Inspired by Stitched in Color's Flirting the Issue Sew Along, I was excited to quickly whip up a skirt.  The sew along was based on the Flirting the Issue Skirt by Anna Maria Horner, which is a free project download from her (Anna Maria Horner's) website.  I dug through my stash, found the beautiful Anna Maria Horner voile seen above, made a quick trip to the store for some muslin (for the lining) and enough elastic to make that gorgeous waist.  Three supplies, super easy.

The skirt is very easy to make, two rectangles, mine were cut at 19" tall by the width of fabric twice, which ended up being more than twice my waist measurement, so this skirt is very full.  Once the rectangles are sewn, you stitch the outer fabric to the lining and then create four channels for the elastic.  The most time consuming part is threading all the elastic, but I used my car rider line time effectively, then came home and finished it up.  The hem was super quick and the last step, voila, you have a finished beautiful skirt.

Well beautiful on a hanger and not necessarily on me.  It fits, it is the right length, but honestly I think it is too full for my frame.  I don't necessarily think it is horrible on me, and I definitely need to find the perfect shirt to wear with it (which will help a lot,) it just isn't that flattering.  Oh well, lesson learned, next time I will stick with the straight skirt.  But for now I will enjoy the glorious waist band, which is my favorite part and the main reason I decided to make the skirt, oh I love those gathers!  You can see my lining fabric, or inside of my skirt below.

I'm linking up my finished (in about 3 hours) Flirting the Issue skirt with Stitched in Color's linky party!  Rachel did a great job illustrating the steps and talking your through each section making this skirt even easier to put together.  A great project for a beginner!  Thank you Rachel!

Lastly I need to take care of a little business, time for me to post the winner of the Juliana Horner fabric bundle below from Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day!  The Random Number Generator from Random.org chose number 74, which was Beth T.  Congratulations Beth, whom I already contacted, she quickly responded and I already shipped the fabrics to her, enjoy them Beth!  Thanks to all that entered and all my new followers!

Welcome to Marci Girl Designs!  If you are here for the first time from Blogger's Quilt Festival, I would love for you to have a look around.  I am a stay at home mom to two precious boys and I fill all my free time with all forms of sewing, and in the last few years, mostly quilting.  I'm pretty obsessed, but anyways, enough about me, let's talk about this quilt!

This is my Cosmic Burst quilt that was part of two sew alongs that took place a few years ago.  It started with the Cosmic Burst Quilt Along hosted by Distant Pickles and then I chose to use "my precious" fabrics and incorporated the My Precious Quilt Along hosted by Kelby Sews.  Way back in the day when this quilt was started, I worked pretty diligently on it and had the quilt top finished in a semi-timely manner (good for me anyway.)  In typical fashion, once the quilt top was finished, it sat for a long time, probably a year.  Well at the beginning of last year (think last March) I finally basted, quilted and bound it.  I even took pictures back then, but NEVER blogged about it.  I have no idea why I never blogged about it, I ADORE this quilt, it is currently hanging in my living room and I love it, I guess I just never sat down to share this beauty.  Well today is the day and I decided to share it today by participating in the Blogger's Quilt Festival!

I said before that this quilt started with the Cosmic Burst Quilt Along, so the pattern was chosen from the very beginning, I knew what the overall quilt design was based on this awesome pattern that Julie designed.  I still love it today as much as I did when I started this project.  Such a pretty design.  I then had to choose what fabrics I wanted to use to compliment the pattern.  Well I knew I wanted something pretty special, so i chose to cut up my hoarded, precious Heather Ross, Macaroni Love Story that was printed exclusively for Spoonflower.  I created 3 digital mock-ups of fabric placement (I didn't want to mess this thing up) and after debating for a while, chose the one I liked best.  In the end I added in Patty Young, Lush, Running Stitch (the pink and orange dotted stripes) and then framed the whole thing with a background fabric of Alexander Henry Heath (the gray crosshatch,) still one of my all time favorites.

I had to do quite a bit of figuring to get all of the directional prints to fall perfectly, especially those blue and yellow sail boats, that was a mental challenge!  But once the cutting was done, the sewing was fast and before I knew it I had a finished quilt top.  And there it sat forever.  Well in the meantime Heather Ross designed fabric for Hancock Fabric stores, one of the prints was a matching clothespin doll print in gray (which worked out PERFECTLY) and I was able to buy enough yardage for the back of this precious quilt that featured all of these much loved and hoarded fabrics.  So I basted it, and then had to decide on quilting.

I pretty much knew that I would straight line quilt this one, and I wanted to feature the radiance of that center star from which the whole quilt pattern was based.  I started quilting on the diagonal in 1/2" lines from corner to corner and then the opposite direction, this creating the wonderful grid right in the dead center of this quilt, seen below.  I just loved how that turned out.  Oh and I used a nice matching gray quilting thread, to hopefully blend in, but yet be seen just the right amount.

Once the center sections were quilted, I just echoed the quilting in diagonal "triangles" in the top, bottom and sides.  I chose to do this stitching 3/4" apart, hoping it would make the center section stand out, and I think it did exactly what I was intending!  Once the quilting was complete I decided to bind it in the same Alexander Henry Heath, so that the binding would just blend into the background.  The finished quilt measures 40" x 40", I used a cotton batting (don't remember the details) and it is a perfect wall hanging.

I am so happy to have shared this finished quilt today and thanks so much for reading along!  I also wanted to mention that I am fairly new to Instagram, and I would love it if you would follow along with my daily antics, you can find my Instagram account here, marci_girl.

Hello and welcome to Marci Girl Designs, today is Giveaway Day at Sew Mama Sew!  If you are here for the first time from Sew Mama Sew, I'd love for you to stick around and have a look, but if you don't have time, you can just enter to win some fabric, that is cool too! 

Today's giveaway is five fat quarters of Juliana Horner fabric from JoAnn Fabrics!  Are you familiar with Juliana Horner, you know daughter of the great fabric designer Anna Maria Horner?  Well Juliana has designed 3 separate lines for JoAnn Fabrics and the giveaway today is from two of those lines.  You see I was kinda on the fence about the first two lines she designed.  I loved the actual prints, but the colors were far from my style and I just couldn't commit, until line three came out and I knew they were right up my alley!  So I went to my local store, and started digging and ended up picking out my favorite prints, and these favorites are the five featured above.  The first (brown latticework) is from her first line and the other four are from her third.  They all play together nicely, don't you think?

If you would like to win this little collection, all you need to do is this:
1.  Answer this question in the comments:  Are you looking forward to any big blockbuster movie this summer?  If not, any TV show that is starting up this summer that you are looking forward to?
2.  For all my followers, you get a second entry, just leave a second comment, and if you want to become a new follower (hello!,) leave a second comment as well!

Details:
This giveaway is open May 12, 2014 and will close May 16, 2014 at 5 pm PST
The max number of entries you may have is two.
This giveaway is open internationally, as long as you have an address that I can ship to!
The winner will be picked randomly via a Random Number Generator.

Thanks and have fun entering all those giveaways!

Today, I am over at Sew Sweetness with a Jaybird Quilts pattern review as part of the Jaybird Quilts Sew Along.  Above you can see my fabric palette for the quilt that I created, and below you can see a sneak peak of the finished quilt.  Click HERE to read my review of the pattern Lotus by Jaybird Quilts and to see my finished quilt!