The Quilt With No Name: A Finished Quilt Top

Howdy y'all, and happy Friday! I'm excited to unveil my latest finished quilt top! You saw a sneak peek of it on Wednesday, but here it is in all its glory! :)

The lovely Belle, back and ready to continue her quilt modeling. :)

As I said on Wednesday, this is a pattern of my own design, though only because I couldn't find one that suited my idea. I couldn't find an on-point square that fit the image in my head, so to the drawing board I went! It was easy enough and I'm thrilled with the result. Funnily enough, the design idea came to me back in the winter while playing video games with my husband. We were waiting for a game to load and the loading screen really struck me. I doodled the basic image in my notebook and hung onto it for inspiration to strike.

Those little intersection squares finish at 1 inch square! :)

That inspiration struck with my Alison Glass fabric! But what to pair it with? If you've followed for a while, you know I admire Kitty Wilkin over at Night Quilter. She really has a way with color, especially rainbows! And she really made me want to use Essex Linen in a quilt. For my birthday, I splurged and got, not regular Essex Linen, but a METALLIC Essex Linen. Oh. My. Goodness. I was giddy when I opened it and saw the shiny!

Depending on how the light hits the linen, it can appear metallic or flat. Makes for interesting pictures! Lol.

To my surprise, I plan on hand quilting this one. I know, weird for me, right?! But the buzz from hand quilting Technicolor Galaxy: Pocket Edition seems to have hung around because all I can see is rainbow hand quilting when I look at this quilt top. I figure I'll wait until the quilting is done to trim off the excess fabric around the edges, even if it looks funny right now! Lol.

This one really shows off the shimmer!

I had hoped for a better photoshoot for this top, but alas, not all wishes come true! So I took it with me when I went to my parents' house to do some work. I tried hanging it on the clothes line, but eventually just spread it out in the yard. The girls, Belle and Jasmine, couldn't help but get involved! Belle, of course, thinks she's a quilt model after I told her how much everybody liked her last time! ;) Now it's just time to dig through my batting pieces and hope I find one big enough for this!

Linking up with Finish It Up Friday, TGIFF, and Finish or Not Friday!

The Isabella Quilt: A Finish!

Mr. LBC's first appearance as quilt holder!

I'm so happy to be sharing this one with y'all! This quilt has had a lot of ups and downs, but here she is and I'm so proud of her!

Pretty in Pink!

The piecing went together easy-peasy with such a simple layout. My Mom actually helped pick out all these pink and grays. It was so fun having her input, she has a good eye for fabric. :)

My handwriting in real life is terrible but I managed to pull things together a bit for this! :)

 And I had fun coming up with a font that fit this top! Yay for Heat N' Bond and raw edge applique!

A rainbow striped back. I even managed to match up stripes so it looks seamless! :)

The texture on this one was so lovely, I love this FMQ motif. :)

As you may recall, quilting this thing was a nightmare. The first two-thirds or so did great; I was loving the flower motif and was zooming through things. But then the problems started. Thread kept snapping, needles kept breaking. I ended up in tears, praying my last needle didn't snap before finally finishing the last flower. I had a quilty miracle though when a new machine got passed onto me, free of charge! I plan on introducing it soon, but I will say it has served me well for putting the binding on and piecing some other blocks!

This shows off the backing, binding, and quilting quite well (though it doesn't show the glitter on the fabrics), as well as the lovely green grass that is growing like crazy now!

There were no special requests for a label, so I made a simple label with my name and LBC Quilting on it. I even managed to get it hand stitched on before the sun went down!

Linking up with Finish It Up Friday @ Crazy Mom Quilts and TGIFF @ Anja Quilts

Finish It Up Friday: Embroidery Success!

Howdy y'all, it's Friday once again and this time, I've got a finish to share! You may recall that my goal for the OMG March party was to learn some embroidery. I rented a book from the library with a lovely little kitty cat in it that was perfect for a starter project! I found an old embroidery hoop and embroidery floss in my craft supplies and snagged some Kona from my stash and got to work.

I absolutely loved doing this! I actually finished the cat on the chair in one sitting one afternoon. Then, a couple nights ago, I decided to add some lettering to it. I looked up fonts for ideas, but ended up winging it in the end. I love the rainbow words, it makes me smile every time I see it! :)

RAINBOW LOVE!

I'm linking up with Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, TGIFF at A Quarter Inch From the Edge, and (when the linky is available) OMG March Linkup!

Peels of Patience: A Finish!

That's right folks, I finished my Orange Peels! Y'all have been seeing these blocks since I started blogging and they are finally completed! :) All the orange peels are appliqued onto the background squares by hand using the freezer paper method. I used this tutorial that Amanda Jean shared over on Crazy Mom Quilts when she made her orange peel quilt. After that, I machine pieced the blocks together into a top.

THE TEXTURE!

I almost did the quilting with with my free motion foot, but decided at the last minute to use my walking foot/zigzag foot. I figured I could get straighter lines and be more consistent, but would have to pivot that quilt at every single corner. It was a pain in the booty, but I'm glad I stuck with my decision! The light gray thread I used just blends into those low volume squares, you almost can't see the quilting unless the light catches it! For the binding, I decided to take a note out of Scrapmaster and The Running Thimble's book and go low volume. I'm loving those little dots! :)

This isn't a very big quilt, but it's the perfect size for a car ride or to cover my lap while blogging or sewing on the couch.

And of course, a simple label. I decided to call it 'Peels of Patience' because the majority of the time I was sewing orange peels was in waiting rooms or waiting on other people. These peels saw many doctor offices, at least one emergency room, and several other places.

The backing really shows off the quilting, I love it!

I'm so glad to get this one finished and ready for some cuddles, though it will be weird to not have it to work on anymore. I'll just have to find another project for waiting rooms I guess!
Linking up with Finish It Up Friday and TGIFF! Also, this was my goal for OMG February! :) Also also, this was one of my goals for the 2016 Finish Along - First Quarter!

This quilt makes me so happy! :)

A Finish is a Finish, No Matter How Small

Howdy y'all and happy Friday! I hope you're doing well! I've got a little finish to share this week. You may remember my mini Supernova that I made while playing around a while back. Well today it was finished!

I couldn't help but show how tall it is compared to the First Born machine. :)

I had plans for some dense quilting with this little guy, but absolutely hated it once I got started. After ripping it out, I did two lines of quilting, outlining the main shape. One line was in blue and one was in yellow, which is hard to see in my pics (still no replacement camera *sad face*). This binding kicks some serious butt and is my best to date I believe! As you can see, Baby 'Nova is a little less than 3.5 inches tall and wide! I've been in a bit of a rut this week, so I'm glad to break out and have some fun with this mini mini! Hope you have a good weekend y'all, happy sewing!

Getting tiny!

Linking up with Finish it Up Friday and TGIFF!

Finish It Up Friday: Saturday Edition!

Long time, no see y'all! I feel like I've been gone forever, but it's actually been around 2 weeks. I caught the end of the summer funk that seems to plague everybody around the time school starts. I was unlucky number three at work to get it! If I had gone to the doctor the first day I felt awful, I could have avoided a lot of pain and suffering, but if I'm anything, I'm stubborn. I refused to go to the doctor for several reasons, but in the end, I let Mr. LBC make me an appointment after 4 days of misery. After getting meds, a grilled cheese sandwich, and some much needed rest, I was back to basically functional in time for my weekend shift taking care of hospitalized animals at the clinic.

This past week I've been getting back to normal slowly, getting back to sewing in short spurts enough to get this finished! And not a moment too soon, the baby shower is today!! But I managed to get the binding on this baby quilt last night, so I had a little time to spare! ;) Speaking of binding, this binding went on smoother than any other I've done; in fact, I think it's the sharpest binding I've done so far! I ended up using flannel instead of cotton because I couldn't find the right shade of navy I wanted in the cottons that were available. I like how soft and cozy the flannel is though, I might make a habit of including it more often!

 I even remembered to put a little label on this one. Nothing fancy, but it's a start. :) I almost forgot about it, but I happened to see the fabric pen on my catch-all shelf as I was rounding my fourth corner! And wouldn't you know it, I didn't take a picture of the label during my photo session. *face palm*

 I even managed to make some burp cloths a la Kelly at My Quilt Infatuation's tutorial. I didn't follow it exactly, but it got the ball rolling for me. I even had time to snap pretty outside pics before wrapping it up!

What's funny is, my neighbor and her daughter came out as I was picking things up and getting ready to head back inside. As soon as she saw the quilt, she exclaimed, "Did you make that?!" After explaining I did, she and her daughter fawned over the quilt, going on about how lovely it was and what not. And they were shocked that I did the FMQ myself; they had never known somebody could do that on a domestic machine! The mother quilts some and she said she had always sent her quilts off to be quilted like that. I might have been steppin' a little lighter after they left, my quilting ego being thoroughly inflated after all their praise. LOL! I just loved that the mother was as thrilled as I was to find 'another quilter finally!'.

Happy Saturday y'all!