Dreaming in Color Quilt

Well, here it is in all its glory, my Dreaming in Color quilt!  I finished putting the binding and hanging sleeve on the quilt the night before it needed to be hanging for our special exhibit at the Lowell Quilt Festival.  If that's not cutting it close, I don't know what is?

I only had time to quilt the dark grey and not the octagons.  I did some dense quilting of straight lines and pebbles throughout the dark grey.  I might go back later and do some quilting in the octagons, but I'm not sure yet.  I had originally done a little quilting in one of the octagons, but hated how it looked, so I spent three hours taking it out.

Here's the back.  It's a print that I got at Marden's for $3.50 a yard.  I really love the print, and wanted to use something from my stash, so this is what I ended up using. 


It's hard to tell from these pictures, but the binding is a bunch of different colors.  I think it shows up best on the picture of the back of the quilt.  I really like how that compliments the scrappy nature of this quilt.

All in all, I'm really pleased with how this quilt came out and I can't wait to find a place to hang it at home.  I'll have to get some better pictures once I get the quilt back from the show. 

Octagonal Orb Top Finished

Last night I put the final stitch on my Octagonal Orb quilt top.  It just might be one of my all time favorite quilts.  I feel like claiming A favorite quilt is like picking a favorite child, so I'll just say it's one of my favorites. 

Can you blame me for loving this quilt so much?  I had the hardest time getting the colors right in the pictures.  The teal in the middle left is darker than it appears and the aqua in the upper right is also darker.

I will say, it was pretty hard to get all of the blocks to be the same size.  With all of the pieces and the angle of each triangle to form the orb, things shifted quite a bit.  I ended up doing what the pattern said and focused on making each block square rather than all of the blocks the same size.  As a result, the sashing doesn't quite line up, but because it's all the same color, it's hard to tell.  It's going to require some heavy quilting to mask it.

Now to finish the quilting before the Quilt Festival in August.  I'm still crossing my fingers.  I know I'm going to have to head on another business trip this month, so its crunch time. 

WIP Wednesday: Octagonal Orb

I finally started on a new project - an Octagonal Orb quilt based on the pattern posted on The Modern Quilt Guild Blog a while back.  I saw the grey and red block and thought it would be great to make a whole quilt with a different color in each orb.

Here's the first block that I made with grey and aqua.  I really love this block and I think I'm really going to love this quilt.  I'm going to wait to trim all of the blocks until I have all of them made.  I prefer to wait to trim my blocks until all are made to ensure all will be the same size.

The next one I will be piecing is the yellow block.  I really like the yellow with the grey here as well.

The lime green block is also ready to be sewn together.  Once again, loving this one.

I also have a dark purple, red, orange, pink, teal and dark blue that are prepped and ready to be pieced together, but those are all still in the small 2 1/2" square stage.

I'm hoping to have this done by the beginning of August in time for the special exhibit at the Lowell Quilt Festival where the BMQG will have a special exhibit. We'll see if I make that goal with everything that I have going on this summer before the festival, with the 4th of July, weddings, etc. I'll give myself a 50/50 chance.

More Octagonal Orb Cutting

I've managed to do some more cutting for the octagonal orb quilt I'm planning.  I cut up the 30+  different grey and white fabrics into squares and rectangles.

I also began going through my stash and arranging pieces of 2.5" squares into color groups.

I need 24 for each block.  For some colorways I have as many as 15-20 different fabrics.  For some, I only have between 4-8 pieces.  I was hoping not to repeat any fabrics, but I may have to in some blocks.  I'll probably raid my aunt's stash and see if she has any small pieces of fabric that I could add here as well, then I'll have to address how many blocks I'll make and using what colors. 

I have everything in plastic bags, as you can tell, all ready to take to retreat next month!  When you put the fabrics against the grey fabric you can see how it really pops.  I think I'm really going to like this quilt. 

Octagonal Orb

On The Modern Quilt Guild's blog, a tutorial was recently posted for an Octagonal Orb quilt block.

*Image source: The Modern Quilt Guild Blog

I decided that I wanted to make a quilt using this pattern.  I like the color scheme of this block, but I thought it would be cool to alternate the color where the red is in the block above for each block I make.  One block could be red, another green, another purple, etc.

Last weekend I started going through my stash and began cutting my grey and white fabric into squares per the tutorial.  I realized I don't have very many grey/white fabrics, so I ordered some and plan to seek out some more as I visit fabric stores over the near future.  The biggest challenge is finding grey and white fabrics without black or other colors.  I want the look of just grey and white with the accent color.  This will probably be a longer-term project.

These half yard cuts just arrived last night.  The color is off a bit since this photo was taken late at night and the lighting wasn't great.  They're all grey grey and white fabrics.

What did I do with them? I began cutting them all up!

I still have a bunch left to cut, but hey, what else will I be doing without my sewing machine?  CUTTING!