Bungle Jungle Quilt – Making Progress

August 27, 2012March 19, 201315 Comments

I am slowly but surely making progress quilting my Bungle Jungle quilt. This is my first attempt at a modern quilt. I discovered the whole modern quilting movement just a few months ago and have truly been smitten!

I started with just one Bungle Jungle charm pack and surrounded the charms with lots of “negative” space so I could practice my free-motion quilting skills. I used Kona Cotton Solids in white for the background.

I love how the pebbling turned out and I’m now learning how to quilt some swirling vines. My vines look a little more like hooks, but it’s still fun to vary the motifs.

I like the textural element that quilting gives to a quilt!

At first I thought I would surround the little hands entirely with just one quilting motif, little curlie-cue’s.

However, after I quilted a few squares, that got old very quickly!

So to keep things fun, I’m switching quilting motifs throughout the quilt. Not only will every charm square be quilted differently, the background fills will change, too.

I’ve only finished about 4 rows of quilting so far (out of 15!) but I am enjoying the process. The key is not to rush it. I only quilt a couple of squares per day. This gives me daily FQM practice so I won’t get bored. This will be a long-term process and I won’t even attempt to record how many hours the quilting takes. But I am having fun and that’s what’s important!

I think I will call this quilt “Busy Hands” not only for the cute little quilted hands, but because I am keeping my hands quite busy quilting this baby!

Bungle Jungle Charm Quilt Week 4 – Ditch Quilting

July 18, 2012March 19, 20131 Comment

I didn’t make a ton of progress on my Bungle Jungle modern quilt this week, mostly because I was packing up to go on our family vacation and getting all my ducks in a row ahead of time.

(They are quacking nicely now!)

But, I did get all of my stitch in the ditch quilting done so I’m ready for the best part, the free motion quilting next week!

I think my plan will be to quilt a different motif in each charm square, to practice a bunch of free-motion quilting designs.

I want to add tons more quilting. By pressing the seams open, stitching in the ditch in between the charm squares was a breeze. It created a grid over the surface of the quilt which you can see on the back side of the quilt. Click for closeups.

I used an acrylic ruler and a blue washout pen to mark straight lines where needed to complete the grid.

The quilt is now anchored so I can remove the rest of my basting pins and it’s ready for more quilting!

Be sure to join me tomorrow as I launch my new tutorial series: Do It Yourself Quilts!

Bungle Jungle Week 3 – Layer Cake Back Art and Basting

July 12, 2012March 19, 20137 Comments

This week I marked and basted my Bungle Jungle charm pack quilt. I will start quilting it next week. You can read about last week’s progress here.

When I finished marking the top, I couldn’t decide on the backing. Then it hit me – why not use a Bungle Jungle layer cake and make back art for my modern quilt?

(The back is probably even more modern than the front since I threw the blocks together totally randomly!)

Each layer cake square is precut to 10 inches, so when you sew them together into 7 rows of 6 blocks each, the finished size is 57″ x 66.5″. My quilt top measures approximately 52″ x 60″ so that was perfect! It took me less than 2 hours to stitch all the backing squares together, including pinning and pressing the seams open.

Using a stencil, I drew little hands in the white spaces randomly over the surface of the quilt. This is going to be cute!

I marked all the hands before basting, using an inexpensive water soluble blue pen. I’m going to join the hands with loopy quilting so I can quilt them continuously.

I still haven’t decided what I’m going to quilt in the charm squares, so I left those unmarked for now. Any ideas??

Finally, I basted the quilt using about 150 Pinmoors. This is the 3rd quilt I’ve basted using Pinmoors and I’ve decided they are awesome! It’s a little spendy to buy enough of them for a big quilt, but they are totally worth it. It made basting a breeze and they are super easy to take out when quilting. I don’t even worry about pinning over my marked lines. The rule of thumb is to baste about a hand-width apart. That was easy for this quilt!

