Mt. Hood | NW Quilted Cat

Hi everyone,

Each month, I love receiving the Sew Sampler box from the Fat Quarter Shop with exclusive patterns and notions. I’ve very behind on making the projects, but I finally completed a cheery and happy mini quilt recently called Bubblegum Kisses by Lori Holt.

This quilt finishes at about 23 1/2″ x 27 1/2″ and uses charm squares plus some background fabric. I started this quilt at a retreat in December 2017, pieced the top, and then set it aside in my to-do quilting pile. Yikes!

I pulled it out last week and found a pretty blue gingham fabric in my stash for the backing.

Here’s my quilt inspector, checking it out before quilting:

Romeo inspects my quilt sandwich

For quilting, I decided to do 1″ piano keys around the border. I also stitched-in-the-ditch around each block. I did a little free-motion meandering in between the blocks. I used Glide thread in Linen for all of the quilting. It is a nice creamy color that blended into the background fabric nicely.

Quilting Bubblegum Kisses

The binding came with the Sew Sampler box, and I love the aqua color! I finished the quilting and binding pretty quickly. I knew that I wanted to take a picture of the quilt outside, and I had a perfect opportunity this past weekend.

We hiked about 9 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail, near Mt. Hood. The temperature was perfect for hiking, about 65 degrees. The clouds played peek-a-boo all day with the mountain, but we lucked out and got terrific views.

There are so many wildflowers in bloom right now along the trail from pink rhododendron to white avalanche lilies to tall bear grass.

Here’s a picture of the finished Bubblegum Kisses mini quilt with some delicate avalanche lilies:

Bubblegum Kisses Quilt with Avalanche Lilies

These little wildflowers are just so pretty!

At our turn around point, we had an amazing view of Mt. Hood. I thought this was the perfect location for a quilt-in-the-wild photo!

Bubblegum Kisses Quilt Along the Pacific Crest Trail and Mt. Hood

What a beautiful location and great hike!

I recommended getting on the Sew Sampler wait list if you’re interested in these fun monthly project boxes! Spots do open up regularly. Now to get more projects finished!

Happy quilting!

~Jen

Hi quilty friends!

I hope that your 2015 is off to a great start! I have a few quilty goals in mind for this year so I hope to add those to a blog post soon.

One goal is to participate in some mini quilt swaps on Instagram. I’m now signed up for 4 this year, and I’ll send the first one out later this week. There is a vibrant quilt community on Instagram, and you can find me there as nwquiltedcat.

The other day as I was driving home from work, some late afternoon sun beams hit Mt. Hood with a striking intensity. The volcano seemed to glow, and I pulled over to take a picture (along with several other people!). Unfortunately, I just had a little point-and-shoot, and the pictures don’t do the scene justice.

Mt. Hood at Evening

I’ve been participating in Bonnie Hunter’s latest mystery called Grand Illusion. She released the final clue last week so I have been working on putting my top together. I went with a smaller quilt center and just a solid aqua border rather than a thin inner yellow border and pieced outer border. I used some of my leftover pieces on the back.

Here’s the quilt flimsy:

Grand Illusion Flimsy

For the backing, I used units that would have gone into the pieced border along with some darker turquoise fabric that I had on hand. While trying to lay it out on the floor, someone jumped on the fabric!

Tiger on Grand Illusion back

After piecing the back, I framed it up on my HQ16 and just quilted an all-over meandering pattern with white Aurifil thread:

Grand Illusion on the HQ16

My Grand Illusion quilt (small version) is now quilted. I need to square it up and bind it. What do you think for binding – aqua or black or something else?