striped zipper pouch

I never had a chance to blog about it in December, but for Christmas, I made my mother-in-law a zipper pouch using Pink Stitches' excellent tutorial.

I've made a few zippered things recently, and I've enjoyed tackling my fear of sewing zippers (turns out it's not so bad).

The green stripe and lining are Lizzy House's Jewels, and the raindrop fabric is from Erin McMorris's Summersault line (which I bought way back here).

P.S. Here's my other recent attempt at sewing with a zipper: leather and canvas foldover clutch.

flying geese pillow class

There are still a few spots left in the Flying Geese Pillow class I'll be teaching in the Spoonflower Greenhouse on Thursday, May 9. If you live in the area, I hope you'll join!

do. Good Stitches: March Blocks

Last month, Sonya requested wonky star blocks for the March quilt for our circle of do. Good Stitches.

Working within her suggested color theme---which I loved!---I made two blocks using quilting weight, linen and voile.

You can see all of the past blocks I've made here. 

hand-printed hexagon wall quilt

English paper piecing has become my go-to project when I'm traveling, so after finishing my star blossoms quilt, I immediately switched over to a hexagon project I started ages ago, but had never finished. During plane rides this past fall to Salt Lake City for Sewing Summit and Houston for Quilt Market, I stitched away.

The main fabrics I used were hand-printed scraps by Sara Lee Parker, which I bought from her table at Crafty Bastards a few years ago. I paired her prints with an olive linen from my stash. I took an improv approach to the layout of the hexagons---I pulled basted hexagons from a pouch without looking, and stitched together whatever I pulled.

Once I'd stitched together all of the pieces I had, I decided to machine appliqué the entire shape to a rectangular scrap of muslin. I did echo quilting around the edges and then framed it all with a black binding.

I love how this piece turned out---and loved working with Sara's fabrics---and can't wait to hang it on my studio wall.

handprinted: a fabric swap III

For the second year in a row, I participated in the hand-printed fabric swap organized by Leslie from Maze and Vale (one of my favorite fabric designers!). You can see the triangle fabric I printed last year here.

For this year's fabric, I decided to use a stamp that I carved in a surface-printing workshop I took at Lotta Jansdotter's studio back in February. The bowl design is based on an image I found in a book in Lotta's studio, and reminds me of Cathrineholm enamelware. 

Using navy blue fabric ink, I printed the bowl on a few different fabrics: two types of linen and a quilting cotton. It was interesting to see how the fabric weave changed how the design printed. I mailed the four fat quarters to my swap partners in England and Australia, and have already received some great fabric from them in return.

I really love printing my own fabric, and am looking forward to trying out screen printing in an upcoming workshop at the Cloth Fiber Workshop in Asheville. My goal is to have enough hand-printed fabric by the end of the year to make a quilt!