I love red and green!

These two quilts are probably my favorite red/green quilts which I've made!

 The "Selvage Star" quilt is my version of a vintage string quilt I saw online. Its made with selvages given to me by friends and from Prairie Quilt Guild members. Machine quilted by Jan Hutchison. It has won several ribbons at quilt shows and was in the 2016 AQS Art Engagement Calendar.

This is my red/green Scrap Vortex quilt made using Amanda Jean Nyberg's technique. My name for it is "Diamond Down the Drain" because of the one diamond block near my spiral quilting. I like all the different fabrics playing well together - cows, holiday, Kaffe, vintage, and the mystery fabrics I don't remember buying! 

Merry Christmas!

Until next time, Mayleen

I love red!

I've been working on a project which I can't reveal to you for a few more months so this week I'm going to post a few of my red and green quilts from previous years. They may not be Christmas quilts but I associate them with Christmas!

 This is my version of Pumpkin Peel from the book, Small Pieces Spectacular Quilts, designed by Elizabeth Kinch and Biz Storm

 Beautiful machine quilting by Jan Hutchison

 This is Bonnie Hunter's pattern, Criss Cross Applesauce, but I named my version, Was Granny Smith a Northern Spy? It used up a lot of my red and green scrap fabric.

Quilted by Tricia Lehman. This one I just want to wrap up in and stay cozy. 

More quilts to come next week, including my most well known selvage quilt.

Until next time, Mayleen

Binding Malfunctions

I just wrote a quilt guild newsletter article about why you should enter a quilt into the quilt show judged entry category even if you've received suggestions (like I have) to improve your binding skills.

For those of you have seen my quilts in shows, you probably don't realize how bad my binding can be. So let's get real, this blog post will be a good visual for why I need to improve my binding skills, ha!

 I've made both straight and bias binding but prefer bias binding. Seems like its more forgiving. First issue: I seem to have problems joining on a 45 degree angle even though I hold the ends together, visualize, trim, etc. Hello, Jack the ripper!

 See what I've done here? Made the binding too short. I had 15 more minutes left to sew and decided to sew on one more binding, it was the wrong decision. I wanted it to work and decided to see if it looked better the next morning. No, Jack and I fixed it.

There were other mistakes, some bindings were even fused down with an old roll of Stitch Witchery I found in a drawer. After I made several dozen of these, I just wanted them done!

So here they are, some of the mug rugs I'm gifting. 

Recipients will be warned of possible binding malfunctions.

On to deadline quilt #2 and if my swap partner is reading this, I promise your binding will look good.

Until next time, Mayleen