Sunday, January 27, 2013

Sea Glass: A Beginning

This weekend brought rain to the Valley of the Sun and a cold to our home.  We spent the weekend hunkered down and I re-focused my attention on a project I started during the holidays: Sea Glass.  I got the name from a blogger's bundle of fabrics put together at Pink Castle Fabrics.  The bundle was sold out, but I tried to match the colors with different fabrics.


I love the combinations of the aqua, navy, and pale blue colors.  Can you see that blue striped piece in the picture?  That's from a favorite shirt that I sadly tore, but had to incorporate into a quilt.  I love it!  The Kona "Oyster" gives the scheme a softer edge than the white I am normally drawn.


I am really excited to see the quilt top put together.  Lots of hours will be spent figuring out the right balance of navy and aqua, both dominate colors in this scheme.  What do you think?


Saturday, January 26, 2013

Fabric Stash Organizing Tips - A Tutorial



Practical Tips to Organize your Fabric:

Do you ever find yourself pinning pictures of how professional quilters have organized their collections of fabrics on shelves in pretty little piles?  If you’re like me, you mouth begins to drool and visions of organized sewing rooms start dancing in your head.  Sounds beautiful, right?  Yes it does!  But is it practical? No!

When pulling together fabrics for a new project I am constantly interchanging pieces until I get the right feel.  Can you imagine if everything was organized in little piles, stacked neatly on a book shelf?  I would go crazy trying to keep those piles in order.  My solution: a set of drawers.

Use a set of clear plastic drawers
Use clear drawers so that you can see what you have without opening drawers.  I love that I can see what each drawer contains; first, because I can admire my collection and second, so that when I need a certain color, I can see which drawer to open.  Saves time and frustration!



Organize by project, then color
It’s as simple as it sounds.  I like to keep fabrics that I have paired together so that I don’t accidentally steal from it for another project.  I designated one of my clear drawers to works-in-progress, or future projects.  The rest of the drawers are organized by colors: reds, blues, greens, browns, … with a category for those fabrics that just don’t seem to fit into any one color group.

My future projects (ahem... or works in progress) are in the prime top drawer for easy access

Here you can see my green stash and my brown stash sharing a drawer


Be disciplined with your system
Whatever system you choose to use, be dedicated to it.  What’s the use of spending all of the time and effort into implementing a new system, if you do not maintain it?  Return a red colored piece to your red section, return the work-in-progress to your designated place.  An organized stash is a happy stash (and happy spouses, too!).

Optional Extra Step:
This extra step takes some more time, but can be quite helpful when pulling together fabrics for a new project.  Label each piece of fabric with its measurements, i.e. 1 yard cut, or 3/8 yard, etc.  One of the easiest ways to label is to write the measurement on a post-it note and then use a pin to secure to the fabric.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Support Your Local Quilt Shop!

January 24, 2013 is Support Your Local Quilt Shop day! Need some validation that it's official?  Check out Support Your Local Quilt Shop.  Help stimulate our fragile economy and your fabric stash!
 

My local shop is Cutting Edge Quilts located in Chandler, Arizona (Just off Arizona Avenue and Chandler Blvd).  They're open late on Thursdays, until 8PM! 

Cutting Edge Quilts Front Entry

I love shopping at my local quilt shops not only for their selection, but for all of the wonderful quilters who work there!  The staff is always friendly and excited to see your projects.  I highly recommend Cutting Edge Quilts.  They've been slowly increasing their stock and have recently added more of the "modern" from Windham and Moda.

Not close to Cutting Edge Quilts?  Try one of the following:

Zoe's Quilt Trunk Shop Their selection is a bit bigger and their also located in Chandler, AZ

3 Dudes Quilting  They're a great group of guys who own and run this gem in Phoenix, AZ (Ahwatukee).  Bonus: they're officially participating in Support Your Local Quilt Shop day.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Welcome to Quarter Mile Quilts!

Welcome to Quarter Mile Quilts!

I sat on the name for this blog for a while and even considered different variations of QMQ.  Quarter Miler Quilter just seemed too large of a mouthful, while Quarter Mile Quilter didn't have the right feel either.  Silly isn't it?  For the history behind the name see the "About" page.

I hope you find my posts both interesting and inspiring.  The goal behind the blog is not to try to bring out something unique about quilting.  There's already thousands of other quilt blogs out there competing for your attention.  I'm just here to share what I've learned and inspire you to try a new pattern, or help you enjoy the process more.

Feel free to gander at my quilt gallery, which I'll slowly be updating over the next few weeks.  I'll feature a few in future posts, but if there's one you are really curious about, let me know and I'll be happy to talk about it.

Welcome again to QMQ.  Thanks for stopping by.

Kate

Feel free to email me at quartermilequilts@gmail.com