Zig Zags and Flavor Flav

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about a zig zag quilt I was working on.  Well, I'm happy to say that I finished it up this past weekend at the Sew Day for ECMQG!  I basted it in time to take with me to the sew, and was able to quilt and bind it there.  It feels so nice to actually cross something this big off my list!  I sent it off to my friend Anna today.  I hope she and her baby likes it!

I really enjoyed making this quilt.  I love the colors and the clean, simple style.  Anna made it easy on me, and picked the fabrics for the whole thing, which was really nice!  She chose Essex Linen in Dusty Blue and Ivory for the zig zags.  And for the bike, she picked Michael Miller Bicycles, because her husband used to be a professional cyclist.  Love that little personal touch!

She also chose this great gray houndstooth fabric for the binding.  I thought it tied everything together nicely.

As for the quilting, I just did some simple echo quilting, in coordinating thread color.

The quilt finished at about 42 1/2" by 50 1/2", so it's not too small, not too big.  The baby will grow into it nicely.

Moving onto other things, at this week's ECMQG meeting, we're supposed to have a handmade name tag.  I  came up with this challenge, after seeing other guilds doing it, but I struggled with what to do.  I've been dying to make this Japanese X and + block that I've seen - I can't remember the first place I saw them, but Amy over at Badskirt Amy did a tutorial on how to make it.  So I decided to just go with that for my name tag, and my idea was to embroider my name in the middle + part of the block.

So that's exactly what I did!  A few months ago, I won a giveaway by Sew Modern (seriously, I miss that store) of a FQ bundle of these Dottie fabrics (by Jay Cyn Designs for Birch Fabrics) in different colors.  I'm a polka dot freak, so I thought using these fabrics for my name tag would be perfect.

I also embroidered around the + with coordinating floss, and quilted just a simple echo in the rest of the block.  I wasn't sure what to use for the binding, and thought twice about using yet another dottie fabric, but now that it's done, I really like it.

Let me tell you, this baby is big - as far as name tags go.  Like, Flavor Flav big.  It's not a giant clock necklace, but it is an 8" square.  Have you ever seen a name tag that big?  Probably not.  I didn't really know how to go about hanging it around my neck, because this thing is definitely too big to pin.  So I was browsing around for some inspiration and I remembered that Monica also made a giant name tag for the Portland MQG (we like big tags and we cannot lie), and realized that she used a selvage.  I thought that was a brilliant idea, and used the selvage from the bicycles fabric above.

Besides it being so big, I'm really happy with it, and I just wanna make a ton of these blocks!

WiP Wednesday

Wow - it's been a while! Life is catching up with me, I guess. I'm still sewing - just not as much. And I'm finding I just don't have a lot of time to blog. Or at least, if I do have time, I don't really think about it.
First I want to show something that I recently finished. 

Before I moved to Florida last year I knew I wanted to start a modern quilt guild.  Through Flickr and her blog, I discovered that Kelly B. lived here and was also interested in starting a MQG. Around that same time, I found (through the main MQG website) Melissa, another girl in the area that wanted a guild. The three of us emailed, and finally met together after I moved here. Kelly and Melissa both helped me get this guild started in a major way, and in September of last year, the Emerald Coast MQG had it's first meeting!

At that time, Kelly and myself were both Air Force spouses, which means that we aren't here permanently.  Kelly's time in Florida was coming to a close, and she would be moving in May.  Since she was such a big part of this guild, I wanted to do something special for her. So I made up some siggy blocks for people in the guild to sign. Once they were all signed, I pieced them together, along with a border, then gave that to Melanie to handstitch over the names. She gave it back to me. I quilted it, bound it, and sent it off to Kelly (because we didn't finish it in time to give it to her in person before she moved). We made it into a wall hanging, and hopefully it will live on the wall in Kelly's new beautiful sewing room in Tennessee.

We miss Kelly and keep trying to convince her to come down once a month for meetings. 

Now onto the WiPs...

I started my block for the QuiltCon Block Challenge a week or so ago.  It's actually taking me longer than I'd like, but I haven't had a chance to just sit down and finish it, and there's lots of HST's involved.  Here's a sneak peek:

And I've taken my first custom order for a quilt.  She wants a zig zag quilt for her baby.  I've got the blocks assembled, just have to trim (my least favorite part) and put it all together.

And another round of the Pillow Talk {Swap} on Flickr is starting, so I signed up for that.  I'm making time for it because I love that swap so much, and had to sit out the last round.  I'm not missing it again, and my couch is in need of a new pillow!  I'm eagerly waiting to find out who my partner is so I can start working on that, so stay tuned...

I'm linking up to WiP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced.  Head on over there to see what other people are working on!