musical mashup - crabfeed quilt 2020

here it finally is, my first finish of 2020!
sure, sure... you saw the good place cross stitch first, but that got posted because of the show finale... THIS is the real first finish of 2020!
i started working on this for my annual new years eve sewfest, but then ended up hanging out with friends.  the crabfeed was fast approaching, and i needed a reason to sew through more of my music fabric stash!  i used the same pattern as ben's star wars quilt you saw last week with a few tweaks.  i changed the rotation of the blocks (not that you can really tell much with the scrappy quilt) and i made an alteration to the border.
yep.
another godzilla sized lap quilt.
why i didn't do the smaller size after doing the star wars one, i don't know.
for the border, i had this great piano key fabric my mom purchased a lot of, but i wanted the keys to run in the correct direction... AND line up on the top and bottom borders.  so what i did was line them up once the strips were cut, sew them together and then trim the overhang to get it even again.  this did make the border smaller by about an inch, but that was not a problem with this beast of a quilt.  with the fabrics running from all directions, i didn't want the chaos of the side borders touching the bottom borders of piano keys, so i added in the corner stones which helps balance it out perfectly (and also allows the forever used black treble clef fabric in to the mix a little more.
once it was done, i quilted it up with the good ol' loop the loop pantograph and bound it with black treble clefs.  as much as i love doing bold colors, the subtle softness of black, white and tan just makes this feel so cozy.  and the backing was a perfect find at joanns... AND a wide back!  plus, i've got the chunk of it leftover that will now be able to be cut up and pieced in to future music quilts.
now that this is complete, i can now check off 2 of my 50 finishes for 2020.  oh yeah, that's a thing i joined to get stuff sewn/crafted thanks to lettuce craft and american patchwork & quilting's ufo challenge that i fell behind on for january's finish...  oops!
pattern: quick as a wink - scottie dog quilts
quilt count: 129

musical pinwheels quilt

twas the night before my final long arm rental at meissner's (that should show you how long ago this was made...) and i had hardly anything to quilt.  i think i only had my snails quilt, which wasn't very big at all, and i didn't want to let my last day go to waste.  i had all the scrap pieces leftover from judy's migration music quilt, so i started sewing those triangles together to make squares and seeing what i could come up with.  well, i came up with this pinwheel-ish creation!
because i was working late in to the night, i literally only had what was in my fabric stash to come up with something.  i had a good amount of triangles in the end, but was still a few short to make a full HST quilt top.  i had a few chunks of red fabrics that didn't get used up, so i measured out my blocks and cut big focal pieces to coordinate with everything to help offset the missing pieced blocks.  and luckily, i also had a TON of this red leftover for the border, which helped make things just a little bit bigger in order to get it a good size.
it was fun to use this triangley pantograph all over to go along with the half square triangles of the quilts. it also made for a nice switch up with using something loopy like i have on most other music quilts.  i also used this quilt as another practice run for doing machine binding!
so when i said i only had what was in my fabric stash to work with, i really meant it... down to the batting and the backing.  i had to frankenstein some batting scraps together, which was an easy feat since i had done it a few times now with various projects.  but the back... that was a creation all to itself.  i was grabbing yardage of all shapes and sizes to see what i could create to be the right size for this quilt to be on the long arm.  there are at least three different projects these came from, not counting all the times some of these fabric have been used in music quilts.  of course, i had to photograph the back for future generations to admire... or really just for me to high five myself a lot when i'm feeling down.
this quilt ended up getting donated to my former high school's band program (which i'm sure you know by now was where i spent my high school years) and was raffled off at their annual crab feed.  now that i've worked most of the red fabrics out of my stash, now i can get back to the traditional black & white ones for next year's crab feed. maybe i'll even throw some gold in there to make it real fancy!
if i hadn't thrown this quilt top together, not only would i have wasted a final day of long arm renting, but i also wouldn't have met genevieve and gotten in the loop with her and the other quilters for her "cohort" laqca.com where i am lucky enough to rent from now :)
pattern information:
half square triangles, my own layout
quilt count: 117

