Basting

I've gone through all the quilts that are small enough for me to baste at home, so I stayed later after work last night to get some of my bigger quilts basted on the conference tables here.

I only have enough pins to do 2 large quilts at a time, so I'm starting with the Snapshots quilt, because it's so cute and I want it finished, and also the Arrows quilt, which I made years ago and just needs to be done!

Colorwheels

I'm halfway though my Quilt Finishing initiative, and as promised I have not started any new projects until I finish three more quilts. Of course, I have plenty of unfinished projects laying around, so I've been pulling a few of those out when I need a break from free-motion quilting.

I started working on these paper-pieced color wheels back in February, but ran out of solid colored scraps. Since then I've worked on quite a few projects using solids, so my scrap bin was replenished and I could finish up these wheels.

There are 16 blocks in the quilt, and each block has 4 wheel quadrants. I don't mind doing curved piecing, but it is quite a bit slower than zipping through my normal straight seams. I'm about half way through with these blocks, and expect I'll have this finished up by the end of the week.

Friday Finish: Hedge Maze

I actually started quilting this awhile back, sometime in April or May, but set it aside when I got distracted by other shiny objects. It only needed another 2 hours of work on it, so I buckled down on Sunday afternoon and finally finished it up.

The quilting design is what I call "Spiky Swirls", but my swirly quilting is a little different each time I do it, and I was worried that my April version wouldn't be the same as my August version, but I think it's OK and you can't really tell any difference.

This was an easy sew - it's just large half-square triangles arranged in a cool maze pattern. This is all Kaffe Fassett material, and I just love his designs! The big, blowsy flowers, the crazy stripes, the wild color combinations...it's so much fun to work with.


The backing is a Jennifer Paganelli print I got at SR Harris. It doesn't really match the front, but I think it works just fine.

Friday Finish: Good Fortune

With all my fancy-pants quilting, this one took me awhile to finish, considering its small size. I finally snipped the last thread last night, just in time for my Friday finish!

I'm pleased with how the quilting turned out, but honestly I think I'd be just as happy with one of my all-over utilitarian designs I usually do. Oh well - it's good for me to try new things now and then!

One thing I'm cranky about is that it was impossible for my machine to quilt over all the seam joins - remember how thick these were? 16 layers of fabric! I broke two needles trying, and finally just gave up and sort of quilted around them, so now there are these strange humps in the middle of every block. I don't think it looks too bad, but it feels strange to have big lumps in a quilt. I'm hoping washing it will soften it up a bit.

The backing is the last of a Riley Blake print that I've used on a few other quilts, and the binding is leftover fabric from the front. 

Friday Finish: Strawberry Fields

No underripe tasteless strawberries here! I just love these bright juicy morsels, and the fact that I made these completely from bits of scraps makes me extra happy.

These blocks were a lot of work with all the pieces in each one, but the quilting hardly took me any time - those figure 8's are super quick and easy, and I like that they blend in nicely and aren't too obtrusive.

The backing is more of the green leafy print from the large border, and also a strip of a bright pink floral with birds I've had for awhile. I figured it was in keeping with the pink theme, and birds like berries, right? The binding is the same pink print as the narrow border on the front, and it's machine finished for extra durability.

This finished out to be a large baby/nice sized lap quilt. It doesn't have a home yet, so it's going in the quilt closet for now, and maybe I'll post it on my Etsy shop later.

I'm Back!

The week at the cabin was lots of fun and very relaxing. There was lots of this:

And reading these:

There was also napping, swimming, making of homemade ice cream, and eating other delecious things. It was a very nice week.

Now that I'm back in the swing of things, I've started working on the quilting - remember the whole six quilts finished thing? I'm almost done with two of them! Granted, I started with 2 small ones, but still.

Strawberry Fields got quilted with my loopy figure 8's - fast and fun.

The Good Fortune quilt is getting a bit more special treatment. I hardly ever do custom quilting on my quilts - it's fiddly and time consuming, and I'm not into that. But there's a lot of negative space on this quilt, and I just felt like it might be a good chance for me to practice my quilting and get me out of my comfort zone a little. So here goes:

Figure 8's on the print blocks

Swirly scallops on the background 

Some pebbles going across the triangle, and then some straight lines

This is all very tricky for me, and I'm glad this quilt has only 9 blocks, because each one takes me a bit of time, and I'm going through thread like it's going out of style. I think I should be able to finish this up over the weekend. Four more to go!