Quilt 47: Peek-a-Boo - DONE!

Last week I told you about the "Peek-a-Boo" charm squares baby quilt.  As I expected, it quilted up in a FLASH!

Here it is - draped over the stairwell rail.

I just love the bright, cheery colours.

For the backing, I opted to go with a lime-green cotton - it works just fine with the royal blue binding:

And so another quilt joins the stack intended for Inspirational Quilts!

Next week - it'll be "deja vu - all over again", because I'm finishing up a second "Tulips" quilt, just like Quilt 46 which I showed you a couple of weeks ago.

Quilt 47: Peek-A-Boo!

More charm squares!  I picked up 3 packages of these at the Gail B. sale back in August.

I adore charm squares - they whip up into something nice so very fast! The only problem with them is that they are cut with pinking cutter (which gives the zig-zag edges you see here). It stops ravelling, of course, but you get a boatload of little bits and pieces of tiny fluffs (as you can see below in the lower left on the green print). Those little linty bits just about drive me out of my mind - the get on everything.

(as always, click any picture on this page to view a larger image)

There's more than enough squares in 3 packs to do 2 quilts. So I opened all 3 packs and sorted through to see what I had in the way of prints. After playing around a bit, I realized that I could pull out most of the lavender and pink ones and use those for a girly quilt. What was left behind would be OK for either a boy or a girl.

I opted to do the more gender-neutral one first - and here's the squares all arranged (it takes a bit of time to decide how to pair up the squares). Once I came up with the arrangement you see below, I just pinned each of the stacks together - then put 1 extra pin in the top of the leftmost row, 2 pins in the top of the next row, 3 pins in the third row, and so on. That way I can tell the order of the rows as I stitch the blocks together - all I have to do is count the pins at the top!

And here we are - all the blocks together.

I added three borders - and am REALLY happy with how the yellow/green/blue pulls out the colours from the center blocks.

Here's a closeup of the blocks. Some of the prints are "baby themes" but most are just geometric designs.

All mounted on the longarm and ready to go.  If you look on the left, you can see the lime-green (solid homespun cotton) I'm backing it with.

Well - quilting this one won't take long!

Quilt 46: Tulip Garden

I bought my "Quilt Wizard" design software way back in 2010, when I first started quilting. That was definitely money well-spent, as I've used it countless times. In the early days, when playing around with different kinds of block designs, I came up with this:

(click any picture on this page to see a larger image)

The block design is called "rosebud" in the design software - but to me it looks more like tulips.  Oh well, a rose by any other name.... yes?
I never actually made it, as I didn't know anybody who'd want a quilt like this, but kept the design and looked at it from time to time. Now that I'm making quilts for the "Inspirational Quilts" charity, I decided to go ahead and make this one. But, I made one alteration to the design: I changed the lattice around the blocks from green to blue:

I really like that splash of turquoise next to the pink flowers.

Just as it happened with the "Deep Blue Sea" quilt, the quilting software had fiddly, awkward instructions for the triangles. Just as I'd done for that quilt, I attacked it my own way:

And below you can see the progression of squares stitched together, then diagonally cut and opened up .

And the final result - the completed block. Because my triangle bits came out slightly larger (as they did on the other quilt), I had a bit of work cropping the sides to even them up - but it didn't take more than a few minutes to do that.

And here I'm assembling the top:

All put together and ready to quilt!

And here it is: FINISHED!

Here's a closeup of the tulips so you can see the stitching a little better. I used the "Baptist Fan" groovy board again. It's just about my favorite of the groovy board designs - quilts up fast, has an interesting design but doesn't "take over".

The backing on this quilt is hot pink - here's what it looks like with the quilting (done in white thread).

I'm very pleased with how this one turned out - and it looks like I've got enough fabric to almost squeeze out one more very similar. I'll have to buy a little more of the white and get something for backing. Hmm... yeah.. I think I'll do that.

This quilt will be donated to "Inspirational Quilts".

Quilts 34, 35, 36 - Christmas Tablerunners - DONE!

I do love "jelly rolls" - and found this one at my favorite quilt shop.  CHRISTMAS PRINTS!

I had some scraps of green/gold and red/gold Christmas fabric from some dinner knapkins I made several years ago - not a lot, but enough to use for the center of a French Braid design.

Here is the center, and a few squares cut out of the green/gold

And here I've lined up a few strips - so you can see where this is going

Here's the red/gold fabric - for this I pulled out all the gold/cream strips out of the jelly roll:

And, here's the red/gold one all stitched together.

The one mistake I made here: cutting the edges too far in (below). The point in the center block won't be a "point", but will be somewhat flattened on the edge because of the seam allowance. Oh, well... another lesson learned.

The quilting got done in a flash. I used plain unbleached homespun for the backing and after mounting that on the longarm frame, just slapped scraps of batting from other projects... TOO EASY!

 

Voila!  Here they are, draped over my stairwell rail.

 

I quilted these using free-motion stitching, just loop-dee-loops. Nothing fancy.  Red thread for the 2 green/gold table runners:

And gold thread for the red/gold one:

WHAM!  That went by FAST!