Hi friends!  Today I want to share a quilt I finished earlier this year called Winding Ways.  I started this quilt in July of 2023.  Around that time, I had mentioned to some friends that I wanted to get better at curved piecing.  One of them happened to have an Accuquilt Die Cut machine + dies for the Winding Ways pattern.  She offered to let us all use it, and well, here we are!

This was my color palette.  I got all of my fabrics (including my backing and binding fabrics) at Harmony in Provo, Utah.  It's one of my favorite shops (and lucky for you, they have an online shop!)  They have tons of fun gift items, yarn, and apparel fabrics.  Their quilting cotton selection is a bit on the small side, but every fabric is beautiful and unique!  

In a moment of insanity, I decided to "go big".  Why?  Why did I decide to go big?  I hadn't even made a test block.  I just dove right in.  And to be completely honest, I regretted that decision every step of the way...until it was finished, haha.  Every step was tedious.  I didn't enjoy it.  But I persevered and now I'm really glad I did!  

 

There isn't a pattern per se, just the dye cuts.  So, unfortunately, I don't have any information about fabric requirements.  But I do know, I did a 10 x 12 block layout.  So 120 blocks with 12 curved pieces on each one.  I chained pieced everything, so every step took a long time!

The blocks finished at 8" x 8" each.  So the finished quilt size is 80" x 96".

Perfect for a queen-size bed!

When it came to the quilting, I knew I wanted something circular to complement the quilt pattern design.  I found some inspiration pictures, but they all seemed to be custom quilted using curved rulers.  I didn't want to pay custom quilting prices, so I took it to my awesome long arm quilter, Jen Ostler.  We found an edge to edge pantograph called Hippie Dippie that was really similar to my inspiration pictures.  Jen tweaked the pattern a bit to make the design overlap a little and it came out perfect!

As many of you know, Jen always quilts a little object into the quilting for a fun game of hide 'n seek.  This time it was a cute little butterfly which you can see above.

I bound it in this striped woven fabric.  And I'm a little obsessed with this beautiful floral fabric I used for the back.  It tied everything together perfectly, don't you think?!?

The label is from Ever Emblem. I've been getting labels from them for years!  I get the 2" cotton, fold-over, sew-in labels.  If you want to get some for yourself, you will just have to pick one of their basic cotton labels and customize it from there.  I machine stitch my binding down around it because it's hard to hand stitch through it (but then I usually hand stitch the rest of my binding down to the back of my quilt).

I'm really happy with the way this quilt turned out!  I love the colors and the quilting.  But I kind of wish I had picked colors that went better in my house.  I don't know where I'm going to put this quilt!

I'm so thankful to my friend for letting me use her die-cut machine to cut all the pieces for this quilt!  So generous of her!  The dies cut out every piece accurately with little notches to show you where to line things up!  I can't imagine doing this project without the die-cutter!

I hope you enjoyed seeing this fun project using the Accuquilt Winding Ways Dies!  I'm glad I was able to get some serious practice with curved piecing.  Tell me, what's one quilting technique that you want to work on?

Thanks for stopping by today!

A {New} Finish!

Happy Monday everyone!

Thanks to all of you who offered names for my orange and turquoise quilt.  There were lots of great ideas and I'm going to stew them over for a bit, but I will announce the winner soon :)

For today, I thought I'd share my latest finish with you.

You like to see finishes, right???

I talked about this quilt a little HERE and HERE.

It's my Accuquilt Go! Quilt.  That's not the official name of this quilt, but I did use the quarter square - 4" finished triangle die.  It was awesome.  It saved me hours of time and my points are way more accurate than they would have been if I had cut them all by myself!!! 

The color scheme is a little different for me and I am loving it!  My friend Liz gave me a bunch of the fabrics for my b-day a while back (Hi Lizzy!) and then I threw in a bunch from my stash to mix it up a bit.

For the background I used a beige fabric with little white polka dots

[Naturally Naturals II for Red Rooster Fabrics #19039].

And for the binding, I used more polka dots!  I'm one of those people that really doesn't mind putting dots next to dots (as you may have noticed :)  As long as you have enough contrast in color and/or scale, I think it works.

The more the merrier -- in my opinion :)  The taupe/dot fabric for the binding is printed by Lecien, but that's all the information I have on it right now.

I used a Riley Blake solid blue fabric for the backing.  Since the quilt is queen size, I felt really happy about the $6.99 per yard purchase (plus my employee discount!)

My quilter did some free hand quilting on it with loops and flowers.  She always throws in one hidden object, just for fun.  As you can see, we found the butterfly!  Jen Ostler in Cedar Hills, UT. did a FABULOUS job quilting it!  The density was perfect, she was fast and she had it all trimmed, wrapped up with a chocolate on top when I picked it up.  I was a happy customer!

I started this quilt at the beginning of August.  7 months later and she's finally finished!  She's going on our guest bed, so now I just need to get those walls painted, buy a dresser and get some accessories. 

Oh, one of these days, right???

Happy Quilting!

~Amber

GO! Baby

A sweet friend gave me these fabrics a while back as a b-day gift 

and I've been wondering what to do with them ever since.  

So when the generous people at Accuquilt contacted me a few weeks ago to see if I wanted to do a review on their GO! Baby Fabric Cutter, I knew that

A.) I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see what all the "GO! Baby hype" was about and

B.) I was definitely going to use these fabrics and my new GO! Baby to make a little something for our guest bed.

To be honest, I was a little nervous to agree to review the GO! Baby. I didn't think one little cutting device could ever be worth $139 dollars.  I'm a little cheap that way :)  I was worried because I am not easily sold on gadgets and tools and such so I wondered if I would be able to give it a good review???

But, boy can I tell you that it's a gift from heaven!?!  I ordered three dies, one of which was the quarter square 4" finished triangle.  I haven't done a lot with quarter square triangles, but they're great for making basic blocks such as the hour glass, bow tie and broken dishes so I knew it was a must have!

I LOVED that I was able to easily cut through 6 LAYERS of fabric at a time (with minimal waste)!  That saved me HOURS of cutting time!

The best part?  Pre-cut dog-eared corners!!!  That's right ~ the quarter square triangle die is designed so that the corners are already M.I.A. ~ so no trimming!

Another great feature about the GO! Baby is it's portability!  It was the perfect size for taking on my quilting retreat a few weeks ago.  It hardly took up any space at all in my laundry basket of stuff! 

That weekend, I was able to make about 40 of the 50 stars that were needed to make my queen size guest bed quilt!  Whew!  It's been a while since I've made a quilt that big!!!  Having the GO! Baby made this a really quick project (which is great for a girl like me).  It left me more time for more quilts (or, more time for cooking and cleaning...however you want to look at it). 

Here's just a sneak peak of the finished quilt.  You'll have to come back tomorrow to see the finished top along side the awesome deal I scored on a headboard/footboard during yesterday's Labor Day sales!

 

So, to sum it up, I am now converted to the GO! Baby.  And, if you know me at all, I don't normally spend money on these kinds of things.  But from this project alone, I think the GO! Baby is a great investment.  Especially for basic dies that you know you will use a lot.  I'm looking forward to getting more dies and playing with the three I already have.  Can't wait to share more of my GO! Baby projects with you!  Check out accuquilt.com for more details!

 

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