Happy Wednesday! I am so excited to share this finished quilt with you today! This is one of my favorites that I've finished in a while!! Say hello to my vintage sheet side braid quilt!


To be honest, I don't actually remember how this quilt idea came about. I knew I wanted to make another quilt with my vintage sheet stash, so I believe I just went through my patterns and picked one that I hadn't made in a while. I still love my Side Braid Quilt Pattern, and I have only made one other full size mini braid quilt! See that version here: Mini Braid Quilt.


I decided to try to cut as much of this quilt from my scrap bin as I could. Super scrappy was the goal, even for the background. I filled in the rainbow of colors with my stash where I needed to.


The layout definitely took some playing with to get right. I swapped out a really bright orange that was sticking out, and a background piece or two that had too much going on. There is minimal contrast in this quilt, so it has a really soft pattern compared to the original mini braid quilt I made.


Here it is in all its glory!! It finished at 60"x78". It's super soft and is like a scrapbook of my sheet stash!


The quilting for this quilt is SO special. This is my first vintage sheet quilt that I've had long arm quilted. I sent it to Katie at Autumn Moon Quilting and she knocked it out of the park. It looks incredible!! I'm so grateful that she was willing to quilt it for me. And I love this fun retro floral quilting design, it goes so well with the vintage sheet prints. It's called Posy Patch.


For the backing I used a sheet (of course!), this one is a fun warm floral. I originally cut and made a striped binding for this quilt, but when it came back I realized it really didn't match the backing at all. So I sent it aside for another quilt and made some with this fun orange geometric. I think it works really well with the front and the back, win-win! I thrifted it in 2011, so it's been waiting for its moment to shine!!


This was a fun quilt to make. It was nice to revisit this pattern, how did it come out 12 years ago!? I think this version is one of my favorite quilts I've made with it. It's great for stash busting fat quarters or scraps!


Pattern: Side Braid Quilt Pattern
Fabric: Reclaimed vintage bed sheets
Quilting: Autumn Moon Quilting

Happy Quilting!

Recent Vintage Sheet Projects and More Bundles

Happy Wednesday! Today I have a little shop news to share as well as a quick updates on a few recent vintage sheet projects I've been working on.

There are more vintage sheet fat quarter bundles in the shop! This round features lots of great florals in whites and creams for your next soft and subtle project! All the sheets were salvaged from local thrift stores. Find them in my shop here: Vintage Sheet Fat Quarter Bundles


Bundle A


Bundle B


Bundle C



Bundle D

Find them in my shop here: Vintage Sheet Fat Quarter Bundles



I finally was able to get a flat shot of my vintage sheet plus quilt that I made this Spring! It was so big that it didn't fit either of my photo taking spots here, so I took it back to Ohio with me to photograph on my parent's barn.


I also photographed my vintage sheet side braid quilt while I was home!! I don't think I've shared any of this quilt here on the blog, I hope to write up a post about it soon. It was also the first vintage sheet quilt I've had longarm quilted, and it's so dreamy!!


I love having garland or bunting hanging in our living room and I recently made myself a new one! I think I need to take it down to get a proper photo, but here is a little peek. I love how it turned out! It's so cheerful.


Right now I'm working on a new pillow cover! I have a big pillow form to cover, and decided to make the pillow from my giant vintage star quilt pattern. Mostly because I cannot find the pillow that I made when I released the pattern. I know it's in the house somewhere, but it honestly seemed faster to just make another than search too hard for it!


I've been really loving working so much with sheets again, it's so satisfying!

Happy Sewing!

This Month

Happy Wednesday! I'm back, at least for today. This month has been pretty draining. I am working towards finishing up some deadlines, doing regular work, trying to keep the apartment in order, and planning our wedding from afar. Plus, it was Michael's birthday and our anniversary this month.

I haven't had much to talk about or show in this space, and honestly I think I needed a little break. I've been pretty quiet on Instagram too, I guess I've pulled back from most social media this month, and it's been good. I can't do everything, so something has to give. Hopefully next month things can get back to normal.

I did find time recently to refresh the quilt ladder. I love having quilts on display! It was made using this tutorial.


I've joined a quilt bee for the first time in years and I'm pretty excited about it. It's a traveling bee, so we had to send out our quilt "start" last month. I choose some orphaned blocks that all happened to coordinate in color. I can't wait to find time to work on this project.


I started my first knitting project of 2015, a Schwimmen hat (pattern by Shannon Cook). It's another gray hat, because I love gray hats. This is the fourth gray hat I have made, whoops! Oh well, I know what I like! More on my Ravelry.


