Sunday Stash: Citrus

Posted on October 7, 2012 by sewingbymoonlight

One of my projects this week is to make a sample block (or two) for the 4×5 Modern Quilt Bee. I’ll use my own color choices for this: lemon yellow, tangerine, and lime. Nice summery colors on this chilly, drizzley day. When I have enough blocks, this quilt will be our summer picnic quilt, so that’s what inspired the color choices, but that finish is several rounds of the bee away.

Meanwhile, here are the fabrics that I will be using for my sample block.

See more Sunday Stash posts at Finding Fifth.

Sunday Stash: Making mei tais

Posted on September 30, 2012 by sewingbymoonlight

After a somewhat long time without any mei tais on my list, there are now three in queue. This makes me happy because 1) I love that I can make something the will foster the art of babywearing and encourage parents to keep their babies close and 2) I get to buy new fabric for the mei tais.

The fabric for all three mei tais came in this week. Here they are: front fabric on top, reverse of the baby carrier behind. They are all washed and ready to be turned into beautiful baby carriers.

Sunday Stash: Blues and greens for Brian

Posted on September 16, 2012 by sewingbymoonlight

I wanted to show you a picture of the fabrics I will be using for Brian’s quilt. Brian’s house was destroyed by the Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado Springs this past summer, and if you’d like to help me by making a few blocks for his quilt, that would be awesome!

You can use these fabrics for inspiration on the color scheme when you make your own block!

Directions for the block I’m using for Brian’s quilt are here.

Sunday Stash: a Giveaway

Posted on August 19, 2012 by sewingbymoonlight

Today’s Sunday Stash is actually a giveaway. Well, a future giveaway.

I decided to say “thank you” to the people who have been playing along with my Road Trip Quilt Along, I would offer a little bundle of five fat quarters when we’re all finished.

Since this is the Road Trip Quilt Along, I thought the cars were appropriate. It’s organic Ready, Set, Go by Robert Kaufman. The coordinating solids are Kona cottons: tomato, robin’s egg, and canary. And the green leaf print is from the Denyse Schmidt Meadow Lark line for JoAnn Fabrics.

If you’ve been quilting along: great! If not, there is still time to join us, and I would love if you would. To enter to win this five fat quarter bundle, you will have to complete 8 of the 16 RTQA along blocks. If you finish all 16, you get two entries. I have posted tutorials for 12 of 16 state quilt blocks so far.

Even if you want to jump in now, you have four more weeks, plus I will leave the giveaway open for an additional 2 weeks. Six weeks to make 8 blocks. You can do that, right? Just jump over to the RTQA page and decide which blocks you’d like to make!

Don’t enter now. This is for a future giveaway. So, go! Join the Road Trip Quilt Along Flickr group. And we’ll see you in a few weeks for this giveaway!

And if you want to see what others are sharing from their stash this week, go visit Fiona at Finding Fifth.

Sunday Stash: fabric fun for the fabric lover

Posted on July 29, 2012 by sewingbymoonlight

I was catching up on my blog reads from the “Let’s Get Acquainted Blog Hop” I participated in at Plum and June.

I happened across Fiona’s blog at Finding Fifth and discovered she hosts a “Sunday Stash” link up party.

Ah-ha! A place to show and tell pretty fabric with people who want to see pretty fabric. Sounds like just the thing for a Sunday afternoon while the little one naps and the big one is at the pool with Daddy!

This is Terrain by Kate Spain for Moda Fabrics. I had seen pictures of this line on the web, but it wasn’t until I saw it in person at Main Street Quilting Company in Bozeman, Montana that I decided some of it needed to come home with me. I purchased a couple of prints in that shop in Bozeman and ordered the rest from Fabrics You Love on Etsy.

Aren’t they pretty? The prints from left to right in the photo below are: Dahlia in berry, Seapod in stream, Forest Floor in stream, Lichen in stream, Forest Floor in foliage, Lichen in foliage, Leaves in foliage and Forest Floor in bloom.

I loved the Forest Floor print so much I bought it in three color ways.

With unlimited disposable income, I probably would have purchased even more of these fabrics. There are several pink and orange prints that are really lovely and an aster print that is a lot of fun as well. For now, though, I will have to find something wonderful to make with these.

Fabric Friday {on Saturday}

Posted on April 28, 2012 by sewingbymoonlight

I meant to post this eye-candy-for-the-fabric-lover yesterday, but I spent most of the morning setting up for a track meet, most of the afternoon and early evening at that track meet, and a good chunk of later evening compiling results. I just wanted to go to bed!

I ordered this several weeks ago, and I love it, so I just have to share. This is the first time I’ve ordered a “fat quarter bundle” of every print in one color line of a fabric line. I knew about this fabric, Fly Away, by Amy Schimler for Robert Kaufman fabrics before it came out because I subscribe to Amy’s blog. I loved it from the very first sneak peeks, and I actually anticipated its release.

When I had these happily in my hands, I decided that a mere 18×22 inches simply was not a enough, so I ordered a full yard of a few of my favorite prints.

Including an extra owl panel because, seriously, how cute are those little guys?!

I don’t have a project planned for these fabrics just yet. Do you have any great suggestions about what I should make (when I get the courage to cut it!)?

Happy mail

Posted on April 14, 2012 by sewingbymoonlight

I cannot tell you how happy I was when I went to the post office yesterday and found this package in the mail. I knew it instantly because *I* had addressed it way back in March when I packed up my 5 yards of neatly cut red-orange charm squares and sent them off to Utah with that self-addressed stamped envelope tucked in next to them.

