Quilt-a-long, part II

Wow. That's a lot of half-square triangles. . .



In retrospect, I wish I'd bought a roll of Thangles. Oh well, next time :)

Quilt-A-Long!

I'm participating in a quilt-a-long! I'm very excited, since this will give me lots of incentive to quilt, something I've been wanting to work on for a while. My assignment over the weekend is to pick fabrics, which shouldn't be too bad. I just have to decide if I'm going to use stuff from my stash or buy new.

You can see a picture of what the finished pattern will be here.

I may only do 3x3 blocks, and finish it at 71 1/2" square rather than rectangle. That's a good cuddling size right?


Update: Fabrics selected!

The blue hearts is going to be my directional fabric, fussy cut so that the hearts are all facing the right direction. The variety of rich cream and yellow fabric will be the sashing between the blocks. The red-brown batik on the left will be the red borders and the binding, the white-on-white will be my background color, and the various colored fat quarters and bag of scraps behind it will be the half-square triangles and blocks between the sashing. The bag is comprised of scraps from a quilt my aunt made for me and Jeff as a wedding present. The quilt still sits happily and warmly on our bed, and the scraps are slowly being whittled away. With the blue in the focus fabric and the blues in the scraps, I thought this was an ideal project for using up a lot of those little scraps. It also will be great to use up some of the inexpensive fat quarters I' ve picked up over the years. Those fabrics I just LOOVE but have no idea what to do with!

Quilty, very quilty

I'ave also been working steadily on a folded fabric quilt to hang in my office. We have all pretty bare walls, and some color would be good.


Most of the work is done, actually. It's down to the tedium, appliqueing down all of the flower petals. You can see on the right that I have 3 of the 8 flower blocks completely finished (button centers and all). Each block takes approximately 45 minutes to do all the petals plus the 5 buttons. Really at this point it comes down to stamina. I can usually get two done at a sitting, then I need a break.

Fun times behind, fun times ahead!

The birthday party Jeff arranged for me was a blast. It was just what I was wanting; a relaxing evening with my friends. We had a few drinks, ate some tasty grilled ribs, and our friends brought yummy side dishes to go with ribs, and we had some nice snacks to tide us over and go with the beers to drink while we were waiting on the grill. The ribs are Jeff's family tradition at large parties and he did a great job with them. Good times, good friends.


I mentioned earlier, I recently have been bitten by the quilting bug (Thanks, Mom!)

Of course, with birthdays comes the opportunity to purchase treats for myself with some birthday money (Thanks Mom Kass!)

Oddly enough, more than half of this is actually going towards making stuff for someone else, but I still get all the fun of making it! Muhahaha!

First up I got three "charm packs" by Moda. The fabric line this comes from is called Bistro, and it has all sorts of coffee and latte themed things. On anyone can quilt she made a lovely table topper quilt using two of these charm packs. I wanted an extra one just in case, although I'll likely make mine the same size or smaller, to go diagonally on my rectangular coffee table that I don't want to cover up so much as protect and decorate. The swirly brown fabric under the 5"squares is going to be the border, and I'll probably use unbleached muslin for the back. While we were at Joanne's, Mom found some beautiful Debbie Mumm fabric in the discount pile, and when we were at the cutting table, when her lady was done with it, I asked her to place that right on top of the pile my gal was working from! There were only 2.5 yards left, and it only came to like $3.50 for the rest of the bolt. No idea whatsoever what I'll do with it, but with that quantity, I can totally use it for a quilt back.

Next up is fabric that's going to be an ABC-123 quilt for my new nephew. More details on that to come :)Now we come to the red batik fabrics. I have a rather ambitious project in mind for these. I've been facinated with fabric folding, which is a marriage of origami and quilting. There is a pattern in the fabric folding book which consists of some 150 folded roses (with their folded centers) appliqued into place to resemble topiaries teeming with roses. And yes. I want to make this. I'll just start collecting red batiks, cutting squares, folding them, and do it whenever. I'm going to work on the background, the pots and the window at the same time, and applique the roses whenever it suits me. One of those ongoing projects that any progress is fun and fulfilling.

So that's all for now. I have an Amazon Giftcard to spend, and I'm looking at a few more very nice quilt books, or maybe a spinning book!

Title of the blog. . .

Let's see. According to the title of this blog I knit.



Check



And I quilt





Double check




The first is my much-loved Danish Tie shawl. The main reason I haven't posted a picture of it sooner is I'm always wearing it, and I'm terrible at taking a picture of myself!


The second I can't take full credit for. It's a friendship quilt with blocks made by the ladies from my Mom's quilt guild up in Michigan, and finished by Mom. Well, there may have been a little prodding on my part to work on it, but really the work is hers. The only problem is she doesn't care for machine quilting. So I offered to quilt it for her. It turned out great, and only took one long evening to complete. My neck is rather sore, but it's done! Mom's going to put the binding on and do some hand quilting in the two center squares (They're both appliqued). I am, however, contemplating wrapping this and putting it under the tree!



Oh, I would also like to point out the particularly awesome quilt displayer I have. His name is Jeff :-D


The only drawback? Now I want to quilt. . . Anyone know where I could get a few extra hours in a day?

Happy Birthday, SIL!

This is a cute little trivet I made for my SIL for her birthday. It's made from scraps of the coat I made her for Christmas a few years ago.

Older Quilted FO's

So here are a number of items I've made for family members over the years.

The first one is a bag I made for my nephew Ben for his second birthday. Plus, a cute Nemo Fish from the Disney Store



Next is a jacket I made for my sister-in-law, Amanda. I had a lot of fun making this. It is made up of 5 small quilts that were then cut into jacket shape, finished with french seams on the inside and a bias strip of the homespun on the outside. Probably the hardest thing about this one was cutting the quilts after they were made!



This one is a blanket I made for Ben for his first birthday. It has cars on it and he LOVES cars!



It's in the background, but he still loves it! He will put his feet on the colors he's learned. Smart AND cute!



This is a quilted purse I made for my Mom to sell to a Red Hat Friend. It has an origami fabric flower in the center!



The next two are, open and closed, pictures of a quillow I made. It's the log cabin in the center of the first pic.




This one is a pillow I made for my mom and dad as a housewarming present. no, I didn't piece it, but I quilted it!



This is a red, white and black quilt I made for my niece, Ally. (Cute just runs in their family!) Sharply contrasting colors like that help stimulate baby's brain! Hooray for smart nieces and nephews! (note that I used black and white and sharply contrasting colors in the one for Ben, too!)



Finally, I have a sewing machine cover I made for myself. The pattern came from my Mom's stash of patterns




That's all for now. I do have a lot more FO's, but need to get family members to send me pictures. I've not been great about takng pictures of things before sending them off, but hopefully that will be changing!