We are finally to the point where we are simply running out of space in our apartment. Since we aren't planning on moving until we leave Madison, this means some purging is necessary. Thankfully, I love ridding through things, so it's not all bad. This past weekend I tackled my sewing room. I took almost everything out of the wall of closets, and got rid of a decent amount of stuff. Not enough, but there is nothing being stored on the floor anymore, so definitely an improvement! I also ordered this FJÄLKINGE shelving unit from Ikea to take better advantage of the space between my sewing table and the window. It's definitely one of the better quality pieces I've seen from there, and it fits perfectly.


Last month when it wasn't quite so cold (it's 2 degrees right now), we got brave and went out onto Lake Mendota for some photos of the ice. It was really cool. Don't worry, this is as far as we got from the shore.


George bunny has been good. He is so sweet, I like to pick him up for a squeeze everyday. He has been waking us up every morning at about 6:30am to go out in his play area. Stinker!


One more George photo just for good measure, cause he is so cute!

Have a great day!

Dreamin' Vintage Side Braid Quilt

Happy Wednesday! I finally have that finished quilt to share with you. This was one of the first projects I cut out when I got my Dreamin' Vintage yardage last Spring! I needed a new sample of the Big Braid quilt from my Side Braid Quilt Pattern, since the first two I made ended up being given as gifts.


I cut this quilt out and then like many projects, it sat in a ziploc, waiting until I had time to work on it. I brought it with me to our Chalet Sewing Weekend in June, and managed to get it all sewn together. I think it was the only thing I actually got done that weekend, but that's okay! The chatting and the company is my favorite part. Holly took some really fun photos of the three of us who finished quilt tops. Here are a few, but there are more in her post, here.


(Photo by Holly DeGroot)

Deedrie with her Florette quilt top, Jacey with her Scrappy Trip quilt top and me with my Side Braid quilt top!


(Photo by Holly DeGroot) 

 Quilt top? Super hero cape? Who can tell!


(Photo by Holly DeGroot) 

Holly has a gift for making things look awesome. And I love these photos. They're so fun! Make sure and check out her photography site, here!


So, back to the story of this quilt. I finished the top in the beginning of June, and then again, it sat waiting to be quilted. Finally in September, I sent it to Melissa of Sew Shabby Quilting to be quilted!


For the quilting, I choose this fun Orange Peel quilting pattern. It felt perfectly summery and appropriate for this quilt! I think it turned out really fun! Melissa does a great work!


Side Braid takes 20 fat quarters of prints and 1 1/2 yards of background fabric. I used my Dreamin' Vintage collection for the prints, and this beautiful Pearl Lace Elements that I've had in my stash for a while. It was fun using a print for the background! It's hard to see in photos, but it has a beautiful, subtle lacey pattern. I think I have enough left for a smaller project! I used the Sweet Meadow print for the background and Bloomery in Citronelle for the binding.


This quilt crinkled up nicely in the wash and has passed the snuggle test, which means it's a win! I love stitching up this pattern. Everything from the cutting to the piecing is quick and easy!

Happy Quilting!

Weekly Snapshot

Happy Tuesday! It's good to be back in this space this week. I had plans to post some finished projects last week and then the weather was all rainy and dark so I couldn't get the photos I needed! Then I was going to post one of those projects here today, but I managed to delete the photos before I transferred them to my computer, whoops! So, it's a snapshot post today instead.


I sent some quilt tops that had been hanging around to Melissa of Sew Shabby Quilting last month, one is bound (hopefully I'll be sharing it later this week!), and the other has binding waiting! I am totally addicted to having things quilted, I'm not going to lie. It relieves a lot of stress for me, and I feel like I can focus more on the parts I truly love. Win-win!


Two weekends ago I sat down to experiment with sewing knits on my serger. My Geomteric Bliss knits arrived, but I wanted to practice before cutting into them. I was able to make a successful knit Scout Tee! I still can't believe I made it honestly! I will take photos of it on at some point! I used Jen's tips for making the pattern from knits here.


I started my Q4 challenge project for the Eat Sleep Knit Yarnathon at the beginning of the month! I am making the Daybreak shawl by Stephen West. I am really loving it, and was so excited to try knitting stripes for the first time, they're really fun. I'm using Madelinetosh Pashmina in Moonstone and Cephalopod Bugga in Bold Jumping Spider. I now have seven stripes of each color knit, woo! See more on my Ravelry.


This past weekend, Michael and I headed down to Fitchburg to pick apples and pumpkins! It was a little chilly, so we had to break into the emergency bag for hats when we got there, but we warmed up pretty quick. I had never picked apples before, so I had been wanting to go for a few years now. I'm glad we finally got around to it, it was so cool! We had a great time.


The only natural thing to do with a bunch of apples it bake a pie, right? I had never baked an apple pie before, so it was fun to try out something other than pumpkin pie. I used this crust and filling recipe from Smitten Kitchen. It turned out really good! We didn't have the right apples, but you couldn't really tell. The crust was perfect, I will definitely use that recipe again.


George baby!

Have a great day!

Quilt Market - The Quilts

Nordika Color Hex Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.

Happy Wednesday! Today's post is the first of a few to share all of the projects made up in Nordika for my Quilt Market booth.  I decided to break the projects up by type, otherwise this would be a very long post! So, how about the quilts first?

As I mentioned on Monday, this Floral version of my Color Hex Quilt Pattern is the first thing I made with Nordika.  I knew I wanted a couple of very bold statement quilts to be the building point for the projects.  The nice thing about this pattern is it takes very little fabric but still packs a punch. It's pieced with half-hexagons, so no y-seams, yay!

Nordika Color Hex Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.

On the original Color Hex quilt I did concentric circle quilting, which I really liked.  This time I did a giant spiral, which was much easier, once it got started! I used a lovely dark grey Aurifil 50wt thread, #2605!

Nordika Triangle Baby Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.

Next, a fun baby quilt using equilateral triangles! I mixed in coordinating Pure Elements (I'll do a big coordinating solids/blenders post soon!), using those for the upright triangles and the prints for the downward triangles.  It turned out really fun, and so colorful!

Nordika Triangle Baby Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.

Still can't get away from the loopy quilting, what can I say! Let's just call it a signature!

Nordika Wonky Crosses Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.

This quilt really stretched me, creatively.  I love order and symmetry and this type of quilting means letting that go a bit.  This might actually be my first large "improv" quilt.  But, you can hardly call it that because it's actually rather calculated. I was inspired by the Add it Up Quilt from Quilting Modern by Jacquie Gehring and Katie Pedersen. It was such a pleasure to meet them both at Market!

I created the cross blocks and then squared them all up to 5".  Then rather than lay the quilt out and figure out how to piece the negative space, I simply cut up a ton of 5" squares from the white and randomly pieced each row.  Then laid the rows out and figured out a suitable layout. 

Nordika Wonky Crosses Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.

So, if you're slightly afraid of piecing a quilt with lots of negative space (me!), this method was a bit easier for me, and did not take much weird quilt math! I'm so happy with the result and I'm glad I stepped outside of my comfort zone to make this quilt! I quilted it using a meandering loop design that I really ended up liking!

I backed it in the only black vintage sheet I've ever found!

Nordika Baby Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.

Next up, a peek at one of my new patterns! Hopefully coming next month.  This is a baby version of the full quilt! This is a very quick stitch!

Nordika Baby Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.

I used a new-to-me quilting design this time! I had always loved seeing quilts done with the Serpentine stitch but never knew how to do it on my machine.  I found this tutorial that walks you through programing it in as a custom stitch on the Janome Horizon and it worked great! I'll be using it a lot I think!

Nordika Arithmetic Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.

These last two quilts were sewn up in a whirlwind! They were cut, sewn, quilted, and finished in a week and a half! I knew I'd be close on time, so I turned to two of my quick patterns! This first one is the Arithmetic Quilt Pattern! I made the throw size using 4.5" squares.  It was fun to see how well this came together, despite how busy it ends up being! It's such a stark contrast to the wonky cross quilt!

Nordika Arithmetic Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.

Pretend I quilted it really fancy!  The quilting is the hardest part to do under short deadline for me.  I can only quilt for an hour and then I need to rest and ice my shoulder and wrist.  I'd love to get a quilting frame for my machine or a longarm one day, wouldn't that just be lovely? :)

Nordika Side Braid Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.

Finally, the last quilt! This one came together quickly and first, then took a disastrous detour and finally in the end was finished just in time.  I used my Side Braid Quilt Pattern.  The top stitched up super quick, and I was so pleased!

The problems started from there.  I did not use enough pins while I was basting, and I knew I wasn't doing a good enough job but being pressed on time, did it anyways.  I paid for it when it came time to quilt, I had a giant line of puckers all down the back.  I ended up unpicking quilting for about 5 hours, and re-basting then re-quilting about half the quilt. 

Nordika Side Braid Quilt, a photo by Jeni Baker on Flickr.

I wasn't sure if it was going to be finished in time, but it was, thank goodness!

Phew! That's all the quilts! Tomorrow I'll share the pillows and other home-decor items!

Have a great day!