Songbook: Fingerprints of God Quilt

 A few years ago I made this quilt for a friend's daughter as she headed off to college

She likes a Boho look so that was my excuse to buy Stephanie Sliwinski's  Songbook collection. I love Stephanie's tea towels and she showed her 1st fabric collection for Moda before it was available. I eagerly awaited for it to be released and I loved it so much that I bought a 1/2 yard bundle.

And when she came out with her sophomore collection, A New Page, I bought a fat quarter bundle. I don't have any empty bins so it sat on a shelf where I looked at it every time I walked into my sewing room and dreamed of making something. 

I am planning a quilt using the little panels at some point, but there's enough fabric for multiple projects and this quilt demanded to be made first

 

I love the scrappiness of this pattern from Erica of Kitchen Table Quilting - the triangles create such a fun movement across the quilt and I enjoyed making this so much that I'm planning another one. Here's a link to the pattern: The Cleo Quilt

Erica is the mastermind behind the Plaidish Quilt that has been so popular (it's on my list to make too). She's got a lot of great patterns in her arsenal.  

But  this Cleo pattern, was at the head of the pack so in September of last year I figured I'd try a few blocks and see if I was on the right path

                                          

Yes please! 

                                

Even trimming the blocks didn't feel like a chore

I never even really laid out the blocks when I pieced the top. I just tried to not have the same fabrics touching. I just let everything fall where it landed and I'm so pleased with the result. If you like to move blocks around, this one may make you crazy because once you start, you may be moving blocks forever, but for me, the joy is in the scrappiness that results when you just sew. Our girl happened to be home when I was in the process of piecing the top and she promptly claimed it. She's going to have quilts coming out of her ears, but that's not a bad thing. And that also means I get to make another one since this one will be living with her. 😉 Edited to add that I am making another...for me! 😂

I found this 108" print for the back

                                        

 and used this rust print from the line for the binding

Sandy used a quilting design called Chantilly Lace that compliments the fabrics perfectly.

At 71 x 82, it's just the right size for couch snuggles. I'm calling it Fingerprints of God, after a Stephen Curtis Chapman song that I have loved ever since he released it over 20 years ago. I don't listen to music when I sew but, the lyrics just kept replaying in my head as I worked on this.

I am just delighted with the finished quilt

Oh, these colors and prints and design are just so good together! 

A Sewing Day

 On Saturday, DH left at 5 to help his dad and a friend of his dad's work a handful of cows. I got up at 4 to fix him breakfast and then contemplated what to do with an entire day to myself. I had cleaned the chicken coop a few days earlier, mowed on Friday, washed all the laundry, cleaned my floors...looks like I had a day to sew! I still had to make a concerted effort to get into my sewing room because I always feel like I ought to be doing something else...my windows REALLY need to be washed, but I talked myself out of that. 😉

A sewing day it is! I began by sorting a few piles in order to make room for more piles when I picked up my Songbook stack of fabrics. 

I made this quilt with it 2 years ago for a friend's daughter who was embarking on her college adventure

And I've been wanting to make something else with it ever since. I had cut out the panels back then and I have an idea for a scrappy quilt, but I'll need to border them to make them all 6x8 and I wasn't ready to tackle that.

I also had a FQ pack of her second collection Songbook: A New Page so I spent some time pressing all of those. This text print is my favorite

I'd love to have some yardage of it. I had a hard time finding any, but finally tracked some down so this print will probably be in every quilt from now on. LOL. Then I cut a huge stack of squares from both collections and starched them in preparation for making this quilt by Kitchen Table Quilting

She also had a great free pattern for a Plaid-ish quilt that has been calling my name for some time.

I love the scrappiness of this quilt - I guess it's more of a controlled scrappiness since I'm using a couple of different collections instead of scraps, but I happily stitched the day away while listening to Jimmy Buffet. I'm a huge fan and was so sad to hear of his passing. In fact, 2 days before, I had started a post about my 3rd blue green quilt (still in progress) and I have been calling it my Meet Me in Margaritaville Quilt. I thought it needed a parrot in it and had gone in search of parrot fabric. LOL 

And yes, I realize that listening to Jimmy Buffet's songbook while sewing with a Songbook of hymns is a study in contrast. Let's not analyze that too closely. 😎

My day of stitching and pressing and trimming yielded a nice stack of blocks that'll be a good start, but I've got a lot of trimming ahead of me

Yes, I think this is going to work

I can already tell that it would be easy to spend A LOT of time moving blocks around, but I'm not even going to go there. Making quilts brings me joy and fussing over placement is counterproductive to that for me so everything is just going to sit where it lands. I'm off to cut more squares because I'm going to want to make this bigger. 😉

Songbook Quilt Finish

 It's not often that I begin a quilt and finish it the same year, much less the same month, but I pieced this a few weeks ago using fabric from the Songbook collection

 And this pattern

 I shared it with ya'll a few posts ago here:

Songbook

And I handed it off to Jackie on a Monday. I have a few others waiting in the wings, but I asked her to move this one to the top and she called a week ago Sunday to let me know it was ready:

I love the fun quilting design her daughter, Sandy, used - it shows up beautifully on the gray Minky I used on the back:

I bound it in this burnt orange from the line because it's one of Brooke's favorite colors - I teased her and told her she was going to the wrong school because their colors are red and black. 😉

I don't usually stitch binding during the day, but I spent some extra time working on it during the week:

And yes, I am watching an Aurora Teagarden movie on Hallmark. That series is one of my guilty pleasures.

I really like the addition of the pieced border:

I loved these fun prints and am looking forward to making another quilt...or two!

The colors practically glowed in the setting sun

The quilt is 60"x72" and I was able to hand it off to the new college girl when she drove by the ranch on Saturday. 

Songbook

 A few years ago a company called Fancy That Design House came across my radar. I am a big fan of her flour sack / tea towels. They are a little pricy, but I love a large, good quality flour sack towel in the kitchen...add a little Scripture and I will splurge and these are worth it. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen and these are by far my favorite kitchen towel. 

Then she announced her first fabric collection for Moda: Songbook...and the wait was on. Here's the fun panel that's the foundation for the name of the collection. There are 4 of each per panel:

I was finally notified that it was available a few days ago and I ordered a half-yard bundle that very same day. There is a quilt for me in there somewhere

 but I also need to make a quilt for a friends' daughter who is headed off to college. She likes a Boho feel and I think this collection will be perfect. After lots of pattern browsing online, I settled on this design. I've had this pattern for a long time and I'm glad I finally found the project/fabric/pattern combination that works for this:

It uses a Layer Cake, which I didn't have and it took longer to press and cut squares from my 1/2 yard bundle than it did to sew the top, but I loved lingering over these beautiful prints:

College starts soon so I needed to jump on this ASAP. I received the fabric on Thursday, cut the squares on Friday, made the blocks on Saturday, pieced the top on Sunday:

It still needs borders - of which the top and bottom are pieced, and as I'm working on those, I'm dreaming of another quilt: