It's in the bag!

This bag contains Floret and is ready to be delivered.
As it is truly one of my top favorites, only a sister is allowed to adopt and love this quilt. I can't wait until she has it in her home!

Floret began with a pattern by Corey Yoder of Coriander Quilts.
I love changing an existing pattern and making the end result my own, as you can see from these two photos.
The fabric is by Vanessa Goertzen of Lella Boutique.
Tammy of Three Sisters Longarm Quilting  "frosted" it with Diagonal Plaid, which turned out to be perfect for this quilt.

Floret
87" x 87"

Ever since I made this quilt for my sister C  back in 2013,
I have wanted to make similar green and white one for myself.
I did it!

I found this kit for a quilt called Bamboo Forest from the Fat Quarter Shop using Cluck Cluck Sew's pattern Morning Glory.
As there are no naturally occurring bamboo forests in Northern Indiana, I am naming my quilt Morning Glory, after the pattern.

I will now have my own green and white quilt.

Morning Glory
68" x 78"

My End of the Rainbow quilt top is finished.
I genuinely enjoyed my first experience with purple fabrics,
and I totally fell in love with the scrap details.

The unexpected mix of different fabrics...

The discovery of text within the quilt...

The tiniest of pieces...
(the little green square is less than 1/4 inch)

And the coming together of colors at the main intersections.
(In this photo, the top right angle of the light aqua triangle points to a main intersection.)

These details you need to be up close to see.

But looking from a distance?
You see the rainbow.

End of the Rainbow
75" x 75"

Willy nilly scrappy quilts are usually awful, sometimes okay, but rarely wonderful. I always am on the lookout for those wonderful ones because I have fabric scraps that are too beautiful to throw away.
When Melissa Corry put this picture on the cover of her book Irish Chain Quilts: Contemporary Twists on a Classic Design, I marveled at the success she achieved using scraps, even the tiniest ones, into a controlled and beautiful design.

I took my time contemplating this End of the Rainbow quilt.
The joy of this quilt comes from not only using those beautiful scraps, but the memories I have of making the quilts that produced them.
The quilt indeed is the "end of the rainbow."

 Yet her process of what I call "sew and slice" made me wonder.
That wild? Really?
I decided to try out one block. It seemed to work.
I kept going. It seemed to worked.

Truly I have reduced my box of scraps, even the scraps of the low volume fabrics for the background.

But the purple! I knew this was going to be a problem every step of the way. You see, I have zero purple fabric in my scrap box.
Zero.
How obvious is it that I am not drawn to the color purple.
Perhaps I could make mine without purple by putting extra blocks of each color that I do have.
"No," my husband said, "That will not be a complete rainbow."
I decided he was right and went shopping.

Great finds! I love these purples!
How will I ever be able to cut into them so willy nilly?

Since these purples may look a little too perfect, I decided to add a  "borrowed"  lavender gingham scrap from a sister for what I think/hope will be a little sparkle.

I see the End of the Rainbow from here.

You may first notice the successful use of the color orange pieced within the midst of many other colors to make this quilt.
With a closer look you may notice the sewing-themed fabric depicting buttons, pins, scissors, and thread, a fun inclusion.

Yet my favorite part of this quilt is the second border. I have never seen a border pieced in this pattern before, an inventive combination of squares and half square triangles using a combination of high contrast and low contrast fabrics.
It blends perfectly with the squares and triangles of the sashing. So cool.

I would be quite satisfied if I was the designer/maker of the quilt.
I am not.
My contribution was the binding, finishing this quilt for a friend.

I enjoyed binding and taking pictures.
I hope she enjoys the looking and the snuggling!

Three weeks ago I cut red print fabrics for a free pattern called Sister's Choice that I found at fatquartershop.com, an online quilt shop. This block design may be one of my favorites. I made nine.

Sashing and a border for these blocks made a 41" x 41" quilt top.

I am most comfortable with straight line machine quilting on my domestic machine, and this time I changed it up by increasing the number of lines, spacing them less than one half inch apart.

I love the added dimension of these horizontal lines.

In this next picture if you look closely past the cool tulips, the cool tulip shadows, and the dotted border, you will see where I pieced the back.

Sister's Choice
41" x 41"
129 pieces

Well! Hello, Wind!

I did not make this quilt; I only added the binding for a friend of mine.
I decided to photograph and post it here because I was inspired by the gray background and the sixteen patch/postage stamp block variation.
I may need to make one for myself some day.

"Daunting" describes my thoughts of making over a thousand half square triangle blocks for an Ocean Waves quilt.
Yes, but manageable.
To reduce the monotony I rotate between the five steps that it takes to make them.

1. Mark

2. Stitch

3. Cut

4. Press

5. Trim

Taking pictures of the steps makes it fun!
I also take pictures of the box as they accumulate.
It helps me think that I am making progress.

"Slow and steady wins the race," said Tortoise to Hare.

Today's post shares two on-going projects and one finished project.

