The First Cut

I have started Asteria.  I laid out my fabrics, and admired them for awhile.

It's always hard for me to make the first cut into beautiful fabrics.  I have calculated the yardage and did the math, and there was PLENTY of math because the pattern is for 12" squares.  The finished quilt would be so HUGE, 106" x 106".  Gahhhhh!  I redesigned the blocks at 75%, so I will be doing a 9" block instead.  My quilt will be 72"-75", depending on how wide I make the final border.  So, time to get started... where's my rotary cutter!?

There are 8 different blocks, some 9" x 9", some 6" x 9", and one is 6" x 6".  I have finished all of the #1 blocks, and all of the #8 blocks.  Here is my progress so far.

  

Looking Good!

Asteria

I am about to start a new quilt, Asteria, which I plan to give to my grandson Drew in November for his birthday.  Long ago, Drew commented that if ever I would make a quilt for him, he would like it to be in burgandy and silver.  I saw the pattern long ago and downloaded it, and then "built" it in EQ7.  I have colored many versions of this, and here is what I **think* is the final version.

It reminds me of a Medieval Coat of Arms, knights of old, a crest on a battle shield, and castles.  Bob thinks it looks more like space ships and stars.  Either way, it's a good quilt for a soon-to-be 13 yr old. 

Most of the fabrics have silver metalics in them, although the burgundy is plain, mottled, with no silver.  The whites and grays all have silver speckles or is patterned with silver.  I extended the eight white "stars" beyond, into the border.    The pattern cuts it off at the inner border but my eye needed those points to be finished somehow!  I always like to see quilts with some design element extending out into the border.  I think this looks really nice.  I'm not sure how I'm going to manage it, but I'll give it a shot.  If worse comes to worse, I'll just have blunt ends to the stars and the quilt can stay inside the borders the way the pattern wants it to be!

 I hope Drew will like it!

Another Pan in the Fire

Now with Isaac's quilt finished, my design wall is empty.  I have any number of gorgeous quilts in the works, and I should work on them, right?  I love all my projects, but the UFO's are piling up!  The only problem is, there are soooo many beautiful quilts out there, and I am a hopeless addict!  I saw a tee shirt today, it said, "I will clean my house today.  Oh, wait, there's some fabric!"  That's EXACTLY me!  But if we just change it a little:  "I will sew on one of my UFO's today.  Oh wait, there's another beautiful quilt!"

And so (really, I couldn't help myself!) I bought it.  It's an "Expert" level quilt, but I think I can rise to the occasion!  It is called "Brilliant Beauty of Joys" and it looks like this"

I promise!  "I WILL NOT BUY ANOTHER QUILT KIT/PATTERN UNTIL I FINISH ALL THE ONES I ALREADY HAVE !!"  This is the LAST time I will do this, I SWEAR!

(What's that sound??  Is it laughing?  HYSTERICAL laughing??)

Birthday Banner

My daughter is having a birthday at the end of the month.  I am leaving on Friday (in 2 days) too visit her and her family (including my brand new grandson, Isaac!)  While I'm there I will give her an early birthday present, this Birthday Skinny to hang on her wall:

      

It's an interactive banner.  Dianne can remove her "Mommy" name badge, and insert one of her family member's names on THEIR birthday.  There's a "To You" badge for a random person, if they ever want to use it too.  I love making these Skinnies, they so much fun.  This one I designed myself.  I had found a Happy Birthday fat quarter and the light bulb went on!  Happy birthday to the most wonderful daughter in the world!

Isaac's Stained Glass Baby Quilt

You know me!  I never have just ONE quilt going at a time!  Besides the Mystery Quilt, I have also been working on a quilt for my new little Grandson, Isaac, not even two weeks old.  Isaac will be getting his new quilt next week.  I've been working on it for a few weeks now, and it is finally finished.  I know that babies like bright colors, and I have heard that black is a good contrast with bright colors for babies (especially yellow and black.)  I've always wanted to make a Stained Glass quilt, but all that edging in black seems tedious, so this baby quilt is just the ticket!  Not tooo big, but big enough to get the stained glass effect.

I had a new panel of dragons, and some dinosaurs left over from a previous project, and I thought they looked good together.  I have plenty of bright colors in my stash, and as I looked through my scraps and stash, I noticed that I also have a lot of polka dots and circle-y fabrics.  So I decided to use those, with the idea of eventually quilting it with my circle template.  A cute theme of Dots and Spots!  Here's the progression of the making of this quilt:

The START!  Laying out the dinos and dragons.  The size of the quilt
was determined by the fact that my dragon panel had 10 dragons on it.
 I used 9 of the ten, making a 3 x 3 quilt of 14" squares.
 The finished quilt will be @ 50" square.

All fabric is cut and placed, sampling borders.  This particular
border seemed too busy for quilt, and I decided to use it as
the binding instead.

Nine finished blocks

With a plain black border to match the sashings, the quilt is pinned.

I made the polka-dotted binding strip is a little wider than usual.
The quilt is FINISHED!

The quilting circles show up better on the back, a soft green flannel.

I can't wait to snuggle up with my grandsons!

Mystery Quilt Goes Together!

I have selected my fabrics, all from my stash, and cut all the pieces for the Mystery (HA!!) Quilt!  I sewed all the blocks, and side panels, and here it is on my design board.

My "Mystery" quilt is in 17 sections, the 9 center blocks, the 4 side panels, and the 4 corner Bear Paw blocks.  For Monday's quilt guild meeting, I will just take my center block and the 8 bear paws.  No one has to know that I have this much done! I'm already labeled as an "overachiever!"   I used 9 of 10 different fabrics, just repeating the pink from the bear paw in the zigzag.  It looks like one continuous border that way.  I will use that taupe colored fabric for the binding.  I am thinking of adding a white-ish outer border, but not sure if I will have enough of that cream from the pinwheel to do it in the same fabric.  I think that would help unify the quilt too, repeating that color, and the taupe on the outer edges of the quilt.  It will also make the quilt slightly larger.  Right now it should finish off at around 62" square.  I like quilts in the 70-80  inch range.  

I'm really pleased with myself.  First of all, for for finding that picture of the original, and secondly for getting this much done in such a short time!  I'm not sure what I will do with this quilt when I am done with it.  That's not really a problem though, just an afterthought!

Secrets Revealed

Well, I have decided to do a little research on this mystery quilt and see if I could find a picture of it online!  I know that's cheating, but everyone has this same opportunity, so if anyone felt as uncomfortable as I do, let them do the research too.

So, where to start...  I noticed in the directions, that the quilt designer was listed (Ann Jones), with a web site, an email address, and the quilt's name, Winter Sunshine.  So armed with that information, I went to Google first but was unable to locate a picture of the quilt.  Next, on to that website.  Still nothing helpful there.  There was, however, a reference on that website to their FaceBook page.  So I went there, and after backtracking a bit (to May of 2014,)   I FOUND IT!!!  I laughed and laughed and thought myself to be quite clever!!  Here's a picture of the original Winter Sunshine!

I'm not overly impressed with the fabric choices this person made.  That stripe in the zigzag is UGLY!  But I see potential in the actual design, and can envision my own quilt now.  I don't need a pattern to make these blocks, I can figure out the measurements myself,  OK!  I'm feeling good about this now!  On with the sewing!