Amish Snowflake block

     Only a month late, but I finished the guild charity block today.  Kristi wrote the tutorial and it was requested that we use black with jewel tones.  

     I am not so comfortable with my jewel tone selection, but I figured that turquoise and the dark blue were jewel tones.  The fuchsia color is similar to the tutorial and I suppose I can find a jewel of similar coloring.  Funny how another person I made a quilt for wanted jewel tones but thought more along the lines of ruby and emerald.  I guess it isn't really funny, just different definitions leaving me with a lack of confidence in my color selection.
     I used American Made Brand solids by Clothworks because that is what I could source locally when I thought better of going to Costco the week before Christmas.  (Costco is only relevant due to proximity of that and the fabric store).

     But hooray for crossing off another unfinished project from the list!

Purple Crazy Crossknot

Nearly a year ago, I took a crazy piecing class from Katie Pedersen of sewkatiedid.  I chose a monochromatic color palette as I had a lot of purples at the time.  It might be my favorite color.  I finished three 12 inch + sections during the class and put them on the design wall where they sat for 10 months.  I did hide them behind some other projects, but I knew they were there.  

     The original plan was for the squares to be diamonds surrounded by a white frame with the shot cotton background.  I was a little uncertain about needing to add triangles to the diamonds to set them in the background fabric.  Not sure why, but I didn't feel like doing that with the shot cotton and having the grains in multiple directions on the quilt.  So, the three diamonds continued to sit and sit and sit.
     But in the last few weeks, I saw Aria Lane's Crossknot  while shopping at Hawthorne Threads and thought that it might work.  Instead of following directions with sizes, I chose to use convenient sizes of the crazy piecing sections.  For the most part, I cut approximately the largest size of section I could with the sections I made and used those instead of the given measurements.  I think I should have cut down the size of the white frames around the blocks by a half inch but I can live with it.

      This quilt screamed that it needed custom quilting rather than get it done quilting, although it was a bit "get it done."  In the shot cotton, I quilted clam shells.  The white sashing has wishbone quilting and the purple sections have swirls.  I could have benefited from marking on the clam shell section as the sizes vary greatly, but so do different ages and species of clams so I really am just being true to the nature of clam shells.  (Yay for biodiversity!)  I tried one section from the top down and the other three sections were starting from the bottom up.  It worked much better that way.

      The backing used up three prints from Basic Grey's Eva line as well as Kona Wisteria and Orchid.  Look, some of the quilting is more visible on the back.  I chose to bind the quilt with the shot cotton and chose not to extend the white sashing into the binding.  This quilt is going to a co-worker when I return to work after the holidays.  Her unsuspecting husband told me over a year ago that her favorite color was purple.  Hopefully she'll like it and he knew what he was talking about..  

Finished size 58 x 70 inches (or so)
Fabrics: many Art Gallery purples, Lizzy House, Tula Pink, Valori Wells, Lavender Shot Cotton (Kaffe), Kona White
Backing:  Eva by Basic Grey, Kona Wisteria and Orchid
Binding: Lavender shot cotton
Quilting: clamshells, wishbones and spirals by me
Finished: 12/29/2014
Began: February 7, 2014

    The hourglass quilt is quilted and the binding is attached.  The binding fairy said she'll bind it next week when she returns.  Only one major guilt inducing work in progress remains, the blue HST quilt.  After changing the rotary blade, I trimmed the HST that were ready and figured out how many I have left to make.  Less than 200 HST.  That shouldn't take long....

     Perhaps I will do a goals for the year post with some specific projects that I'd like to complete.  Or, I will sew and trim blue solid HST to add another quilt to the finished list and not feel guilty about it anymore.  I did clean and sort fabric bins in an attempt to put it all in the locations it belongs.  Haven't sorted the colored scraps into various sizes, but there is always tomorrow or after the HST quilt is done.  Hope you all have a happy new year!

Hourglass quilt top finished

I'm not sure why this quilt top has given me such difficulties.  Determined to get it off the wall and in one complete piece, I set to finishing the component hourglasses the past two days.

