Well, that was an unexpected hiatus! Things have been crazy busy this past year. Quilting, traveling, wedding planning (!)… oh my poor neglected blog. Better late than never though, right?

OK, so let’s go back in time to 2014. I attended a Judy Niemeyer retreat led by Jackie Kunkel. For those of you unfamiliar with Judy Niemeyer, she’s the lead designer behind Quiltworx, a pattern company that specializes in beautifully intricate foundation paper-pieced patterns. The technique allows you to achieve angles and points with relative ease.

The project of the weekend was the Feathered Star. I chose the 60″x60″ wall hanging size because, let’s face it, I was already in over my head. (The Queen is 96″x96″ and has a curved border.)

Jackie is an amazing instructor. Paper piecing really is one of those mad science techniques that makes no sense verbally, but when you see it, it’s like a thousand lightbulbs firing in your brain. I can still remember the collective gasp that came out of our mouths when Jackie revealed that first sharp point to us.

The design comes together in wedges, not blocks, so Jackie walked us through one entire wedge. That way, we could familiarize ourselves with each unit before going home to complete the quilt. Once I got home, it was a few years of on-and-off chain piecing, getting all the units done for each wedge, and putting those wedges together. You cut and sort everything into bags (by chapter) at the beginning, so keeping track of things is pretty straightforward once you get the hang of it.

Look at that Y-seam! They didn’t all come out this good. Yes I am still afraid of them.

Slowly but surely, it all came together, and I tore all the papers out. I sent it off to Rebecca Silbaugh, who did a great job longarm quilting it. I normally quilt everything myself, but was too afraid to touch this one!

I got the quilt back and bound it just in time to enter into the Queens County Fair last September. It won best in show!

We now have this quilt hanging over our sofa at home, and I have a 2nd chicken trophy.

Hugs,
Hayden

Recently Jorge and I took on a fun contract sewing job for a school!

It’s a local day school for ages 2-5. Every year the students all make blocks, which get turned into quilts for auction at their annual fundraiser. Each quilt combines the work of one class.

A friend who teaches art classes there reached out for help with the project. Our job was to sew together the blocks with the provided sashing. It was several weeks of marathon sewing and delivering tops. The quilts were tied and bound by the school’s director, so we could focus on cranking out tops.

We made five out of a total of eight. It was so cool to see all the work that these little kids did for the blocks! We had lots of laughs as we sewed up the rows. Little bee quilters in the making. 🙂

This was the first project I worked on with my new-to-me Bernina 910. This machine belonged to my friend and coworker who passed away last Fall. Emily was a wonderful mentor to me when I started sewing. She was incredibly smart and passionate about sewing, art and education. I think that she would get a big kick out of this project and all the creativity coming from the little ones.

The machine’s original table was MIA, so I outfitted it with this shiny new SewSteady. I was surprised at how easy it was to fix up the table situation. The original part runs on eBay for about twice the cost of the SewSteady!

I just got the machine – and the Bernette serger that also came to live with me – serviced and cleaned. I’m going to try to attempt some garment sewing… we’ll see what happens!

Hugs,
Hayden

This is a quilt that Jorge and I made about two years ago, for Spring 2015 Quilt Market — a sampling job for a beautiful Timeless Treasures art deco fabric collection called Charleston. The pattern is Faster Fourteen by Hunter’s Design Studio. Sam wasn’t kidding about the “Faster” part; we made this in just a couple of days, as the sample yardage arrived about a week before it was time to fly out for the show.

The quilt lives on our sofa now and gets a lot of love. I’d never had a chance to take a proper photo of it though, and the weather was so gorgeous this weekend — perfect excuse to enlist Jorge for a picture-taking walk with me! Without any clouds in the sky or leaves on the trees, I was getting discouraged on my hunt for open shade… until we came through this perfect Station Square overpass on the way home.

