Catching Up The Week

I having been stitching away, this week, on the samples for Penguin and Fish.  I am half way through number 7 (a super cute giraffe) and then I will just have the monkey left. I hope to get them in the mail by Monday.  The designs are simple, but with the sweetest details that really make them sing!  I am having a lot of fun working on them, albeit with a bit of pressure to do my very best work.  (I will admit to taking stitches out to re-do them when I might have said "good enough" if I were stitching for my own project!)

This is the cutest little hedgie!

Before I received the sample materials, I did finish up two more quilts for donation to the birthday program. 

The nursery pastel scrappy trip-a-long:

The snow is all gone, after today's rain!

I am using up some puffy poly batting that I got at an estate sale some months back. It is quite different from low loft cotton batting.  A little challenging, but it does show off the quilting really well!   I did an orange peel design since I had a built-in grid in the squares. (You have to look closely to see that I changed direction a time or two.  The high loft camouflages errors nicely!)   I used the same stripe as the binding for the backing and it ended up about 36" x 48".

This is number two, this week.

When Ms A was little she had some tiny Kitty Cucumber paper dolls. They were so small they fit into a little matchbox!   

I came across these coordinating KC fabrics at a Goodwill last summer. I outlined the blocks with quilting and stitched around the motifs in the focus blocks and around the smaller kitties in the alternating block, along with some "bubbles" around the tossed flowers.    I did not use a different bobbin thread to coordinate with the dark blue backing. I don't mind that the quilting shows, but I wish the binding stitches were tidier.  Having a binding that is an equal width on both the front and the back is still an area of opportunity for improvement for me.  

This one ended up about 40" square.

I hope wherever these little quilts end up, they will keep a little one cozy!

Trippy Baby Finish!

I put the brakes on the scrappy trip-a-long after 6 blocks when I started to think about cutting into some yardage to make more 'scaps'. It would be one thing if I had planned out a color scheme and layout etc, but since it was meant to be a scrap busting diversion, I decided to stop.  

Look!  A quilt on a fence instead of the laundry room door!

I am glad I did, because now it is a perfect size for a toddler, about 36" square. 

I quilted it with a combination of Leah Day's giant sunflower and a variation of Elizabeth Hartman's orange peel .  

And, I sewed the binding by machine. 

And, it turned out okay!  

I spent about two hours reading and watching videos about all the different techniques to make a machine applied binding look nice.  I selected a wide stitch pattern almost down the center of the binding, maybe just a bit toward the inside.  I have to say, it does not look bad!

A print from my stash for the back camouflaged any imperfections in the binding and quilting (especially after it came out of the dryer!)

I have added this one to the charity stack which now totals three. 

I looked through the stash to see what I have that will go with the juvenile panels I pulled out the other day and matched up a few.

My goal is to finish at least one a week. 

I better get cracking!

WIP Wednesday - I Drank the Kool-aid!

 Well, it was bound to happen, sooner or later!  I joined the Scrappy Trip-a-long!

I kept thinking that I should wait until I finished more UFO's, but last night, I couldn't help it.  I grabbed some 2 1/2" strips and started sewing. 

My first block is the one in the upper left.  It was the leftovers of the Orb quilt, so all one line.  I love the way it looks, but I decided I better mix it up a bit with some other fabric, or the quilt wouldn't be very cohesive,  since it wouldn't take long to run out of those fabrics. 

I found some stashes of strips that I had kind forgotten about and threw them in the mix.  It was hard not to try to plan and also to include some of the fabrics that I wasn't sure would play well with the others, but I only paid attention to value and I think it works pretty well.  I have set aside some red and red-orange pieces for the middle strips.  Of course with more blocks, I will be able to mix up the layout even more.  

I can't wait to see how it looks with more blocks!  It all started with Bonnie Hunter's tutorial here, so join in if you have a mind to! There is also a Flickr group that is chock full of different blocks and layouts.  All in all, a very fun phenom!

Also in progress:

This is my progress on the Baby Animals quilt.  I decided to do the main color on all the blocks and then go back and add the other bits.  Mainly because I haven't really decided what other color to use.  Something in the pink/fuchsia spectrum, but I need to settle on it soon.

Here is a closer peek at a cute little cotton-tail. I am working on the lamb and the baby deer is in the queue.



Lots in progress!   I will be finished with my autograph quilt in the next day or two.  I just have to finish the hanging sleeve and get it on the wall, and it will be checked off the list.

Hope you are having a good Wednesday!

I am linking today at Freshly Pieced!