     It has been taunting me on the wall for months now.  But finally I have a completed quilt top.  

      So here is how it currently looks.  Quilt holder wasn't very happy and wasn't quite tall enough to get a good shot of the quilt top.  I wish I would have picked a different background when I made the second batch of hourglasses, but I didn't realize that I wouldn't like it as much until I was laying out the completed pieces on the wall today.  The density of the dots just changes the coloring.

     This will now sit until I feel like quilting it.  I have three months until it needs to be completed and I'm currently just happy to have it off the wall and in a semi completed form.  Apparently I couldn't count the number of hourglasses that I needed and ended up with a whole bunch of extras.  After two additions to make the quilt bigger, I decided that it was big enough and would do just fine in the size that it is.

  Hooray for another project off the plate for now.  Just having it sit in quilt top form really does make me feel much better.  Perhaps tomorrow I will just finish it up.

Tree Pants!

During blog perusal this past month, I saw Monica Solorio-Snow's Tree Pants post.  Silly me decided to add another project to the list to finish before Christmas.  Or after.   Or before next Christmas.  With a selection of scrappy reds and greens, I made a set of pants for the tree following the tutorial on Sew Mama Sew.  Instead of making bias binding, I purchased some.  I wish I would have just used all red but for some reason I decided to buy one of each at the store.  The green is mostly in the back of the tree.

 Perhaps now I will finish the other advent calendars for next December.

Warm HST quilt

 Back in June I found out that I would be leading the July guild meeting.  I came up with some stations as standing up and talking for long periods of time is not one of my favorite things to do.  One of the stations involved pre-made HST.  I asked people to design a block using a 4x4 grid, take a picture, and place the squares into a bag.  I assembled the blocks from the pictures (I think just one was not assembled by me).

      As this has been lingering in the background as something in progress that I need to finish, I finished it up this weekend.  Turns out that finding the missing camera battery charger was not necessary for completion because the pictures were on the other camera instead.  Oops.  Part of my delay was not being able to access the pictures on the camera with the dead battery. But now both battery chargers are where they are supposed to be.

      The backing is made up of larger scrap pieces that reasonably coordinate with the front.  Binding was chosen by the 7 year old and is Kona Coral.  I wasn't sure if I would manage to attach the binding before the sun went down but I did manage to do so.  Quilt holder didn't want to go outside in 30 degree weather a second time and actually the lighting in the back room is much better.  Who knew.

     Two designs ended up with two blocks each.  I put them in opposite corners.  I think I could have increased the sashing size from 2.5" to something a little bit bigger to help blocks stand out.  Or, I guess I could have added borders around the outside or used a different color.  It only stands out in the pictures and I didn't notice that in person.  

      I had eight guild members design a block which allowed me to design one.  Instead of doing so myself, I let my oldest have fun with the squares and made her choose.  She chose to copy the block on the floor next to her.

    The block layout chosen by the 7 year old.  She is quite proud of it.  I do have over 150 more squares so perhaps she'll keep making designs and I'll make more blocks until we use up all the prepared HST.  I do like that she also knows that this is going to be donated through Katie's Comforters Guild.  She's starting to ask if it is a hospital quilt that I'm making.

   

Fabrics: Kona White, Charm squares from Color Wheel Charm Swaps
Binding:  Kona Coral
Backing:  Waterfront Park Reflections in Black and Yellow, Dear Stella Naroibi Gray, Orange Dot from RJR
Size:  52 x 52"
Quilted in a meandering stitch by me
Designed by various members of SSMQG

     Another WIP finished and ready to go.  Three more main quilt projects to finish before a fairly clean slate and not a feeling of quilt guilt as I walk past the bins.  The other three projects are Blue HST, Blue hourglasses and the Purple Crazy Pieced quilt (of which I apparently have no picture.  As I looked for pictures I also noticed that there are quite a few projects that I have not posted here.  Oops).  This doesn't manage to include all my intended projects or some of the projects I started cutting for, but just the main ones that are really bothering me that they aren't done and are keeping me from starting on some projects I want to do.