WIP Wednesday

The nasturtium quilt is coming along.  I have a large pile of finished blocks and a potential layout.  I tried out lots of other layouts, but I think this one is the winner.  This is the BQ3 pattern from Maple Island Quilts.  It's a great pattern because it's so fast to put together but still flexible in the final layout and design.

Linking up at Freshly Pieced for WiP Wednesdays.  Even on the 4th of July!

WIP Wednesday

This is my next quilt.  I have been sitting on this focus fabric for a while, and I finally figured out how to use it.  It's going to be used in a BQ3 pattern with random greens and oranges to complement it.  So I went through my stash and pulled most of my greens and oranges and am ready to go!

Swap blocks

These are some blocks I've been making for a swap I'm in. They're ready to mail off now, so I feel safe posting them.

There are 12 people in the swap, so I should get 12 new tulips in return sometime in Oct. I made 12 red tulips and 1 green on for the hostess of the swap.

It's a fun old-timey block. I can see them set on point with alternating squares of something. Maybe muslin with an intricate quilting pattern in them.

Sneak Peak

A sneak peak of my latest obsession. It's a dark picture, but it will give you the idea.

This is such a fun block to sew. I'm using the great tutorial by Bonnie Hunter over at Quiltville. It's a good feeling to clean out the scrap bucket and use up a bunch of office paper that was also destined for the bin.

Liberated Pie

This was an experiment in no-pattern, liberated piecing. I just started with some fabric that reminded me of strawberry pie filling and went from there. It turned out remarkably well for just an evening of experimenting.



I'm thinking of pairing it with Tonya's teacup and teapot
tutorials and making a small kitchen wallhanging. What more could you want than tea and pie?

Sneak Peek

This is a sneak peek at a project I've been working on all weekend. I needed some handwork to do while I was watching waaaaay too much basketball. So this is my first attempt at needleturn applique. I'm quilting it now, so hopefully it will be finished this week.

Asian UFO

I finished a top to another UFO. This one had been sitting around with the blocks mostly done for about 4 years (or more). For some reason, I was thinking I had a lot more work to do on it. But when I dragged it out of the closet, I realized that it was a lot closer to completion than I thought. So I finished about 20 blocks and then put the top together.



It's done in an Asian theme, so there are lots of black, red, and gold fabrics. It's a large project at 84" x 84". I'm trying to decide how to finish it. I could put a border on it, but I think it's going to be difficult enough to quilt without adding anything more. It's going to be a real challenge to quilt, so I'm going to set it aside for awhile. (Plus, I'm out of batting and waiting for a good sale to buy more.)

My Town BOM (February)

I'm a bit late posting this, but I swear I did it during February. This is the February block from Forever Green Quilt's free BOM.



This was a series of 4 apartment buildings, but I thought they looked more like row houses. So I made them brightly colored like the row houses I remember from San Fransisco. I reversed some of them to give it a bit more variety. This quilt is going to be another scrappy quilt since the blocks are small and well suited for using up scraps. I've almost got the March block finished, so I'll post that soon.

Wonky Letters

Lately, I've been struck by the art of free pieced quilting. I'm a bit fan of the look and style as well as the variety of things you can create by putting words/phrases/letters into a quilt.

This weekend, I sat down and started experimenting. I used Tonya's wonderful tutorial for free pieced letters as well as Brenda's mini-tutorial on how to make the letters more uniform.



I was going to do letters in multiple colors but quickly realized that for a first try, it was much easier to do them all one colors so I could reused units and use a little bit of strip piecing to make it go faster.



You might notice that I didn't do many angles. All letters that could be pieced without them were. Hence, my "m", "w" and a few other letters aren't quite what I'd like. but it was certainly easier that way. In fact only 4 of my letters have angles: "k", "v", "x", and "z". The K and V were easy (and I love how the K turned out!) but the X and Z about killed me. I have a hard time visualizing how seam allowances affect the piecing and ended up ripping several times when I realized the finished letter was going to be about .5 inches wide by the time I got done with it.



All that being said, I really enjoyed this exercise and was extremely chuffed with how they came out. My husband doesn't like them as much as my normal, non-wonky pieced work, but I predicted that. He's a very orderly, likes-things-in-their-place type of guy, so I was not surprised that the wonky letters offended his sensibilities. However, I loved them so much that I just laughed it off. I did a couple of trial layouts with some blocks I have but didn't like it enough to make it into a top. So for now, they are on my design wall (piece of batting draped over my office door).

Houses BOM 1 Complete

Forever Green Quilting has a great free block of the month up. It's called "Come on Over to My House." It's a series of houses with one house per month. I always admire people who are willing to freely share their patterns and ideas and this is a great example of that ethos. Joanna also shares photos from people who have completed each block and it lends a little bit of the "quilt-along" atmosphere. I really enjoy getting to see other people's take on the house and the fabric styles they chose.

I'm usually a bit leery of BOM clubs since I feel like it puts a deadline on my quilting and if there's one thing I don't need, it's stress from my de-stressing activity. But I spent about two hours busting this one out on Saturday. It's a great opportunity to use up some scraps from my overflowing scrap box.

This is a really cute series and I've always loved the "around the town" style of quilts. I've also heard them called "around the neighborhood" or "around the square." Here's a great example of one from Flickr by jbdigiuseppe. So I decided to give this BOM a shot with the hopes of generating quilt that has a similar layout to those. I also enjoy quilts that tell a story too. I'm thinking I'll change some of the blocks slightly to make some of the iconic buildings in a town: the courthouse, a barn, a school, etc. in addition to just houses.