2016 Finishes – Sew Bittersweet Designs

Thank You Notes

7 Comments / 2016 Finishes, Finished Quilts, Innova, Long Arm Quilting, Spike / By Melissa Dunworth

As a parent I am trying to teach my child the value of thank you notes, sometimes though…it is really hard to put your emotions into words. Heck, sometimes I struggle to find the right words to write my blog. This summer my uncle rescued my blog, he sacrificed over a week of his time and was basically my superhero. It isn’t often these days that you come across people who will help you just out of the kindness and goodness of their hearts and I’m so lucky that my Uncle Pat is in my life.

When he was reloading all of my pictures to my blog (and I have A LOT of pictures) he commented on how lovely my quits were. I figured the best way to say thank you would be to make him a quilt. I started searching the internet for inspiration, my aunt and uncle are both into motorcycles, in fact that’s how they met, through their mutual love for motorcycles. I ran across this incredible motorcycle quilt pattern (pattern by QuiltWoman.com) and it just screamed Uncle Pat. He lives in Nevada and he loves motorcycles. Hello southwest motorcycle quilt, where have you been all of his life!

I loaded this quilt onto my frame and went to town custom quilting it. Then I wrote a special sentiment on the binding and shipped it off to my uncle. This is the wall hanging version that finishes at 28″ x 24″ and there are 264 pieces of fabric in it! Can you believe that! As my uncle received this last week, I can now share that it was one of the secret projects that I was working on last month. I’m very happy with how it turned out!

Remember to always say Thank You!

Fireflies Do. Good Stitches Quilt

2 Comments / 2016 Finishes, Charity, Do.Good Stitches, free motion quilting, Innova, Long Arm Quilting, Spike / By Melissa Dunworth

Last month I quilted my last quilt for the Trust Circle of Do. Good Stitches. Don’t worry, I am still part of Do. Good Stitches, but with a wonderful friend, Jessica (@plumpatchwork) I am starting a new circle to benefit military children that have to be hospitalized when a parent is away on deployment or duty assignment. This is a cause extremely close to my heart, as you can imagine and I am excited to get started. Before I could move on with the new group I needed to finish my final quilt for my old circle. This quilt was based on my block tutorial for the Fireflies block. This is the second quilt I have helped make using this block tutorial I love all of the secondary patterns at are created with this block. Check out my first quilt created with the pattern here.

I asked the ladies to use a Kona White background with Aquas and Reds. If you didn’t know, this is one of my favorite color combinations.

Here is a close up of the custom quilting job that I did on it. I love the feathers!

This was a super fun quilt to do and it was so quick too! All quilts should turn out this successfully when made of blocks from 8 different quilters! I know this quilt will bring much joy and love to a child in the foster care system.

What have you been working on? I’ve been prepping two quilts for shows and ordering supplies to get started on the customer quilts I have waiting for me. Don’t forget that I want to quilt for you so please feel free to leave a comment here or email me at any time! Melissa (at) sewbittersweetdesigns (dot) com!

First Day of First Grade!

4 Comments / 2016 Finishes, Clothes, Personal Post / By Melissa Dunworth

Whoever told my Anne that she could grow up…I’m not happy with you! She needs to stay little and mine forever!

Seeing as I’m not going to get my way and she is going to keep growing up into a beautiful little girl, I need to come to terms and celebrate that! Today she started First Grade! I am in shock and yet so proud of her too. She handles everything that is thrown her way with such grace and poise, she is wise beyond her years. Here are our standard back to school photos in the new dress that I made her.

She told me that she wants to be a doctor, and given the amount of time that she has had to spend in hospitals during her short lifespan I think she would be amazing. I know she would be full of empathy for her patients and beyond understanding of nervous parents. That being said…she is six and surely her dreams will change many times between now and when she needs to make tough grown up decisions like what she wants to be when she grows up. Heck I’m 35 and still haven’t quite figured that out!

Dress information – Fabric is House of Hoppington by Violet Craft and the pattern is by Simplicity. It is the same pattern that she picked out last year except this year she wanted the version with the cap sleeves.

And now that school has started, I will be spending quite a number of hours with Spike, we have 5 customer quilts ready and waiting and hopefully will be receiving two more tonight. We plan to burn the school hours together until I get my little girl back! I hope everyone has a very happy Wednesday and I have a few projects to show you in the next several days that I didn’t get to share before I went on vacation last month! So stay tuned!

Do Good Stitches – Wonky Starry Night Quilt

5 Comments / 2016 Finishes, Charity, Do.Good Stitches, Innova, Long Arm Quilting / By Melissa Dunworth

I am so excited to say that I have finished a quilt! This one was assembled with blocks made from the oh so talented ladies of the Do Good Stitches Trust Circle. I asked the ladies to use solid blues and whites to create wonky star blocks and they did such a beautiful job (as always!). This particular quilt has be actually quilted since March…but I really struggle to bind quilts so sadly it languished a bit in my “to bind” pile. I decided this week that it was ridiculous and unfair to everyone who helped make it and got my rear in gear! You may even remember my super angry concentration face (I’m not grumpy, I promise!) in this blog post.

I decided since the entire top was solid that I would use a very nice blue and white print for the binding. I like the fun contrast. This quilt will be donated to a child in the Foster Care System which is the group that Trust Circle sews for.

Have a happy and healthy Monday everyone!

Long Arm Quilting – Stripper Quilt Finish

8 Comments / 2016 Finishes, Innova, Long Arm Quilting, Stripper Quilt / By Melissa Dunworth

Stripper Quilt?!? What has Melissa been doing?

I promise, I have only been quilting, not stripping. 3 years ago I was part of a fun group of quilters who called themselves Stripper Quilters because we each made block strips for each other over the course of a year to make fabulous, fun and scrappy quilts. I pieced my top in January of 2014 and never quilted it because it was 80×80 and that was too big for me to wrestle through my domestic machine. Well now that Spike is here, I have run out of excuses not to finish it! All that’s left is the binding and given how I feel about quilt bindings…well that could take awhile, but at least the quilting is done.

It is really hard to photograph the quilting on the white background, lucky for me the backing is a nice dark blue and the quilting popped beautifully. I did this quilt with a different fill on each row so that I could show customers what different fills would like like and given them ideas for how they might like their quilts done.

The outside border has a nice wishbone motif, I wanted to be able to show lots of different ideas and what might work for different quilts. The second border has continuous feathers that go around the entire quilt. Not bad for my first attempt at feathers if I do say so myself. The first stripper row has my take on Vicki Swirls – which are done by my good friend Vicki from Orchid Owl Quilts.

Row two are my flames. One of my favorite designs so far. I love the gentle echoes and think the design has so much potential for a quilting.

Row three starts with pebbles (pictured above) and then fades into paisley (pictured below) and back to pebbles. Showing how designs can be mixed together for different textural effects.

This row was lots of fun to quilt.

Row four is this fun triangle design, they look like fireworks or starbursts to me. Can’t wait to do this design again! I love angular designs.

Row five is an echo heart design.

I really enjoyed quilting this one, I learned so much on it and even got to FaceTime my Innova rep in Italy when I had issues, talk about amazing customer service! She is on a two month vacation and took time out to help me. Truly awesome people work for Innova.

This summer I will start taking customer quilts and I am so excited about it!

Have a great day!