Mini Forest Tree Quilt

It's been a loooooong time since I've been on here! But I wanted to hop on and share a quilt that I made that I've been getting lots of questions about on Instagram. That's where you can find me these days (@naturallymeg) but it would be easier to explain the details of this quilt over here.

I love how my Holiday Patchwork Forest quilt turned out! I really wanted it to look like pine trees in a snowy forest, so that is why all the trees are green and the white background. I used this tutorial for the tree blocks from Diary of a Quilter.

I cut my trees down to 3.5" x 5" so they ended up being pretty small blocks. I tried to make the trees as uniform as I could, but that was tricky since it is kind of a free style pattern. And yes, I wasted half of the fabric. The way that the pattern works you would end up with white trees and a green background too, but I just wanted the green trees. The thrifty girl in me died a little by throwing the other block pieces out, but I think it was worth it to get all green trees with a white background.

I picked about 12 different fabrics to make the trees. I think it was key to have a couple solid greens in there too, so there is a solid dark green and a solid lighter green that I had on every row. The rest of the fabrics were mostly dots and stripes that I had stashed away from other projects. For the white I used kona white solid fabric.

I ended up with 107 tree blocks and 75 blank white squares that I randomly placed so that it had a more foresty look. 182 blocks total with 14 blocks across and 13 rows going down. This still ended up being smaller than I wanted for a lap quilt  (48x58 was the finished size with just the trees) so I added a 6 1/2" white border on all sides of it. It ended up being the perfect size to cuddle on the couch with my kids during the winter, just like I envisioned!

I machine quilted it with a matchstick quilting pattern. I just sewed in the ditch straight down and then measured 1 1/2" over which was down the center of the trees starting in the middle of the quilt and going to the end. Once that was done I went back and sewed another line in the middle of those two seams to finish it off. Then I flipped the quilt and did the other side. I hope this makes sense. If not then check out this great tutorial on straight line quilting by Suzy Quilts.

I picked a super soft minky fabric for the back and a striped binding. I'm so happy with how it turned out!

Triangle quilt...

I finished the triangle quilt for our living room a few months ago and am finally getting around to documenting it here. We snapped some family pictures this fall so I brought the quilt along with us to take a few pictures outside.

My goal was to keep it simple and use the colors that I want in my living room in the quilt. I went for brown, teal, green, and white. Honestly... I love it, but it's a bit busy for me. I think I used too many different patterned fabrics and not enough solid colors. Oh well, it's a quilt! I'm sure it will be one of many around here someday. I used a mossy green flannel on the back so that it would be nice and soft. It's been getting a lot of use around here already.

Hope Valley...

 There are a few things in life that I really strongly believe in...

I believe one should eat butter instead of margarine.
I believe that hot baths and walks in the mountain are healing for the soul.
I believe the best way to mop a floor is on your hands and knees with a bucket of vinegar water.

I also believe in handmade quilts.

There is nothing else quite like sleeping under a handmade quilt. I've yet to sleep under a store bought one that was nearly as comfortable or satisfying. Maybe it's the love that goes into hours upon hours of quilting it... I'm not sure. But they are wonderful! I've been very spoiled and have benefited from other's quilting skills in the past. My sister in law Nicole made us a quilt for our wedding that we have used to shreds, literally. We had it shipped out to Hawaii when we lived there because we missed it too much. But we have used it and loved it over the past 10 years and it's now falling to pieces so it was time for a new one.

I first blogged about working on this quilt here. That was two years ago! So yes, this has taken me a long time to put together. The fabric and pattern are by Denyse Schmidt, the fabric is from her Hope Valley line. The fabric was inspired by the creative, homey economic era of the Great Depression. There is a very vintage-y feel to it and I loved it the moment I first saw it. I wanted to use fabric that wasn't too feminine and the blue, teal, gray colors were perfect for this. I also loved the name of the line. When I started getting the fabric for this quilt I felt like I was in my own hope valley era just overcoming my 2009 crisis. It felt very fitting, and I love that I now get to slumber with peaceful dreams under my Hope Valley quilt every night.

I've had the top done for about a year but was pretty nervous to quilt it. I tripled the pattern size so that it would fit our California King bed. It's pretty massive, and I wanted to use really thick batting so that it would be nice and warm for the Utah winters.

I didn't want to pay a fortune to have someone machine quilt it on a long arm machine, but there was no way I was just going to tie it. I was so nervous to do it on my own machine!!! I had spent so much time on this I really didn't want to screw it up.

What I ended up doing is machine quilting with my walking foot down each of the rows by stitching in the ditch. Then I started in the top middle and stitched in the ditch down the different pieces. It worked just fine on my machine! I don't know why I was so chicken and waited so long to do it. It's not perfect by a long shot... but it works for me and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

I decided though that binding a quilt is like child birth. You're almost done, you just have to bind (or birth) your quilt. But the only way to really do this so that it looks good is to do it by hand... which takes FOREVER! One centimeter at a time, by hand... until it's done. Then you swear you are never going to make another quilt again because you don't want to go through the pain of binding again. But again like childbirth you forget how awful that was and you start piecing together another quilt ;). My thumb still hurts from hours and hours of binding, so texting has been minimal this week (oh the pains of life huh?).

I'm so happy that it's done though. This is a huge project that I've been working on for so long, it's quite the feeling of accomplishment! And I may not be birthing another quilt anytime soon... but maybe I'll forget about how much I hate binding one day.

Shop Hop...