mira loma musical hearts quilt

finally catching up on another quilt from last summer!
to be fair, it didn't get delivered until the beginning of this year, so at least that isn't too far off... right?
much like the migration music quilt, this one was made with a specific recipient in mind.  my parents met in high school at mira loma, and were very involved in the music program.  their director ted weber went on to begin many music projects they were involved in post high school, including donner mine music camp which were the recipients of the majority of the former music quilts made over the years (see all those here!)  ted fought a valiant fight with leukemia, but passed away in 2017.  i felt like his wife carol was very deserving of a quilt, and after combining a few patterns together, came up with this for her!
i combined the raspberry kiss block (12.5" tutorial by heritage threads) with the pixelated paper heart block from the quilt pattern by my tea & brie to create this sort of "hugs and kisses" pattern.  mira loma high school colors are this bright blue and red, which tied perfectly with the cream sheet music background.
i did have to hunt down a little more of the background fabric, which was an adventure in itself.  it was pretty fun hopping around the local shops in order to find the perfect reds to make the scrappy hearts as well as the raspberry kiss blocks.  i even had some help from a few of my quilt guild members to make the kiss blocks.  there are a few extra in my stash that are waiting to be made in to a second quilt even!
> i used the remaining blues to create a scrappy binding to bring a little more blue in to the quilt.  the backing is a tone on tone red, which framed up well with the blue around it.  additionally, i used a long arm pantograph that was similar to a trebel clef.  it is one of my favorites to quilt, and has looked great on anything i've put it on so far!
i had quite a bit of fun combining these two block patterns in to one and mixing up the reds for these scrappy hearts!  i would absolutely use these patterns again to create quilts in their own (potentially proper use) ways.  the hardest part was probably finding the perfect blues, closely followed by hunting out more of the background fabric.  the quilt was well received, and i'm glad i was able to deliver it myself to her.
pattern information:
raspberry kiss block (12.5" tutorial) - heritage threads
pixelated paper heart block - my tea & brie

quilt count: 116

migration music quilt

so yeah, it has been like a thousand years since i posted a finished quilt on here.
well since april, which feels like yesterday and so long ago all at the same time...
today is the day that starts to change!
my summer was a little crazy.  i went from having 2 projects to 6 all with a specific deadline for each one, which meant less time blogging and more time sewing.  but i procrastinated... but this was actually the first quilt done, which means 5 more are coming soon!  (well one needs binding still... but that is beside the point)
i've done music quilts for the past 5ish years or so (i know i counted them at one point) but since my mom wasn't working for the camp anymore, and was a financial donor to the projects, they just weren't going to happen on my "i have to pay rent now" budget.  BUT, over the past 5ish years or so, there has been one person yearning to win a quilt, yet failing each time, all while making us delicious baked goods.  so this quilt was specifically made for her, complete with a "golden ticket" so that she knew not to allow anyone else to swipe it from her hands.
i found the pattern at a quilt shop that was going out of business (the owners were retiring) and thought it would make a great pattern for this quilt!  in the original pattern, the flying geese are made from HST, but i didn't want a seam running through the middle of each block.  i made each one a rectangle, with the background fabric being black on black treble clefs, as seen in many music quilts gone by.
since previous music quilts have attempted to steer clear of any "school color" involvement (the camp hosted many students from many different schools) i had acquired a lot of music fabric that was set to the side since it didn't quite fit the black/white/gold/silver schemes that happened before.
that said... i LOVE the pops of color in this one!  the red just adds that much more visual interest to the quilt to take it from simple flying geese to a little more excitement.  the piano keys even have stripes of red, as does some of the text on a few gray prints.  well... enough words for now.  on to more photos!
i quilted this using the long arm rental program at meissner's this summer, and used the same loopy motif that i used on one of last year's quilts.  it just worked so well, echoing the idea of a treble clef throughout the quilt.  it was a rough thread breaking sort of day that day, but i got through it!
will it be weird not making music quilts each summer?
sure, as it often takes adjusting when change happens...  buuuuut i'd be lying if i said i didn't already make one from start to almost finish with the scraps from this quilt.  more on that another day!  this quilt was well received by it's "golden ticket" winner, which is one reason why i love to quilt randomly like this... the reactions are the best!
quilt pattern: migration by running doe quilts
total quilt count: 111

musical themed himalayan pink quilt

i bought this pattern back in october when i showed up in colorado to hang out with lisa for a few days and was anxiously awaiting the time to use it.  when i saw what my collection of music fabric was looking like, i decided that i needed to clear out everything i currently had so that i could start fresh for what will come next year.  i sorted things through in to various piles and then came up with this!
unlike previous triangle quilts i have done, this one was a lot more scrappy and that worked perfect for the fabric supply that i had on hand.  also, instead of the triangles pointing upwards, these ones lay sideways which added another fun element to the quilt.
more black, white, gold and cream fabrics as usual, but it was nice to see the supply of these fabrics reaching an end!  some of these have been hanging around since the very start of the music themed quilts for the raffle.  now that they are dwindling down, it was fun to put them together in a sort of collage quilt.
the backing and binding were a leaf print that i found, which seemed very appropriate for a music camp out in the woods.  i kept the quilting simple, following the lines of the triangles to put a frame on the "blocks" in a sense.
time for a photobombing cat break!
as usual, there are those treble clefs! it should just be an i-spy game for them to appear at this point.
i think my favorite ones are the super scrappy triangles like these in this bottom corner.
it was so much fun to see this music fabric "sampler" come together and be complete for this year's music camps.  since this was a first time quilt, that means it will very likely get repeated for next year, and i've already started shopping for fabric in a completely different color scheme!