I didn’t even make it home before I ripped open the package just to take a peek. And, oh! They are beautiful, these 280 little 5-inch squares of fabric in every color of the rainbow and more!

I cannot imagine all the work that went into the sorting and stuffing of 280 charm squares multiplied by 56!! I am eternally grateful to Kati of from the blue chair, who organized the 5 yard color wheel charm swap, assigned the colors to the participants and then took care of collecting and sorting 280 yards of fabric and putting 56 packages of rainbows back in the mail to their new happy owners. WOW!

My head is already spinning with all the lovely things I could make with these treasures. I think I would really like to make a whole quilt out of my double staircase block. It would be awesome in rainbow colors. I wonder if I should radiate from the center outward in the rainbow colors, or start in one corner and have the rainbow sweep across the quilt from corner to corner??

This is a project for some undermined time in the future. But! Since I cannot possibly wait that long to play with these pretties, I’ve already pulled 16 for a dresden plate wall hanging. It’s about time I actually have some fabric art in my sewing room!

Pink Castle Fabrics Bundle Contest

Posted on March 24, 2012 by sewingbymoonlight

Back in January, one of my first posts on this little blog was a fat quarter bundle I created for a contested hosted by the Fat Quarter Shop and Kokka Quilts.

While my fabric bundle didn’t catch the eye of the judges, I still enjoyed the process of looking through the fabric at that shop and picking out a selection that appealed to me.

Now, there is a similar contest hosted by Katy at I’m a Ginger Monkey and sponsored by Pink Castle Fabrics.

This time around, I was inspired by this living room I pinned on Pinterest awhile back. I just love the contrast of the dark purple and yellow grounded by bits of green and gray.

I struggled with creating this fabric bundle a bit because I wanted to build it around a focal print, but I couldn’t really find anything that was co-dominated by my color choices. Instead, I chose a solid in each color from the palette and then filled in with co-ordinating prints, trying to be conscious of including a range of tones within the color choices. Admittedly, pairing purple with yellow might be a bold choice, but I think these would make a fantastic, vibrant quilt.

Purples: Free Spirit grape/Moda ditzy daisies/Joel Dewberry Aviary2;
Yellows: Free Spirit saffron/Michael Miller ta dot sunny/Heather Bailey Bijoux;
Greens: Kona cactus/Riley Blake fly a kite dot green/MM vintage ironwork leaf;
Grays: Free Spirit nugray/Moda cross weave gray/Lotta Jansdotter small spring buds

Little stack of squares

Posted on March 19, 2012 by sewingbymoonlight

Or maybe that should be BIG stack of little squares. Five inch squares, 280 of them.

Why, oh, why do I have a stack of 280, 5-inch squares of fabric, all in the red-orange color family?

Because I’m going to trade them as part of a fabric swap! It’s like trading cards for the fabric lover. Kati at from the blue chair organized a monster 5-yard color wheel charm swap. I realize that last sentence may not make sense at all, but I’m pretty excited about it. Apparently, 55 other people are really excited about it too because the available slots for this swap filled up in five minutes. Five minutes! It’s a fabric craze!

I need to give a quick shout-out to Lyanna at Purple Panda Quilts because she signed me up for the swap since I was in Chicago and didn’t know if I would be able to log on when the swap opened. Without her, no collection of fabric trading cards for me!

A charm square is a pre-cut 5-inch square of fabric. Fabric manufacturers often produce a charm square pack of a particular fabric line so you can get a little taste of the entire collection. These little squares are great to use in patchwork and quilting.

In this color wheel charm swap, there are 56 participants. Each person was assigned a particular color and purchased 5 yards of fabric in that color group. We cut them up into charm squares and mailed them off to Kati. I, obviously, was assigned to the red-orange group. The directions were to purchase 4 prints and one solid in your assigned color.

Kati has the massive undertaking of sorting 280 YARDS OF FABRIC into 56 different packages and putting them back in the mail. Yikes. I think I may need to send her a thank you gift for all that work. Phew!

Some time next month, I will receive a package with 280 charm squares, five total yards, in all colors of the rainbow, plus black and white. It will be like Christmas in April. Hooray!

Fabric Friday + a poll

Posted on February 17, 2012 by sewingbymoonlight

Many months ago, I won a yard of fabric from rufflefabric.com in a giveaway on No Big Dill. I let Sierra pick the fabric and as she loves all things green, it’s no surprise she picked this chartreuse ruffle fabric. I have always intended this fabric to become a skirt for Sierra (she did choose it!) but it has sat and sat in my sewing space, as I’ve been completely uninspired about how to actually construct the skirt. I could have just sewed it up and added a waistband, but it needed something more.

Last weekend, inspiration struck. My friend Sarah hosted a Matilda Jane trunk show at her house. I didn’t have the budget to purchase any of the lovely items she had for sale that day (my budget is going toward fabric and supplies to move my business forward at the moment), when I saw this skirt, I knew just what to do. This ruffle fabric needed a fun print at the top to make it complete. So, now I’m ready to make this skirt, but I just can’t decide white print to pair it with.

Here are the options; each picks up a bit of that green in the ruffles:

Left to right: Timeless Treasures Owl Floral, Quilting Treasure Splendid Rhapsody, Michael Miller Beatrice Bloom, Blue Hill Fabric Basics Multi Dots on Black, Michael Miller Bird Song

Okay, I’m going to attempt my first poll: which do you like best?

I tried three times (from two different poll makers) to make a poll, but I couldn’t get it to embed. Just leave your thoughts in the comments, please. And any thoughts on how to add a poll to a blog post!