a few Color Me Retro squares in there! :)

Hope you enjoyed George's tour!

Quilt Market - My Booth

Monday, May 27, 2013

Happy Memorial Day! Hope you're all having a lovely day celebrating our armed forces!  I'm hanging out with Michael at the lab today. It's cold and rainy out, so I don't think we're missing out on too much! I feel so much more like myself today, I think I have finally recovered from Spring Quilt Market! So, without further ado, here are the photos I promised you last week! I'll have posts about the projects themselves (and the fabric, yay!) later this week!

This was the first Quilt Market where I had my own booth.  In the Fall, I shared part of one of the Art Gallery booth's with Angela Walters.  This was slightly more scary, and a lot more work.  I was breathing a lot easier when it all started to come together.  It's so hard to decide how much to make. I just sewed and sewed until I could not sew anything else! I started sewing with strikeoffs at the very end of March, and got a couple yards of each print about a week and a half before Market.

That pretty much explains the lack of projects around here lately! I promise, I was sewing my fingers off! I'm so glad that it was worth it.  I was really happy with how my booth came together, and I think (hope!), I was able to demonstrate lots of ways to use my new fabric line, Nordika.

I was so thankful to be able to receive sample yardage just in time to whip up some fun garments.  I love that Art Gallery's base cloth is so versatile.  It's great for quilting and hangs wonderfully for garments, bags, and home goods too.

On a whim I snatched up this dress form on Amazon, and I'm so glad I did!

The day before Market I made some SUPER easy pillows, just 20" of yardage, folded the selvedges in to form a 19.5" front and sewed up the two sides.  Now I can just unpick (or trim off) the seams and use the fabric for something else! It's so nice when crazy last minute ideas work out!

The first thing I made for the booth was this floral version of my Color Hex Quilt Pattern.  I shared some sneak peeks of the quilting way back here.  I was happy to have paper versions of my patterns along with the fabric.  They're now available for wholesaling if you're interested in carrying them!

Had to stitch up a Staple Dress (pattern by April Rhodes) using one of the special panel prints from the line! Woot! Cannot wait to share more this week!

This crazy pillow is one of my favorite things I made for the booth.  I'm going to try to figure out a better way to make it, don't even ask how I made this one, haha! It was one of those fly by the seat of your pants projects.  That's what happens when you sew after 11pm!

Quilt Market - Nordika by Jeni Baker
Quilt Market - Nordika, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
Can't wait to share more about the fabric, Nordika, this week!

Happy Monday!

Favorites

Friday, May 24, 2013

Favorites by Jeni Baker
Favorites, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
1. Suburbia, 2. Zen Garden, 3. Herringbone, on rail, 4. PTS 10 Finished, 5. Deco-Shimmer Baby Quilt - Details, 6. PTS10 - finished..., 7. Soho Sanctuary, 8. Fairytale Forest quilt close up, 9. Avalon Quilt Top

Every week I go through my favorite photos on Flickr, and choose nine sewing/quilting related projects to showcase here. These photos and projects are not my own, you can find the original images and creators by clicking the coordinating links! If for any reason you do not want your project featured here, please email me and I'll remove it!

Happy Friday!

Catch-up!

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Back to Work by Jeni Baker
Back to Work, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
Hi there! Long time no see! All I can manage at the moment are some phone photos, but I'll be back tomorrow with real photos of my Quilt Market booth, I swear! For now, I still feel like a zombie! So, let's catch up!

Traveling by Jeni Baker
Traveling, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
We aren't used to seeing mountains like this in the midwest, so I always snap photos when I have this view!

George by Jeni Baker
George, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
George (pillow version) came along for the ride!

Quilt Market Set Up by Jeni Baker
Quilt Market Set Up, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
The before photo! The very sweet Christina and Megan were total lifesavers. Christina picked us up from the airport and they both helped with shopping and putting all the furniture together, don't know what I would have done without them!

A little peek of the finished booth! More tomorrow!

Modern Domestic by Jeni Baker
Modern Domestic, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
Friday night we visited Modern Domestic, a ridiculously cool fabric shop/sewing lounge.  It was so darn awesome. I can't wait to come back and visit!

Sunshine! by Jeni Baker
Sunshine!, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
We saw the sunshine for about 5 minutes the last full day we were there.  It was so comforting to feel the warm sun!

It's pretty crazy how fast everything comes down in the end.

Roomates by Jeni Baker
Roomates, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
My super awesome roommates, Art Gallery Fabrics ladies: Anais, Jeanee, and Marcela.  They were so sweet to me!

Voodoo Doughnuts by Jeni Baker
Voodoo Doughnuts, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
We managed to squeeze in a stop to Voodoo Doughnut as we were headed out of town.  It was so yummy!

Souvenirs by Jeni Baker
Souvenirs, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
Killed time in the airport with a little shopping.  Bunny earrings! Also, I watched Portlandia a few weeks before the trip, so obviously I had to get something Marionberry, haha.

Traveling by Jeni Baker
Traveling, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
Took three flights to get home, needless to say it was a long day!

George by Jeni Baker
George, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.
Somebunny was very glad that I was finally home!

See you tomorrow!