First, this project box contains enough squares cut from my blues, greens, and light low volume fabrics to make a zillion (give or take a few) half square triangles. Because half square triangles are a bit daunting to make in that amount and because I am not in a hurry, I plan to take my time over the next two years.  Every month or so I will pull this box out and make a few more. Eventually they will be sewn into blocks for an Ocean Waves quilt, a traditional pattern that has been on my list to make for years. Trust me when I say there are two single bed sized quilts in this box. Yes, I believe that eventually I will make two!

This second project box has black fabric cut and ready to make A String of Pearls, a quilt pattern by Melissa Corey, found in her book Irish Chain Quilts: Contemporary Twists on a Classic Design.
As usual, this quilt had me with it's simplicity and minimalism.
Once I actually have the white fabric, this will not take long to make. Need to shop.

Finally, the finished project, Checkerboard Pillow, I made using the scraps from my Voices quilt, pieced in 2015, and quilted in 2016. There were enough leftovers that I could have made another smaller quilt. After planning, cutting, sewing, changing my mind, planning, cutting, sewing, and changing my mind again, I ended up with but one simple pillow.

Simple. Minimal. Yes, it's good.

My husband makes room in his life for driving me to fabric stores. Seriously. Driving to and from our recent ski destination included stops at two fabric stores.
Lucky me!

I stocked up on dots! They go well with another recent acquisition, this Hey Dot jelly roll by Zen Chic.

I began with this pattern called Over and Down Under.

I liked the "woven" look of the strips, but the quilt looked a little too dark and dreary to me.
I wanted ridiculously bright and happy.

Hey Dot
 56" x 56"

My abundant quilt supply readily accommodates quilt donations.
This month I happily donated six quilts.

My church received four pieced tops. Three are pictured here; one of the four, Pottery, I failed to photograph, so I'm showing you a picture of the pattern. My quilt looked fairly similar.

These four tops will be completed and either sold at the Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale or sent overseas for another MCC relief need.

Wrap Them in Love Foundation received two quilts. This organization based in the state of Washington distributes quilts to children worldwide.

I am thrilled that these quilts now have the opportunity to do what they were made to do...keep someone wrapped and warm.

Am I getting better at machine quilting?
Hmmm...maybe.
At least the quilt is square!
I began stitching in the center and wound my way around and around gradually reaching the edges. You  can see how I did this by looking at this small practice piece I made before starting on the bigger one.

I continue to have issues with keeping the stitch lengths even while feeding the bulk under the walking foot; I broke one needle, bent two others, and spent quality time with my seam ripper as well.

But as I sewed on the binding I felt more comfortable that this quilt would actually reach a satisfactory conclusion.

Grey Labyrinth
60" x 60"
576 pieces

This modern log cabin pattern and fabric from several different collections were designed by Brigette Heitland of Zen Chic.

Friday I retrieved Alphabet Song from Three Sisters Fabric, where it received diagonal plaid finishing.
I love the plaid quilting.

Saturday I relished each binding stitch I put in by hand.

Sunday I revisited the pictures I took while making this quilt, and I took more pictures.
Each one inspires me to make another.
Some day.

Alphabet Song
57" x 66"

Cottage Lane, a top  that I pieced in 2015, became the first to be quilted on my new machine.

Not exactly a smooth first time effort.

I taped the back down on the floor, layered the batting and top to make the "sandwich," and began pinning...
noticed a mistake. (How does this happen with all the pressing and checking and pressing and checking?)
Do you see the turned section?

Here it is.
I unpinned, fixed the mistake, and continued pinning.

Ran out of pins.
Went to the store and bought more.
Ran out of pins again.
Finished pinning anyway with fewer than desirable pins.

Began machine quilting.
Ripped out the first four rows for tension issues.
Adjusted tension.
Went back to the store and bought quilting gloves. And more pins.
Continued to machine quilt.

I chose straight line quilting because I thought that following the walking foot guide and sewing straight lines would be an easy way to begin. Not so much. The blocks in this quilt were set on point, resulting in me having to stitch straight lines across the bias. Now there are many wonky lines. I am okay with some wave, because in my mind that does not hurt the over all look of the quilt. Too much wonkiness? Yes, but let's just call those wonky lines design elements. And I am not going to let you look that closely. The quilting advice I read online was to never point out your mistakes. I have no problem following that advice.

Cottage Lane

The pattern is Country Lane by A Quilting Life.
The fabric is Whitewashed Cottage by Three Sisters.
It measures 54" x 68."

I welcome the spring vibes resonating from this quilt during these short days of frigid temperatures.

Meet Seven Letters.
I couldn't be happier with this quilt top!
The Seven Letters pattern by Miss Rosie's Quilt Company and the Wordsmith fabric collection by Janet Clare work perfectly together.

This shows one of thirty-six blocks consisting of seven by seven squares. Put these together with pieced sashing, and you have a quilt top!
If you decide make a postage stamp style quilt, you want to choose this pattern. The instructions clearly describe the necessary strip piecing;
and the pressing instructions, if followed correctly, means you will never need to use a pin. I didn't at all!

Seven Letters
74" x 74"
2,401 pieces