Floral Borders?

I have all the blocks and the rows sewn together for the 2-block quilt.  But now, when I put up the fabric I had planned to use, the darker blue,  I am wondering if the fabric is too "flowery" for a boy's quilt.  The blue color is perfect, a rich royal blue with spots of purple blended in.  Used for the star points, you don't notice the floral pattern too much, the floral design is all cut apart and it looks more like a Nature print as opposed to a floral print. Here is a swatch of the fabric (it looks lighter in this picture):

I have asked a lot of people for their opinions, and it's a mixed review.  Some just point blank said no, it's for a BOY, you don't use florals for a boy!  Some said, Use it, it's fine.  Boys like flowers, and true, some boys do.  But this is for Max, a 12 yr old grandson, Boy through and through! He plays 8th gr. football and he's still in 7th gr. for goodness sake!  Someone said boys don't notice details like that, and another said you can barely make out the flowers, so go ahead, use it!  Gahhh!  How to decide!?

So I auditioned a couple of fabrics.  The medium blue in the 9-patch (on the left), and the dark blue (floral?) in the star points (on the right..)  I have enough fabric to make borders from either.  Here's the audition:

I'm gonna have to think about this some more, but personally, **I** like the darker blue on the right...

Progress

I have been plugging along with Max's Christmas quilt. Bob has been sick this fall, and so I haven't had as much time to sew as I wish.  But the 2-block quilt is very nice  to work on, it's not a complicated quilt, but very pretty, and I find it an easy way to relax after a stressful day.  Here's how it looks up on my design wall so far:

I have all the unit pieces cut out and sewed, now it's just a matter of sewing them into 9-patch blocks.  I have all of the B-blocks done and am now working on the A-blocks.  

2017 Darlington Quilt Show

The Darlington Quilt Show was this weekend.  There were over a hundred entries, I entered Something Blue, Whirligigs, and the Pot Holders.  VERY EXCITED to say that Something Blue won the Viewers' Choice Award, so I have a second award winning quilt! (The Harry Potter quilt won in 2013.)  We had a good turnout for the show, the raffle quilt was won by someone in Darlington so it stays local.  AND  the Author Quilt was also taken off the wall in the Darlington Public Library and put on display in the quilt show as well!  So I'm very pleased with the show this year.

Here are MY entries in the quilt show:

 

 

One thing different about the quilt show this year was that we had a quilt appraiser, Sandy Schweitzer, do a "Quilt Walk", where anyone who was interested could walk with her at a scheduled time through the quilt displays, and she would talk about certain quilts that she thought were outstanding, or interesting, or had something to teach us about "the good, the bad, and the ugly" of random quilts on display.  It was all very interesting, and I learned a lot.  She stopped at both Something Blue and Whirligigs on the Quilt Walk and had a little bit to say about each:

     Something Blue--the "style" is very popular in this day and age, and even though the quilt is beautiful, well-constructed, and is challenging to make, it would probably not raise much money in an auction as it can be purchased at a lower cost in many places. You would probably not get your money's worth, not even to cover the cost of materials in making the quilt, to say nothing of your time and effort.  The market has a glut on these kinds of paper-pieced quilts.

     Whirligigs is a "fun" quilt, but hard on the eyes.  "You cannot look at it for too long" because the colors are so bright and the background black offers too much contrast. (bright against bright).  "There is nowhere for the eyes to rest, so they will tend to drift out of the quilt, perhaps to the wall, or a neighboring quilt."  You want to have good contrast, but also something that will bring the eyes INTO the quilt, not out of it,  

Also, neither of these quilts have labels. (bad!)  

That's ok, I still like my quilts!  :)

Pot Holders

Now that I have finished the Something Blue, and the Fan Quilt is still on the design wall, I decided to do a fun little project before I jump into the heavy duty quilting projects again.  I saw this really cute "beer" fabric at Heidi's quilt shop and couldn't resist.  I've been thinking about pot holders as potential Christmas gifts, and the beer fabric would be perfect for the men chefs in my family!

I've never made pot holders before, but Heidi was helpful in telling me what I might need.  Only thing I didn't have was "Insul-brite," which is the heat reflective material that is used inside the pot holder to protect your hands from the heat.

