Canary Quilts

April 19, 2012
by Carrie Dunn
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Quilting Gallery – ATC Swap!

Last year I participated in a Mug Rug Swap at Quilting Gallery. This swap was sooo much fun, I was assigned a person who had given me their preferences (Americana) and I was to make two mug rugs and send them to her! She didn’t know who she was getting mug rugs from, and I also received two mug rugs from an anonymous person. Once I received my mug rugs, I was so excited and I still use them today!

Quilting Gallery has a new Swap taking place now. It’s called an ATC Swap, ATC stands for Artist Trading Card, and they are 2.5″ x 3.5″! This will be such a fun challenge again on such a small format, and to look at the tutorials of people who have already made some, it looks like such a fun challenge. Continue Reading →

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Logo Fabric Printed at Spoonflower

April 6, 2012 by Carrie Dunn | 0 comments

Canary Quilts Logo Fabric

I wanted to share this great piece of fabric I just purchased from spoonflower! This is one of two logo’s my husband made for me to brand the items that I make.

Spoonflower is a company that allows you to upload your own design and have it printed on a variety of fabrics. I love this service because it lets people be independent fabric designers and show and sell their designs online, and it also lets you personalize any of your projects with a design of your own. Continue Reading →

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March 26, 2012
by Carrie Dunn
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Repeat, A Design Competition at The Printed Bolt

I wanted to bring to your attention a contest that is going on over at “The Printed Bolt” website. They put out a call to anyone who was interested in designing fabric to enter their Repeat: A Design Competition. I found out about this competition after they had already chosen their top ten competitors, but I think it will be a lot of fun to see what the challenges are, and see how all these aspiring fabric designers interpret the challenge.

I find this fun because I think about designing my own fabric and with a graphic designer in my house we are really interested to see what designs come out of this AND how the judges look at each design. All the designers come from different walks of life, some are artists, some are graphic designers, and one is a regular person like me, so I am very interested in watching how this whole challenge and competition plays out. Continue Reading →

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March 24, 2012
by Carrie Dunn
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Baltimore Quilt Complete

Carrie's Baltimore Quilt

The Mary Werner-Stone Baltimore Quilt that have I have been working on is finally totally complete. I became stuck on what to quilt in the border, but when I was browsing some of Karen Machetti’s (Creative Longarm Quilter).. I saw a bamboo pattern she made in an Asian quilt for a customer and love it. I also have bamboo hard wood floors throughout my house, so I had great inspiration and reference!

I machine quilted this on my Janome Horizon machine.. I probably have at least 10 hours in the machine quilting over the course of a few weeks. The machine quilting was probably the most fun I had on this quilt, trying to come up with a pattern for each individual block was very challenging.
Continue Reading →

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March 21, 2012
by Carrie Dunn
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Alexander Henry’s Contigo Tote Of My Own Design

Well, I learned from my last tote that I did and gave it another try. This time this is my own design since I’m not much of a messenger bag person, and the last messenger bag was a little too small for me. I made this tote bigger, and I tapered it to the top so that it would hold my items in it a little better and I put two straps to go over the shoulder on it.

I used black faux leather on this purse which compliments the fabric a little better. I still put a zippered privacy pocket on the inside and I put a medium weight interfacing on the inside fabric to give it some more stiffness on the inside of the purse. I constructed the purse in the same way as the messenger tote and I added a little tequila bottle embellishment to the strap also because I couldn’t get that little detail into either tote. Continue Reading →

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February 23, 2012
by Carrie Dunn
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Alexander Henry Contigo Not-So-Big Messenger Tote with Faux Leather Sides and Strap.

Recently I came across this free Not-So-Big Messenger Tote tutorial over at SewSweetness.com and thought it would be a great little tote to try out with the faux leather I had purchased a couple of months ago. I also had the Alexander Henry Contigo fabric that I have been dying to use too!

Her tutorial is very easy to read and understand and she links over to a site that shows you how to put a zippered pocket in too. I used a thicker fusible interfacing and attached it to the AH Contigo fabric and then used metallic, glitter and decorative threads to give the print some sparkle along with some outline and definition. The thicker interfacing acted like batting and helped give it that quilted look. I fussy cut two different scenes from the fabric and still have quite a bit of fabric left! I used fabric from my stash for the inside of the bag. Continue Reading →

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Full quilt without the quilting in the borders.

February 15, 2012
by Carrie Dunn
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Baltimore Quilt Update 2/15/2012

Full quilt without the quilting in the borders.

I have been spending the last week quilting the Baltimore top I recently finished. Each block is different enough that I didn’t feel that I could do one type of quilting motif throughout, so each block got it’s own quilt motif. The Motif was basically planned around the design of the block and I didn’t do much planning other that to look the block and either outline it, or mimic some type of design element in the block. Continue Reading →

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February 5, 2012
by Carrie Dunn
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Applique’d Baltimore Quilt Update

Full Baltimore Quilt Top

Well, I finally finished the quilt top. Generally, I am happy with my work. I definitely got to practice my blanket stitch, especially around a lot of curves. I used a satin stitch on some of the circles and a modified satin stitch on a few of the circles in the flowers.

The only modification I made to this pattern is the heart block with the heart inside of it.. The pattern had a hand with a heart, and I didn’t like the hand, and I had a heart shape left from the heart block on the left side of the quilt and decided it looked good here. Continue Reading →

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February 2, 2012
by Carrie Dunn
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Applique Baltimore Quilt

I have recently started working on an applique’d baltimore quilt top. The design is by Mary Werner-Stone, and I picked it up at a guild meeting that she was the speaker for the night. I didn’t take one of her classes, but I did pick up one of her patterns. I have a Baltimore Halloween quilt that I have hanging in my hallway and I wanted to replace it with another baltimore quilt that wasn’t season specific! I chose some warm background colors to go with the focal color of “purple/red”, and the picture shows the center block, 28″ x 28″, with the focal fabric. Continue Reading →

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January 28, 2012
by Carrie Dunn
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Yea.. I tried a Mariner’s Compass..

If you read my last post.. I don’t do a lot of piecing. The AQS Mystery Quilt in my last post was piecing without paper, and this Mariner’s Compass was piecing with paper! When I learned paper piecing I really enjoyed it. It is a great way to make points look perfect!

Quarter section of the compass

My first paper piecing was a class with Dan Burke, and then I took a class with Edyta Sytar, so I felt I could do something on my own, and I chose this Mariner’s Compass from a book (A Passion for Piecing) by Claudia Clark Myers. Continue Reading →

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