My sister in law's are awesome!! I am a lucky girl who gets to have 8 sister in law's on my husband's side and they are so much fun to hang out with.

They like to do this thing every year called the Shop Hop. It's a quilt shop thing where there are 13 shops across the Wasatch front that are involved. There is a theme and each shop gets all decorated and has drawings, free quilt patterns, etc, etc.

So the point of the shop hop is to visit each of the shops and get your paper stamped, and when you get all 13 stamps you get to be in their big drawing. They give you 4 days to visit all the shops.

We did it in one day. Yes, we did.

13 shops from Logan to Springville in one day. It took about 11 hours.

And here are my lovely sister in laws who are always up for a good adventure. Just 4 of us were able to do it plus some of the younger girlies. I'm sure they love that I took a picture of them and am putting it on my blog. Here we are about halfway through the day on our crazy shop hop adventure!

We made it to the last shop about 20 minutes before closing. We totally did it in one day! Crazy! I felt crazy, like the amazing race but quilt shop style. It was a lot of fun. And I got all my stamps...

I wanted to do it so that I could spend some good quality time with my sister in laws. Also, it's nice to see the different quilting stores around and get ideas for projects. Like I mentioned before I'm getting geared up to work on my hexagon quilt and so I looked at all the different yellow fabrics that they had at the different stores and picked up some great pieces.



These fabrics make me happy! They look so fun together. It was a fun day and a long day. I haven't heard if I won anything yet, but it was fun to get out and see all the cute shops!

Stacked Coins Quilt...

I finally got the quilt done for my little boys bed. It's been in the makings for almost a year... but I did the finishing touches on it last week and I'm so in love with it.


When I started it my son was still in his crib and I figured that we would buy a twin bed for him. But somehow my husband talked me into getting a queen. So the quilt sat in the closet for a while, until I decided what I was going to do. I ended up just cutting some of the bottom off and adding the cream borders around the whole thing. And for the record... I'm glad that my husband talked me into a queen bed. Some of our funnest times are at night when all three of us lie in bed and read stories.

Then once I had the top done I took forever to decide how to quilt it. I really didn't want to tie it, I wanted it machine quilted. But I couldn't bring myself to paying someone $200ish dollars to have it done. So after some pep talks from friends/sister in laws and watching lots of You Tube videos, I decided to go ahead and do it myself.

HOLY COW!!! Why didn't anyone tell me that machine quilting was so much fun! It was amazing. I had a blast doing it. And it turned out pretty good. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm so happy with how it turned out.

I love the binding that I made for it. It adds just the right cuteness on the edges. I know that this fancy quilt (well, fancy for me) is just for a three year old boy and that it's probably going to be filthy dirty in a week... but I am so glad that I did it. I started this when I was going through chemo and I would work on it during the times that I was too sick to have my son with me. It was heartbreaking to send him away for a few weeks each time I did, and so to me working on something for him while I wasn't with him was good therapy for me.

I really love his room. Most of the art work/things in there are things that I have made for him. I love making things for my family!! It makes me feel like my boy is always surrounded with his mom's love.

Stacking the Odds...

Oh my... have you ever fallen in love with a quilt before? I hadn't "fallen in love" until last night when I saw this Stacking the Odds quilt by Denyse Schmidt. Oh my... I love it!

I love the pattern... the clean lines... the rows... the white.... how modern it is compared to other quilt patterns... I love this new fabric line she has going called Hope Valley.

My husband has been asking me for years (literally) to make a new quilt for our bed. Ours was a wedding gift and has been well loved... and is falling apart. I've been hesitant because it's pricy and takes so much work to make a king sized quilt... but I'm doing it! I'm totally going to make this one... I can't wait!

Fancy Jean Quilt...

Holy cow... I have the most amazing sister in law. My SIL Nicole has more talent in her little finger than I will ever have in my whole body!!! Too bad she's too busy sewing up cool stuff to keep a blog huh (that and take care of her 3 1/2 kids...) She whipped up this amazing jean quilt for my other SIL's wedding shower that was on Saturday. By whipped up I mean she started this on Wednesday and had the whole thing done and ready to go Saturday morning. Unreal!

She used these adorable 1940's prints for all the squares. By the time I got my camera out they had already rolled most of the quilt so I didn't get a picture of the whole thing. But I was so impressed. She also brought a bowl of spring colored taffy to munch on while we tied... because all the colors were springy. She put my jean quilt to shame... However, this is not a competition! I love that I can get good ideas from her and she is constantly teaching me new things about quilting.

Jean Quilt...

I finished the jean quilt just in time for my family to use it! We had company this weekend and I was so happy that I did not have to borrow any blankets from my friends so that we didn't freeze!!

Sorry that my pictures are fuzzy... Unfortunately I don't care to retake them...

For the top of the quilt I sewed together all of the jean squares. I didn't want to to be your average/typical jean quilt so I added two strips of this black and white flowery material in there. There is a black border around the whole thing, but it didn't make it in the picture. It's kind of hard to take a picture of a big ole' blanket like this you know!

For the back I did a strip of jean that matching up with the strip of fabric on the front. Then I just pieced different fabrics onto the back till it was big enough. I think that I like the back better than I like the front.

To quilt it I used my walking foot and just did straight lines down the diagonal of the squares. It was a workout, let me tell you! Some of my lines are... straighter than others... It's going to take a little practice to get good at this machine quilting business!

I'm really happy with this blanket, it's a good extra blanket to have around! I love the memories that are in here. Six years of jeans from Trent and I! Some of my favorite pairs that I wore down to the last thread almost.