On the design wall

For my niece from a fat quarter bundle of Texas A&M and coordinating fabrics ordered online. The challenge is making it all work with a limited amount of fabric ... and getting it done before she graduates. Her sophomore year will end soon.

Back to blogging

The whole point of this blog for me is to record my quilting activities and sometimes other things so I can remember when I did them. The last three and a half months were an unintentional blog break. It's not that I haven't been sewing, but that I haven't been inclined to spend time on the computer (or life keeps you from it). Before I forget what I've done lately, I'm back to blogging.


Transformer Stars, 76 x 81 inches, original design by me.

Transformer Stars came back from my longarmer, was bound and mailed to my nephew. I've already gotten a cute thank you card from him, and I hear that he really does like it. Thank heavens. I was afraid that it took me so long he may have lost interest in Transformers before he got the quilt.

Detail of quilting by Maggi Honeyman.

Maggi Honeyman quilted an all-over star pattern that is exactly what this quilt needed.


Back of Transformer Stars.

One of these blocks is not like the other

Three more of these blocks. Although that dark green one is both my and my husband's favorite, the fabrics in it have a completely different feel from the others. Seems the biggest pieces in my scrap bin are brights. 

I was trying to fix the color on the first pic (fail) and accidentally turned it black and white. You really get a sense of value. That dark green block doesn't match the others in value either.It may need a project of its own.

Weather forecast is -15F / -26C with windchill. Guess who's staying inside and sewing today. Maybe I'll do some laundry.

Playing around

I couldn't quite squeeze the scraps from this quilt and a stash re-org into my scrap bin so I used them in my version of Victoria's block from this tutorial. This might become something more than a couple orphan blocks. We'll see. In the meantime, I've made a couple more millennium blocks and some units for this oldie and some binding. Anything to avoid making the backs I should be making for this and this and this and. ...  

Next up?

This might be the next project. It's a UFO from 1999. I remember the year only because this was to be my millennium quilt. My guild at the time exchanged 2 1/2-inch squares so that we could get 2,000 squares for our quilt. I spent hours sorting the squares by color and value and trying to weed out all the duplicates (and squares so poorly cut they couldn't be used).

I have about a third of the blocks I need. And I found my drawings and notes about what I had planned. I need 40 squares across and 50 down to get 2,000, which will require a few rows of squares running down between the blocks and squares running around the outside.

I pieced one more block this week, and realized why this project hadn't gotten far. Kind of boring piecing, and those squares aren't all that square. Makes me wonder how badly I cut the ones I exchanged. At least I can see definite improvement in my sewing skills in the last 13 years! Wonder if I finish this if a quilt historian one day will think it was made by two different quilters.

Couldn't wait

Doll quilt, 19.5 x 26 inches.

I was loving Lori's quilt-along so much that I couldn't wait for her next step, and now my little top is done. I'm so pleased with it.

I see she has posted step 3 and is promising quilting suggestions next, which will be great because I think I might hand quilt this one. (And just ignore the other little wall hangings that haven't had a stitch put in them for years.)

Thanks, Lori!

Switching gears

Triangle Love, 69 x 84

Top is done. The pattern is Chopsticks, which I changed a bit by using a single fabric where she has multiple fabrics and using multiple colors where she has a solid. I wanted to highlight that Marcia Derse fabric that is fabulous in person but does not photograph well. My version also has a different number of blocks and rows than the pattern.

And when I was almost done putting it together I thought, "I should have oriented the rows up and down." Maybe next time.

Then I completely switched gears in terms of scale and color and started Lori's doll-quilt quilt-along Pink Lemonade. I'm working on Part 2 (the half blocks). This is such a fun project. I'm going back to it right now and put off making the binding and backing for the triangle quilt!