I made this quilt for my friend Sabrina, in exchange for all the cute art caricatures she made of me doing “quilty” things like sewing and hoarding my fabric stash.

I used an older collection from Clothworks entitled Sunwashed that is now, sadly, out of print.  I’m accumulating a large collection of floral stencils, one of which came in handy for the alternating blocks. I quilted around the flowers in the border with a few looping swirls to make a continuous design.

Fusible applique has become my favorite decorative quiltmaking style.  I machine stitched around the edges with a buttonhole stitch in a blending thread color. Here’s a closeup of the blocks showing the background stippling:

This is now one of my favorite quilts. I’m so glad I could give it to such a good friend who appreciates it!

I am so proud of myself! I finished this quilt before I sold out of Moda Charm Packs for you to make one just like it!

It uses one Lollipop charm pack by Sandy Gervais plus about 1/2 yard of two different border fabrics. Use the same material for binding or add a darker fabric like I did.

As soon as I got the pre-cuts I knew the Lollipop line would make an adorable baby quilt.

I sewed the squares together super quick and picked two coordinating green and yellow striped prints from my stash for the borders.

I added leftover charms as corner squares.

The basting went pretty quick since I just put one pin in each of the 5 inch squares and a few around the borders.

Now that I am trying to blog on a more regular basis, I have an incentive to hurry up and finish my pile of UFO’s (un-finished fabric objects).

Here’s a closeup of the machine quilting:

There were a total of 36 squares so I quilted 26 letters and ten numbers in the blocks. I added a freehand loop design in the borders. I love how it turned out!

I am addicted to making Moda Charm Pack quilts! They go together so quickly and are the perfect last minute gift for all the baby showers I’ve been going to lately. I usually have less than a week’s notice to whip something up and I can finish a charm quilt in about two afternoons.

For a super quick finish I like to quilt with an allover meander stitch and sew the binding completely by machine.

I stitch the binding to the front then turn it to the back and finish with a decorative stitch.

This striking quilt was made using one black and white charm pack called “Half Moon” from Moda. Since it was for a baby girl, I backed it with pink fabric with the words “Baby” written all over it. I just hope it will be well loved and used!

Last week I took a fantastic series of lectures from Joanie Zeier Poole. Her specialty is Heirloom Machine Quilting which showcases very tiny stitches over the entire surface of the quilt.

I never knew that listening to someone talk about machine quilting for hours on end could be so exciting! She went over many tricks of the trade and explained the importance of planning the quilting before you even start.

Here’s Joanie showing some of her smaller wholecloth pieces.

She loves to use thin silk thread with soft wool batting to show off the stitches to their best advantage. (I wish the pictures weren’t so blurry!)

Here’s a picture of me and Joanie with her show-stopping quilt. I regret that I didn’t get a better closeup of this quilt showing the intricate details of her fantastic quilting. She designs all of her own patterns and machine quilting stencils.The best part is, I took this class with my friend’s mom, named Judy. She’s my new found quilting buddy and we have lots of plans to take many more classes together!

I think this is my favorite of the three Pure charm pack quilts I’ve made. This one was for a really good friend so I wanted to do something very special with the quilting.

Before I begin the machine quilting process, I first select a stencil that I want to use. I then decide what tool I need to use to mark the quilt so that the lines show up.

For this quilt I selected a stencil of a moon with a star. It’s really easy to mark and quilt and I’ve used it many times before. I figured out how many moons I’d need to mark around the borders. Then I went back over each one to make the lines a little darker and easier to see while quilting.

I can sometimes get lost in the marking, just like many people do when piecing. For this dark material, I used a white washable marker with a thick tip.

If I’m not stressed with a deadline, I can really take my time with the marking process and it can be very relaxing!

I like to go over all the lines and fill in the stencil lines for a complete outline.

Here’s a closeup of the machine quilting with a free motion foot and contrasting thread.

Compared to the fist charm quilt I made, I think I like this one best with the dark brown sashing.

I used little squares between the sashes to help the rows line up straight. It looks like more work, but actually it’s easier than trying to match up rows with no intersecting seams.

I used the same squiggly quilting pattern across the blocks, like I did for Pure Quilt #2. It’s a super fun way to quilt across the blocks. Now on to the next quilt!