Back in Business - Final Around the World Border

Well, I'm back.  I spent all of last week in Las Vegas for work, and man was I exhausted when I returned.  My company (high tech industry) hosted its annual user conference with more than 15,000 attendees.  As some of you may know, I work in public relations at the company, and as part of the event, we hosted 130 journalists from around the world.  We announced 42 new products last week alone.  Talk about a crazy week.

I finally spent some time when I got back finishing the border of the last around the world quilt. 

I added the flying geese to the corners of the border.  I really like how it came out here.  This quilt will go back to my aunt KK the next time I see her. 

And yes, those geese are paper pieced.  I couldn't get away with not doing some form of paper piecing on one of these quilts.  I had been wanting to do flying geese on one of these as well and was happy when this one seemed to call for it. 

I can't wait to see mine. 

I can now return to my regularly scheduled sewing (well, for the next week - before my in-laws grace us with their presence for 17 days.  No complaint, I love my in-laws, I just love sewing too). 

Around the World - Trip #2

This month is the second round in our Around the World swap.  I received the quilt plus one border from Samantha who added a cute scrappy border with an appliqued tree and two love birds onto the center block of Stephanie's quilt.  This is what I came up with.

The second border that was added is adorable, but I thought it was very busy, so I wanted to simplify the second border.  I wanted to play off the petals in the center block and incorporate the fun colors that were also added.  I tried several different looks with the petals, but settled on this one.

The petals are fused onto the quilt and then I machine appliqued the petals down. 

I really like how this came out and I hope that Stephanie does as well.

Fabric Choices for New Quilt

This coming Saturday, KK, Lynn (a co-worker), and I are getting together for a quilting gathering.  We all decided to do the same pattern, a Bento Box.  I've been wanting to make one of these for a while and I thought this would be an easy quilt to make and wouldn't require a lot of concentration since we'll probably be gabbing the whole time.  

Here are my fabric choices.  What do you think?  I'm SOOOO excited about them.  It will be made with the navy batik and the bottom lime green batik with the top lime green as the border.  This will help meet one of my 2009 goals, to make a quilt using batiks.  I've always loved batiks, but have never really used them to make a big quilt.  I've only made a few small wall hanging with batiks.  

I'm thinking of doing some cutting prior to our gathering so that I can spend more time sewing.  I think KK was planning on doing the same thing.  Now I need to figure out what kind of baked good I want to make and bring since I promised I'd bring something.  It can't be chocolate, even though I'm a chocolate addict, because KK doesn't like chocolate (gasp).   

I've been working on my autumn quilt.  I just have two more sides of the border to add and I'll be done with the top.  Here's a little peek.  I hope to have the top done by the end of the week. 

Border & Binding

Tonight I got the inner and outer border put on one of my UFOs.  You might recognize it from the pic in my profile.  At the time I made my profile this was one of the few quilts I had a picture of.  I've been trying to get some of my UFOs done so that I can begin to work on some new stuff.  It has been bothering me lately to see a stack of unfinished tops.  

I made this quilt entirely out of my stash, and out of a lot of small scraps.  All of the flowers were made from scraps (well, not the green, but the "petals" in each flower were scraps). I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this quilt, whether or not I'm going to keep it or give it away.  It was one of those quilts that I had everything for and could use up some scraps.  

I'm going to work on sewing the binding on the back of the "box of roses" quilt.  I haven't sewn it on over the past two days because I finally found the thread that I was sewing with.  My silly cat found it (he always seems to find any thread spool that's not in some place extremely secure.  I had wrapped the thread up in the quilt to shield it from him, yet he still found it.  I discovered it tonight as I was cooking dinner tucked in deep next to the fridge.  Silly cat.  

Finished Quilting "Box of Roses" YAY!!!

I finally finished all of the quilting on the "Box of Roses" quilt.  THANK GOODNESS!!!  This was, hands down, the most difficulty I've had with machine quilting.  

 This one is a little darker, but it shows the quilting a little better.

I plan on using different thread next time.  I've always used Gutterman thread, but I think I'm trying something different.  I'm hoping that will solve my issues because I know it's not my machine.  I've been doing little projects in between quilting this one to keep my sanity.

Now it's on to the binding and creating a label. :)

I also added a floating, pieced border to the top and bottom of the bright quilt that's still nameless.  I think it's helping with the dimensions.  Before it was too stubby and needed to be a little bit longer to make the proportions work.  

I still need to add the orange swirl fabric on top of the floating squares to finish the top and bottom borders.  To finish it off, I'm going to put probably a 5 inch strip of the orange swirl fabric to the sides.