Focus Friday Material Obsession Quilt Book

Material Obsession

I have some reviews in!!! YAY!!! Thanks to those girls who offered and are willing to share their opinion with us all.

First up we have Maggie:

She lives in Western Washington, near seattle

She said she tried to move the cat, but he bit her! so there ya go. what is it with pets and new blankets? funny stuff.

This is the first time I have been a reviewer and it was fun!  I have had a copy of Material Obsession for some time now and had not made any of the projects so this was a good reason to test drive one of the patterns.  I chose Cowboy Baby on page 38.  I am in need of four baby quilts (two sets of twins!) this summer so now I have one down.  At first I thought I would make a repeat of this one but it took me much longer than I had planned and I think I will move to plan B on the next three.  Anyway, I chose “girly” fabrics with bright pinks, purple, green and yellow.  The theme fabric has been aging in my stash for years so I am glad it is finally made up.

 I had to read and re-read the cutting instructions several times before I got the idea of what to do.  I think it would be nice to have the cutting instructions in some sort of a graph.  I made the pinwheels and blocks  with as much chain piecing as possible and once the blocks were done they needed to be squared up.  Mine went to 8 inches.  This is not a step mentioned but I think very important.  If someone is new to quilting they may not know how to do this and a little explanation would be nice.

 I did like about the pattern was how the inner border runs all the way across the side panels and then the top and bottom intersect.  It is not the usual way of adding borders.  Again, the directions were not clear but I could see what they were describing and I will use this on future quilts.

 The backing was another piece of “aged” fabric I found hiding in my stash.  It was the right size and color-purple.  I realized that I had limited thread choices and the nearest place to get thread is 30 minutes away.  So, I used Superior Threads King Tut #921.  It is a variegated thread with colors of the rainbow and I figured it would go with what I had going.  I really like their thread and it shows up nicely on the back.  I quilted it using my Bernina BSR and did a simple, meandering stipple.  It was a quick, easy way to get it quilted and a fun look for the cheery quilt.

 Overall, this is a well written pattern.  The piecing took longer than what I had anticipated and I don’t know that I would do it as a baby quilt again.  I might enlarge the dimensions of the blacks and use it in a lap size.  It would be fun in red, white and blue!

Next Up— Amanda:

Remember Amanda from the One Yard Wonders Book Focus Friday? Wasn't she wonderful then? Check out her darling quilt:

 The border on that book is similar to this one, but I made it smaller so it would fit in with the doll quilt size.

Those triangles are 1.5″! I almost gave up on it to make bigger triangles. All the appliques are hand stitched and it’s also hand quilted.

Material Obsession is a book full of lovely quilt patterns by two quilt shop owners in Australia, Kathy Doughty and Sarah Fielke. Like subtitle stated, it has modern quilts with traditional roots.

The quilt projects are organized in order of difficulty, the ones in the front are simple squares and the ones towards the back involve appliques or small piecings. I love everything they've put into book, beautiful styled photograph of the quilts and a full page picture of the whole quilt. There's also a section about quilting basics if you need a refresher on some techniques.

I have made one intermediate project from the book, Out of the Window quilt. I made a small version of it with only one block instead of the original four blocks. The block involves a lot of hand stitching because everything is appliqued, except for the branch which you pieced beforehand by machine.

The instructions tell you to use needle turn method to sew the appliques. I chose an easier method, the aluminum foil wrap. It's not a fancy name but it works!

First, you make templates for the applique from something firm, template plastic or cardstock. Prepare your fabric by cutting it 1/4" bigger than the template for the seam allowance. Cut some notches into curved areas, no longer than the 1/4" seam allowance. Then take a small piece of aluminum foil about 1" bigger all around than your template, put your fabric on top of that, then your template on top of it all. Fold the foil towards the template so fabric take on the shape of the template. Press firmly on all sides so your fabric will get a nice clean crisp. Unfold the foil and take off the template. Your fabric should be ready for some blind stitching  now.

You could run it quickly through the iron to give it an extra clean finish before doing some hand stitching. Everyone will think that you are very experienced at applique!

Overall, the book is excellent because there's something for everybody. You could progress through the easy projects first if you are a beginner. Or you could do one of the advanced ones if you have some experience with quilting.

Check out Amanda's Blog here.

And last Jackie–

Here is a bit about her…..I'm a school librarian living at the Jersey Shore, married to an Englishman, and enjoying a crafty life. This is where I write about books, crafts, food, travel, and whatever else grabs me.

Here is her quilt:

Okay, here are my thoughts about the pattern:
I loved the Avalon Quilt pattern from Material Obsession, it is great for beginners. The directions and piecing are super straightforward, and it came together pretty quickly for me. I use it as a blanket when I'm lying on the couch, and I get a lot of compliments about it.

The one issue I had with the pattern was that it called for 12 fat quarters to make the 18" color blocks. A lot of my fat quarters were a little smaller than the standard 18" by 22", and the ones that were this size didn't have an 18" edge that was ready to go with no squaring up or trimming. Plus I'm not the neatest cutter on Earth. By the time I evened everything out, I had 17" squares. So I added an extra 1" width to all the sashing pieces when I cut them out to make up for the difference. I don't notice it, and I definitely don't mind it. I never actually measured the finished quilt, but I wouldn't be surprised if mine is (slightly) smaller than Kathy Doughty's 64.5" x 85" quilt. 

More on the quilt Here. Rainbow Quilt Pt. 1, Rainbow Quilt Pt. 2, Rainbow Quilt Pt. 3, The Quilt Is Pinned and My Fabric Came (Rainbow Quilt Pt. 4), Rainbow Quilt Pt. 5, Thursday Things, How to Juggle More Than One Project, Rainbow Quilt Pt. 6, Rainbow Quilt Pt. 7.

To see more of Jackie Click Here for her Blog.

Thanks everyone for sharing your opinions and letting us see your beautiful work and quilts! Love them all.

Because I was such a slacker last week— I still have a few more reviewers out there with some more great info. So, there will be another post on this book….I want to let them all have a say. Don't you?

But, girls—-don't forget.  July will be all about Peanut!!!  She will be traveling around the world in 80 days…..so get making her {I know there has been over 100 downloads on her pattern, so don't pretend you don't know what I am talking about}.  Make her and get her traveling!!!! We want to good stories, photos…

Clickety Click here for the rules

Clickety Click here for the pattern. {it is only $3}

And, can I be honest with you? We're friends aren't we? Well, let me tell you— It's like pulling teeth to get you girls to play along! I know there has been over 150 of you that have downloaded the Round Robin Patterns, just like peanut—yet, noone says anything.  No one shares photos.  Where is everyone? Are you all a bunch of Horders? {just like me?}  You take the pattern–thank you– and then never share what you make from it. Gosh. What do I have to do to get you girls to speak up and share them? 

Let me know would ya?