Aside from being a fabulous pattern designer and all-around pleasure of a human being, Sam Hunter is an incredible advocate – and resource – for makers and creative professionals through her We Are $ew Worth It movement! So I was extra excited to stitch up one of her designs.

We used a dense metallic floral for the back, which made the free-motion stippling a bit of a drag. Those gold flowers added friction and weight. It worked out OK in the end, but lesson learned!

Here is the quilt hanging in the Timeless Treasures QM booth in 2015. I was pretty excited about coordinating the display. Leslie used May Chappell‘s Clutched pattern to make those awesome purses hanging out in the corner. And the framed swatches are the actual antique fabrics that were used to develop the collection!

I’m still totally in love with these fabrics, and actually planning another project this year with what’s left of it in my stash. Stay tuned!

Hugs,
Hayden

Hi everyone! I know I said in my last post that this next post would be about Brandon’s baby quilt, but I had to share some exciting news. Brandon was almost as excited about our chicken trophy as we were, so I know he’ll understand…

Our Sunshine and Shadow quilt won BEST IN SHOW at the Queens County Fair!

NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer, Queens Borough President Melinda Katz, and the Queens County Farm Museum pres(?) director(?) presented us with a trophy.

Not just any trophy. A GOLDEN CHICKEN trophy. 🐥🐓🏆 The whole thing was pretty darn amusing. Official photos were taken. I blinded the audience with my legs.

My quilter-in-training and I had originally made this quilt for Timeless, and it hung in the Quilt Market booth in Spring 2015. The pattern is by Castilleja Cotton.

It made an appearance in the Keepsake catalog too. This quilt has been around!

We had a lot of fun with the mad-science construction. First, you cut out 1200 squares. We did this with our trusty rotary cutters, and yes, I have since learned better methods for doing it. My “quilt mom” Anita also told me about a snazzy fusible grid for this kind of piecing. But you can’t really appreciate those methods until you’ve tortured yourself the old-fashioned way, am I right?

As Jorge would say…

So then you do this wild & crazy chain piecing technique that is so mind-boggling I’m not even going to try to describe it. It starts off as a little tree and then gets bigger and bigger until you have all the rows you need to assemble the layout. This picture was taken when it was almost done. The final tree was too big to even hold up!

You clip off the biggest row, and that’s the center. Then you clip off two rows at a time and sew them to the either side of center.

Just keep clipping, just keep clipping, just keep clip-ping clip-ping clip-ping what do we do we clip! (and sew. and press.)

I know, I should be ashamed that I don’t have a handmade quilt on our bed in this photo. The situation has been corrected since last spring, when this was taken.

Eventually you get a real pretty radiating square of colors.

And it’s time to trim off the points and add the borders.

We used skinny masking tape to mark the straight line quilting. I stippled the borders because, ya know. I stipple everything.

A little binding and labeling and it was done and blowin’ in the wind!

I made the jacket I’m wearing in this photo! It’s the Indygo Junction Swing Jacket pattern.

This was the highlight of my day yesterday, but I must say, the Queens County Fair (hosted by the Queens County Farm Museum), is SUCH a fun event and I look forward to it every year. Last year, we navigated their “Maize Maze” with friends — it was no joke! We took our moms this time around, and we all enjoyed carnival food, live music, performances, and the impressive work on display in all the competition categories.

We met Yogurt, the 60 year old tortoise that lives at John Bowne HS (right next door to our alma mater Townsend Harris). She was quite the lady.

During the award ceremony we met the best in show winner for the livestock category — she was the owner of this adorable mini-lop rabbit.

I participated in a corn-shucking contest (I can peel an ear of corn in 8 seconds, not bad!), and Jorge, Rosa and Kiki did the pie eating competition. Rosa put Jorge to shame.

I’m already starting to think about next year’s entry. This was the first time I entered a quilt into a public show and had it on display. Ribbon or not, it was so fun to participate in one of my favorite local events and share our work with the community.

Hugs,
Hayden