Friday Finish: Flower Baskets

 Finally! I actually finished this in time for last week's Friday Finish...except for taking the pictures! So, here it is now, a little later than planned.

The quilting on this went pretty well, but I ran into issues with the backing while I was basting it. Turn outs, I didn't line things up properly and I was about an inch short on two sides, but I didn't realize it until I was well into the quilting process. At that point, fixing it wasn't an option (there was no way I was going to seam rip everything I'd already quilted and rebaste the whole thing!), and to make matters worse I didn't have any of the backing fabric left!

The solution was to patch a few strips of fabric that were a decent match, but it looks kind of half-assed. The good thing is that it's on the back, and who cares about that anyway?

Otherwise, this turned out really well, and looking back I'm proud of all the skills I learned while putting the blocks together back in 2015. Applique and y-seams definitely! But I also got a good handle on paper piecing and some other tricky things. It feels good to finally cross this one off the list!

Still working....

I was so close to having this ready to share for my "Friday Finish" last week, but just couldn't pull it off.

It's about 75% done - I did all of the black background in a simple stipple, and now I'm working on embellishing the pieced or appliqued parts a little bit with some additional stitching, just to anchor things a little. It's futzy work with lots of thread changes and stops and starts. Plus, my machine decided to be contrary and I spent almost an hour last night troubleshooting and seam-ripping before finally figuring out what was wrong...which was lint buildup in my machine due to not cleaning it for...well...a very long time.

I'm hoping to finish up the free motion stitching tonight and then put the binding on Wednesday or Thursday. What a beast!

Scrappy Paper-Piecing

While I'm not officially starting to piece anything new, I did have a few old paper-piecing projects hanging around, just waiting for the right scraps to come along.

I haven't worked on my Union Jack blocks in quite awhile, so it was fun to make a couple of those the other night. I can't decide if I should continue with my blue and red color palette, or go wild and start making some in different color combinations. Since I make approx. 6 of these a year, I have plenty of time to figure it out!

My stacks of little string-pieced blocks continue to grow, and after starting to sew them all together a few months back, I think I'm about 2/3 of the way through with these. I'm making an oversized queen bed quilt with these that my roommate has spoken for, and we're both really liking the way this is turning out.

I crank out a bunch of these in a few nights, then I have to wait a month or two until my stock of scrappy strings builds up again before I can make more.

Basting

Once people cleared out of the office a few days, I took over a conference room and did some basting! Remember this beauty from 2015? Time to get her finished!

It's a massive quilt, and after wrestling it through my sewing machine for two hours last night, I'm really regretting my decision to anchor it all with some straight line quilting before getting out my free motion foot and going wild. It's too late now to reverse my decision, so I'll continue the struggle and hopefully it'll pay off in the end.

Obviously, there's no Friday finish this week - this one is definitely a two-week job!

Friday Finish: Spools

It took a bit, but I finally got the hang of quilting the double tear drops! Every here and there, an errant spiral pops up, but overall I really like how this turned out. I think the quilting adds nice texture to it, and I'm happy I went back and made changes to the color scheme, all without having to take anything apart or seam rip! Very clever of me.

The backing is a Tina Given's print that I had just enough of to use for this. Now, it'll be a furious rush to try and finish something else in time for next Friday!