I’ve been following quilting blogs like The Free-Motion Quilting Project, WIP Wednesdays, Moda’s Bakeshop and the 2012 Free Motion Quilting Challenge for quite some time. I have so thoroughly enjoyed these projects that I have now been inspired to start my own sew along called Do-It-Yourself-Quilts!

I want to share step-by-step tutorials on how easy and fun it is to make your own quilts completely, including piecing and quilting. Then you can truly say you made it yourself!

Be sure to follow my blog for the official announcement about that on Thursday, July 19th, along with a sneak peak of my first project and a supply list if you’d like to join in!

Li’l Rascals Charm Pack Quilt #4 – Blocking and Binding

July 5, 2012February 16, 20152 Comments

I’m finishing up my Li’l Rascals charm pack quilt this week and it has been such fun to make!

Week #1 was the free pattern and cutting instructions to make the top.

Week #2 was machine quilting the large nine-patch blocks.

Week #3 was using a stencil to mark and quilt the sashing and borders.

I will finish the quilt this week by blocking and binding it. I’ve enjoyed putting together this tutorial so much that I may make this a regular blog feature. Let me know what you think!

The first step in blocking the quilt (whether you do this before or after binding) is to get the quilt completely wet. You can soak it in a tub, or in your washing machine on the hand-wash cycle. It will start out as a wet lump, but that’s ok, because you’ll smooth it all out.

I have 2 large tables set up in my sewing space that I use for basting and blocking. I laid the quilt out on the corner of the table and began blocking it into place.

I use several acrylic rulers to help me block it into place. I overlap them and measure some of the areas of the quilt to make sure they are nice and square. Using the numbers on the rulers I can tug and pull the quilt into place.

It takes about 1-2 days to dry nice and flat.

Once I’m happy with how the quilt looks, I use large square rulers to trim the corners and long rulers to trim the sides. The long lines help me make nice straight trimming cuts.

Now it’s ready to bind! Here are two binding tutorials I’ve put together from previous posts. I bind most of my baby quilts using these methods. Now, onto the next quilt!

Binding Blog Post #1

Binding Blog Post #2

By the way, if you are interested in making this same quilt, it requires just one charm pack of your choice and 1 yard of coordinated fabric for the sashing. I used Lil Rascals by Chloe’s Closet for Moda with Funky Monkey Sock Texture in dark brown.

Bungle Jungle Charm Pack Quilt – Week 2

July 3, 2012March 19, 20134 Comments

I finished my version of a modern quilt top this week:

Using one Bungle Jungle charm pack and 2 1/2 yards of White Solid , I whipped this puppy up in just a few days! I started working on this quilt last week.

I started off by making a total of 42 blocks since there are 42 charms in a pack.

I arranged them on my design wall randomly, turning each block in a different position.

While I like this arrangement, I didn’t love it, so I tried laying out all the blocks in the same orientation. I liked that better.

It must be my OCD kicking in!

Next, it was a simple feat to sew the blocks into pairs and then join the pairs into rows to complete the top.

Each row had 6 blocks (or 3 pairs), and I sewed a total of 7 rows. I pressed all of my seams open so it will be easier to quilt and fabric won’t shadow through the white.

Once I finished sewing all the blocks together, I realized I needed to add a strip of white to the left of the quilt top and one across the bottom to balance the design.

This would create a continuous border of white all around the quilt with plenty of negative space for creative quilting.

Instead of cutting one long strip for each border, I cut 13 rectangles, 4″ x 8″ each and made 2 pieced borders. The left border required 7 rectangles and the bottom row needed 6 plus a 4 inch square for the corner.

I’m pleased with the quilt top and will start machine quilting it next week. It will finish around 52″ x 61″ which will make a nice sized baby-throw.

I have a few ideas that I’m going to think about over the next several days before I begin quilting. I really want to incorporate this hand stencil in the white areas:

I’m thinking I might randomly quilt the hands in the white areas, joining them together with loopy stippling designs. I’d like to quilt something fun in the charm squares too, like perhaps a different shape in each block. If you’ve got any suggestions, please send them my way!