Back to Quilting

I did have a nice little break from quilting for a month or two, but now I'm back at it.  My quilting guild had a quilt show last month and that inspired me to finish some quilts to enter next year.  So I've been busy trying to finish some tops up, at least, and have gotten a few of them done.

The first one I'll show you is one that I posted an Electric Quilt picture of in the design stage.  It was a really enjoyable project and I made it up as I went along.  I pretty much started with the size of a block and then  decided what to do with it as I went along.  I wanted to use some of the beautiful rose fabric that I loved, so some of the blocks are just a piece fabric.  This is what I ended up with.

I am very happy with the way it turned out.  I ended up not doing the pieced borders that I had originally wanted to do, but I found this border fabric at a quilt show and really liked it, so decided to use it instead. I'll probably bind it in green.  I also pieced the back with the leftover fabrics.  I ended up doing 10 inch squares and used up most of the extra fabrics that I didn't want to save for other projects, with some smaller sized pieces and scraps added to the "Fabric for appliqué" bin.  I plan on hand quilting it.

Another quilt that I finished the top of is one that I was inspired to create after helping my friend put together some vintage sunbonnet Sue blocks that her grandmother had made.  I loved the simplicity of the vintage Sunbonnet Sue's as opposed the the more modern version of a Sunbonnet Sue quilt I had made previously.  I did a miniature version of it, however, each block being only 5 inches square.   Now I need to figure out what to do for the back.  I'm trying to not buy more fabric (ya right!), so I think I'll try piecing something, but not sure what yet. 

My latest project is from a pattern by Lori Smith.  I don't purchase many patterns because I enjoy designing my own, but I absolutely love her patterns and just had to have one.  Here's a photo of the pattern.  I did enlarge the blocks a little, and I'm pretty sure I'll do something different for the border, and maybe add some sashing too.  I'm also using civil war reproduction type fabrics.

Here are the first two blocks that I've finished.

I added the little spot of color in the center of this one.  It just needed a little something.

My next project is going to be a quilt for my granddaughter.  I purchased a panel of small Hello Kitty pictures and am in the process of coming up with a design.  The last time I was with her, I was showing her some quilts on Pinterest to see what she liked (she's 4 by the way).  She loved the ones with bright pretty colors, so this one will have lots of bright pretty colors in it.  I plan on piecing it during a quilt retreat in October.

Other than that I only have one other quilt that is in the works.  I was having some trouble with my choice of one of the major fabric colors and had a goodly amount of sashing pieces hand appliquéd and then decided I didn't like the shade of pink I'd used and decided to find a different one.  The problem was that I used just two colors on these sashing pieces, green and pink, but the green stood out more, while the pink faded into the background.  I needed them to be equal in tone, so ended up taking photos of various pink fabrics in my stash next to the green and then changed them to grays in my photo program so I could see only the tone.  I found a solid pink that I think will be perfect.  I had put a lot of time into making these pieces, but I knew I wouldn't be happy with it the way it was, so my perfectionism won out and I decided to redo them.  It shouldn't take too long to unpick them.....

Happy Quilting!

Coloring

I've been doing a lot of coloring lately and wanted to share some of my coloring creations.  In addition to coloring I enjoy designing mandalas to color, so also wanted to make some of those available to others who enjoy coloring.  You should just be able to click the picture to make it full size and then right click it and save to your computer.  You can then print it out from your computer.   Or I suppose you could print it directly from the online picture as well.

First I'll show you some of the ones I've colored.  I've been using gel pens lately and, although you can't do shading like you can with colored pencils, there's something about just filling in the little spaces with the pen that I'm finding quite enjoyable.  Here they are.

Enjoy!

More Quilting Fun!

In my last post, I mentioned sewing this quilt together and not sure about it because of the white next to the white.  Well, I decided to take it apart and put sashing in between and I like it much better.  Now I just have to do the borders.  After giving it much thought, I've decided to do applique borders. I think it will be the best for it and make it really special.  

I was at a quilt retreat last week from Wednesday to Sunday.  My quilting guild has these retreats twice a year.  I went last October and really enjoyed it.  I think I'll probably go to them twice a year.  It's so nice to just quilt my heart out and not have to stop to make dinner or clean or anything.  Meals are provided and we just have to walk over to the dining hall.  I  like to use the time to do borders because there's plenty of space to lay out the quilt and measure and what not.  I just don't have that at home.  So I'll save all my borders for the retreats.  I wanted to make a quilt sandwich, too, but brought the wrong size batting so will have to save that one for next time.

I did add the borders to my primitive quilt and am very happy with it.  Here's a pic.

I agonized over the borders on this one, trying to decide what to do.  Of course I used Electronic quilt for this.  I came across a simple way to make a 3 section 4 square triangle block (one large triangle and 2 small ones), which I used for the triangle border here.  And I learned how to do paper piecing for the corner blocks from fellow guild member at the retreat.  It was my first time doing paper piecing.  I was very happy to get 'er done.  Now I can add it to my pile of "quilt tops to find backing fabric for".  I seem to be getting more of those, as well as "quilt tops to pin/baste for quilting".  I have one that is ready for hand quilting, but I can't seem to get motivated to work on it much.  I'm still learning to hand quilt, though, and I suppose that's part of the problem.

Anyway......I'm still designing and starting new quilts.  Just started working on another one a couple days ago and am having fun with it.  It will be a random size block quilt and I'm sort of designing the blocks as I go along.  I'm using large rose print fabrics as a basis and adding in applique, pieced blocks and lace.  I'm pretty excited about it and really enjoying the process as I work on it.  Here's a sort of mock up from EQ.

Of course the fabrics are totally different, and the blocks are different but this gave me something to start with and I basically used the size and placement of blocks.

In addition to this one, I have 2 more quilts I've started, and plenty more that I want to do.  At least I'll never run out of ideas for new quilts.  I just need to finish the ones I've already started.....

Happy Quilting!

More Quilts

I've been doing a lot of quilting lately.  This is my latest quilt, which I still need to put the borders on.    I started it at a quilt retreat I went to last October.  It's my own design.  I think I want to appliqué the border, but I'm not quite sure yet of just how I want to do it.  I'm also thinking I need some separation between the white blocks.  I was thinking of perhaps a blanket stitch around each one, or maybe I could appliqué some kind of border around them.  I kind of design as I go, so I'm never quite sure how it's going to end up.

This was so much fun to do.  I really enjoy doing hand sewing and this was all hand appliquéd and then I did the blanket stitch around all the girls by hand.  After I got it all done, I kinda felt like I was going through withdrawals with no hand sewing to do.  So I started another quilt with more appliqué to work on.

Here's my next one, which I designed on Electric Quilt.  Today I finished all the blocks that will be appliquéd so I can get started on that.  I did needle turn appliqué on the Sunbonnet quilt, but with this one I'm using freezer paper.  These will be 6 inch blocks so it will be a smallish quilt.