Colorwheels

My Smithereens quilt project has left me with lots of scraps, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to start working on another quilt I've wanted to make for awhile!

These are paper pieced color wheels, and they'll get sewn together in groups of four to form a whole circle. This is a great project to work on in tandem with the fiddly Smithereens quilt because when I get sick of that one I just reach for a few scraps and sew a few wheel pieces onto paper. Since they both use the same fabric, it's no big deal and I stay engaged with both projects.

Smithereens: Slow but Sure

I got all my diamonds sewn together and pressed carefully open and started sewing the rows together. This is a slow process. It's hard to get all the seams matched up with the weird angles, and the pattern itself can be a little hard to follow.

I'm marking off each row with a sharpie so I can keep track of what I've done and where I'm at. So far it's going OK, but can you see where it might be confusing? Sheesh

Half my seams match and the other half...not so much. But I'm getting better as I go, and carefully pinning everything is also helping.

Actually, one more basket!

Remember, I thought I was done with the applique flower baskets for my Craftsy Block of the Month? When I reviewed the pattern (always a good idea!) I discovered I actually had one more to do, the one that goes smack dab in the middle of the quilt. This caused lots of moaning and groaning on my part, but I was in practice from finishing up the last two, so it didn't take me long to finish up the last one. The REAL last one.

I still have to actually sew everything down because right now it's all just held together with some glue, but that's good stuff to work on whilst watching trashy TV, which is totally the plan for this weekend!

New Project: Smithereens

With the berries and the mystery quilt finished up, and progress being made on the ancient Block of the Month baskets, it's time to start something new and exciting.

I've been wanting to get back to working with some bright saturated solids after my foray into prints, and a design called "Smithereens" grabbed my eye awhile ago. This quilt is made up of these crazy angled triangles, sewn together into random patterns.

I think it will be striking, but man - these things are tricky to cut, since they're such a weird angle. There are 42 colors I'm using, and keeping everything organized and labeled will be a challenge.

Back to the Baskets

I haven't worked on my Craftsy 2015 Block of the Month project since last spring! I got bogged down in all the teeny tiny applique pieces and took a break, which ended up being a year-long hiatus. I still love this quilt though and really want to finish it, so I took it out the other day and finished up the final two applique baskets. I still need to stitch the whole business down, but that's the easy part!

I feel re energized for this project now that I know the worst is behind me. The rest of the baskets are paper-pieced, and that's also kind of fiddly, but fun. Overall, I'm about 1/2 way done with this now. It WILL get finished!

En Provence: Final Borders

Now that my detour into the berry patch is over, it's back to regularly scheduled programming. I finally finished up adding the borders to the En Provence mystery quilt.

The first border was made up of the neutral four patch blocks and some of the triangles to finish out the stars, and the second and final border was just neutral four patches. For some reason I'd miscounted when I first made these back in November, and I was short about 15 blocks. I got out my trusty neutrals again and made one last batch of them - phew. Glad those are finally over!

This was a fun project, and overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, considering that all my fabrics were picked before I knew how any of it would be sewn together or how they would be placed. If I had to do it over I'd pick purples with greater contrast so my lights and darks would stand out more, but all in all I'm happy.

Juicy Berries

I went to town over the weekend and finished up all my berry blocks. I decided to stagger them by sewing a white strip of fabric on the bottom of half the blocks and the top of the other half and then alternating them in the rows. I also experimented with adding sashing strips in between each block but decided that was too much white, and I don't like lots of white in quilts.

So that left me with a fairly small quilt, too small even for a baby quilt and I didn't want to make more berry blocks - I love them, but am ready to be done. The answer: Borders!

I added a white border, just to even out the blocks that didn't have any white on top, and then I added a narrow pink border for a little visual interest, and finally a big thick green leafy border.

I'm really pleased with how this turned out - those berries are so darn cute with all the different shades of pink, and now with all the borders it's a nice sized baby or lap quilt.

Stems and Leaves

I've been slowly working on getting the stems and leaves on all my strawberry blocks - slowly, because each of these blocks has 35 pieces, and it just takes awhile to get it all together!

I think these are the cutest things though, and once they're finished up I have to figure out how to put them together into a quilt top. I'm thinking staggering them, and adding narrow white sashing in between, and maybe some cornerstones and a type of border...but obviously details still need to be hammered out.

Strawberry Blocks

I'm almost finished putting the En Provence mystery top together - just one more border! But as you know I tend to get distracted with shiny new quilting projects, and when I saw these berry blocks on instagram I knew I had drop everything to make some for myself.

My bin full of pink scraps was also too full to shut, so really, these blocks NEED to be made! It's like a public service or something.

These are only partially finished blocks - they'll all get green stems and leaves and will look much more like berries then instead of pink blobs. But I love the bright warm colors during this grey time of year here in MN.

Also, did you notice my sort of new design wall...err door? I taped batting up on the back of the closet door. It's much smaller than my old one, and it's ugly, but it'll work for now until I figure something else out.