musical charm (and 10!) squares quilt - version 2.0

it's that time of year again!
i was actually pretty ahead of the game this year making these quilts.  blogging everything seemed to end up a different story... like, i have 4 quilts photographed to blog, 2 more to follow after that.  oops!
anyways, another year with donner mine music camp means another year of music quilts!  since they flipped the weeks this year, high school week happened first so this pattern was the repeat from last year week one.
i love the opportunity to repeat patterns on occasion, because it allows me to recreate them in a completely different way.  this quilt was originally done in all black and white prints.  not a single shade in between.  this year, it was done with some of my left over prints that were in the more ivory, gold and black range.  same pattern, same music theme, different result!
not only did i use different fabrics, but i also was able to quilt it using the long arm at meissner.  i quilted this one and another one in the same day and originally had a different plan for it.  when the woman working in the long arm center that day suggested this pantograph that looked like treble clefs, i knew i had to give it a go.  and you know what?  the curves were not as scary as i had expected!
the binding was a solid black, same as the majority of the backing fabric. i didn't calculate correctly for the extra 8" for longarming and had to piece a chunk in to the backing to make it wide enough. it sure helped get rid of some of my left over pieces!
now that this quilt has been done twice, it is now "retired" from being used for donation quilts. well, at least until i run out of ideas i'm sure!
one thing that is clear is that black on black treble clef print is a LIFESAVER. if joann fabrics ever stops carrying it, i don't know what i'll do!  okay, i'll probably survive... but this has just been so perfect to tie in to the music quilts.
i just gotta end this post with one more up close of that swirly quilting.
love it!

musical amy butler daisy chain 2.0

as mentioned last week, this quilt has "graduated" to week 2 of donner mine music camp this year after being last year's week 1 quilt(see it here).  lisa found this quilt initially years ago, and this will be the 4th time that i've made some variety of this quilt using this style of block.  once as a queen size wedding quilt, once as a baby quilt, and now twice as the size the pattern actually describes.  i hadn't actually looked back at last year's quilt before putting this post together, and wow, what a difference between the two!  just the differences in the border alone make all the difference to show while they are the same quilt, they look totally unique in their own.
i really love doing this quilt pattern, despite how LONG it takes to put the blocks together. pin 48 blocks, sew, iron, repeat a bajillion times. then trimming the blocks all before they can be sewn together. bah!  the fact that the strips are sewn to a foundation piece of fabric is awesome, since it really helps keep things in place.
the last few times i have done this quilt i left out the 5" strips, but for some reason this time i felt obligated to leave a few of them in.  kind of shook things up a little bit, that's for sure.  i also noticed i had a lot of one direction fabrics this time (in particular one with words all over it) so i had to keep more of an eye on which way the fabrics were going when i put the blocks together as a whole.
see? there are those treble clefs again!  i used them a bit within the blocks, but when i forgot to keep one of the fabrics in a big 2 yard chunk for the borders, i had to find whatever joann's had to offer.  and of course, there they were waiting for me at the store :)  i did use one of the music prints for the binding, which really popped.  i had originally planned that the treble clefs would be there, but hey, plans change it seems!
 i am also quite fond of the backing fabric i used.  you can hardly tell the seam runs straight down the middle to make the pieces large enough!  i was pretty proud of myself for getting this done within a week as well, as i spent the sunday of week 1 doing some of the binding in the car on the way to take the camp photo.  multitasking for the win!  (not multitasking by hand sewing and driving though... that sounds all bad)
this one was a little larger than week one's quilt this year, but definitely still a good size.
it seems this idea of doing a quilt raffle each week has been a successful fundraiser for the camp, and i'm excited that i get to keep being part of it.  now maybe next year i'll FINALLY get ahead of the game and not spend the last week of june and beginning of july in crunch time to get these done!  and as fun as it always is to do these, i am excited to take a break from staring at music fabrics for days on end :)