Heidi didn't have this particular kind, but something similar on a bolt, so I bought a yard of it and some beer fabric, and came home to play!  Little projects like this are fun because they finish up quickly, and are easy to do.  And you have a quick gift.  The only tricky part was making a loop with the binding.  I'm sure there must be a simpler way than how I did it, but I am satisfied.

The pot holders have 4 layers:  the backing, the batting, the Insul-bright, and the top which can be a pieced block. (This would be a good way to use up orphan blocks.)  I started my potholders with 10" squares and after all was said and done and trimmed, they ended up just slightly larger than 9".

Here they are, 4 so far.  I will be giving these in pairs, so  I have 2 gifts done for Xmas!  (SHHHHH!  Don't tell!)

HST's

Working on Max's quilt, I have all the fabrics cut, and have been sewing the HST's.  I've been chain piecing these, and it goes pretty fast. I'm not a fan of chain piecing, generally, but in this case, since so many of the patches are the same, it works just fine.  I usually like to build and sew one block at a time.  It seems like I am making progress faster that way.  It's probably faster with chain piecing though.  Here are all the gray/white HST, getting squared up and trimmed to size.

Let me say one thing about making HST's.  The standard formula of  starting squares for HST's  is "finished size + 7/8".  I'm not overly concerned about wasting fabric with an extra 1/8" of an inch, so I use the formula "finished size + 1 inch."   I've tried it both ways.  That extra 1/8" in MY formula (finished size + 1 inch), gives you enough wiggle room to have a little "trim space" on all 4 sides.  You end up with a perfect HST.  AND it's easier to measure and cut! The "finished size + 7/8" formula is pretty exacting, and can leave you with a less than perfect HST.  There's no room for error.  Some people make them this way and don't trim them. Just use them however they turn out.  Much faster to skip the trimming step, but unless your quarter inch seams are perfect, and your cutting is exact, do yourself a favor and go the extra mile... I mean, 1/8"--- you'll be glad you did!

Max's Two-block Quilt

Now that Something Blue is finished, I am jumping in with Max's Christmas Quilt.  I have chosen a two-block quilt, which when combined, forms a secondary pattern.

Last Christmas, after Aidan received his quilt, there was a general discussion on who should get the next Christmas quilt.  Max and Landon are the two McGuire grandkids that don't yet have a quilt from me yet.  After the discussion, I asked Max what was his favorite colors.  Max said Blue and Maroon.  I asked what color was "maroon" (it can range in a lot of variations from cranberry to purple), and Max said it was a dark purple.  Ok, I can deal with those colors.  A little later on, Max came up to me and said he really would like "blue and maroon 'underwear'" for Christmas next year. (A private joke there, involving the colors in Aidan's quilt.  He wanted to know why I wanted to know his favorite colors, and I said so I would know what color "underwear" to buy him for Christmas.  He DID get red and blue underwear, that was the joke, but also a red and blue quilt...)

Ok, so back to the 2-block quilt.  These are the two blocks:

 

Light blue, dark blue, Very dark blue, purple, gray and white.  They combine into a quilt that looks something like this:

It's not a complicated quilt, only 2 blocks, and both blocks are 9-patches, one has V-blocks, one has HST's. I DID add an extra "row" to the top and bottom, to help round out the circley-parts.  I think I may also add that same kid of a row to the sides. That way, all the blue stars will have all four points on them. Notice how the side stars run into the purple inner border, and are missing that last point?  This would add 6 inches to the width of the quilt.

I've been cutting fabrics, I have all the fabric I need already in my stash.  That's really nice!  I won't have to buy any fabric.  I might even have a piece of backing fabric that will work.  Gotta check on how big it is though.  This quilt will wind up being around 76" x 91."  Or 82 x 91 if I add on the extra "rows" to the left and the right of the quilt.)  A good size for a 13-yr old.

Something Blue is Finished

Today I cut the final thread of the Something Blue quilt!!  Officially finished, measuring @ 85" x 85.  It took me 7 1/2 months to do.  And what a finish it is!  This quilt  is beautiful on BOTH sides!  It almost looks like a "whole cloth" quilt on the back, with all the quilting.  I am so happy with this quilt.  The binding went on perfectly.  I wasn't sure how this would work because I cut rounded corners, and then needed bias-cut binding strips for them.  It went so well that I will probably only use rounded corners on my quilts in the future!  No mitered corners to worry about with all their thickness and  touch-ups!

Here it is, front and back: