Life in Color Photo

Celebrating crafts, kids and the everyday through photographs.

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  • Amber’s Quilting Sheet of Greatness

    quilt in the process of being designed

    Oh hello. I’m not even going to try and recap the last few years. Instead I want to share something awesome Bj made me years ago: A quilting sheet of greatness! I found these awesome spreadsheets from Generations Quilt Patterns, but they were limited to bed sizes, and not editable. I asked Bj to make me one that I could edit for smaller sized quilts and he came through with the coolest spreadsheet ever!

    Example of spreadsheet

    In this sharable template you are able to change the words (“baby”, “small throw”, etc.) and your desired size. Then it will automatically calculate how many blocks you need to make. I feel like there is no way I’m the first one to want a sheet like this or make one, but I couldn’t find a calculator for block amounts exactly like this so I thought I’d share. Enjoy!

    Quilting sheet of greatness

    triangle quilt on design wall

    Oh and the quilt above? It is pieced from a bag of triangle scraps I’d saved for years. I haphazardly sewed them to a 5″ square block and then trimmed them down to 3.5″. A very satisfying use of small scraps.

    trimming up blocks

    A spinning mat like this Fisker’s one is a must. I also like using little repositional marking strips (Glow Line tape by Omnigird is great) to make sure I don’t have too big of a corner on the block. With my bag of triangle scraps and spreadsheet I decided to make a small throw. I made 340 blocks and it will finish at 51 x 60.

    quilt laid out and being pin basted

    I actually drafted this post four years ago (oops) and have just pin basted this quilt! I can’t wait to quilt it up.

  • Random Quilting from 2018

    None of these sewing projects warrants a whole post (what does these days??), but I wanted to have a record that I did sew a lot in 2018. I made some minis, working on some improve skills (I love The Improve Handbook for Modern Quilters). I tried to finish some of my many, MANY UFOs (unfinished objects!). I finally quilted up my Moda Building Blocks for charity. I took a bunch of Christina Cameli classes (online and in person, she is a member of our PMQG guild).

    I made my friend Carmen the biggest quilt I’ve ever made and the largest I can make in my house and baste here! I had to move my dining room furniture to fit this beast, I think it ended up at 92×92. I just started sewing scraps together (a la Crazy Mom Quilts) and Carmen said she liked it so I asked her if she wanted it. She did and requested this size. Now you would think after this I would be out of scraps, sadly, no.

    To date I think I have made 8 or 9 rainbow picnic blankets. I’ve actually lost count! I did start an Evernote doc to keep track of all my quilts I’ve made and where they are. But I went through a few phases of making a handful of picnic blankets at a time so I honestly can’t remember how many I’ve finished. I know I still have a stack of blocks to make even more!

    I finally made a scrappy trip around the world. I finished this one for a friend and then helped another friend make one all out of blues and greens. Oh man, I can see why so many people were obsessed with these. Very fun and addictive way to use up scraps. Hmm looking at this makes me want to start another! My Juki continues to be my BEST sewing purchase. With 1,500 stitches a minute it’s no wonder I finish so many quilts! Bj and I are hoping to have time to get a hole cut in my desk for it so I can quilt longer in a better posture.

    2019 saw more quilting, but not as many finishes. I guess I still have a few months to do that! With the weather I should be inside more, so we’ll see how much I can get finished!

  • Mind the Gap quilt finally finished


    I started this one when Bennet was a newborn. And I don’t know if the pattern is off, my cutting was off, or my seam allowance but I pretty quickly realized that things were not matching up. So I set it aside. And I was going to just give up on it all together but  a friend convinced me to trim up the pieces I had done and finish it. I’m so glad I did! I did pebble quilting in the sashing and some big stitch hand stitching in the colored areas. Here is a link to the pattern (a free one by Moda called Mind the Gap). I did change the colors a bit and used a mix of solids from different brands (can’t remember which now, sorry!). I haven’t seen many of these quilted so I thought I post to show how I did it. This is roating between my girls’ beds now, they love it.