Drunk Fun

I've been working on a new quilt for the past few weeks here and there. I decided use my drunkard's path die for my AccuQuilt to make a more modern curved quilt. In addition, I thought that curves would make a good class topic for my next class at Quilter's Way.

I started by making a bunch of drunkard's path blocks and tried a bunch of different layouts. I finally settled on the one you see here by adding some squares to the pattern.

Here you can see the teal block before it's sewn together and trimmed down. I added 2" borders to the edge of the squares to match the white background width from the drunkard's path block. Before sewing the "petals" together, I trimmed them down to 1" and 1.5" inches. I left the spacing larger on the outside to leave a little more space between the blocks.

These blocks are HUGE and take up most of my design wall right now. Each block finishes around 26" square! Yikes. I'm planning on making nine blocks in a rainbow of colors. Above you can see the first five blocks. I have the yellow, orange, red-orange and red blocks left to make. Once I have all of them made, I'll probably lay all of these out on a floor or the grass outside to try a few different layouts.

Here you can see some of the other colors waiting to be pieced into these petal/flower blocks. All of these fabrics except the Lizzy House Pearl Bracelet white on white came from my stash! All the more justification to buy fabric for my stash. This is proof I actually use it!

Here's wishing everyone here in the states a happy 4th of July!

Another "Baby" Quilt

Using this same pile of fabrics, I am in the middle of creating another "baby" quilt.  I say "baby" because it really isn't for a baby.  It's for a sibling of a "still-cooking" baby.  I'm all about being equal.

This is the start of this one.  I'm hoping to make this more of a throw or twin size.  The squares in the first picture are 5" square and I sew on either side of a center line to create two 4.5" HST blocks out of one set of fabrics.  I have a ways to go with this one, but I think it will be really great once it's finished.  I'm really linking how this one is coming out.

Autumn Quilt Kit

A few years ago I bought this quilt kit at an after Christmas sale at 50% off.  It looked like a pretty easy quilt, and the colors were really nice.  I decided that it was too cute and too good a deal to pass up.  Believe it or not, it was the first quilt kit I had ever purchased.  I much prefer to pick out my own fabric and deign the colors. That's half the fun of quilting anyway.  

When I got home, I realized I grabbed the wrong kit. :(  It was the same pattern, but had some slightly different fabrics.  I thought it was the same one, but it wasn't.  I had picked the package that was in better shape.  Because I wasn't too keen on the fabrics/colors in this quilt, it went into my pile of fabric and was forgotten for a while.  

Well, yesterday I pulled out the kit and decided that it was time to put this thing together.  There's one fabric in there that I would NEVER have picked.  It's a really burnt or rust colored orange. (seen below)  I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, but orange has to be my least favorite color.  I like it with some other color combinations, but it just doesn't do much for me.  I thought about replacing the fabric with another one from my stash, but I realized that I would never use it in anything else, so why not use it now.

Here are a few pictures of my progress.  It calls for two more frames around the diamond and some sashing in between the 20 blocks.  It's definitely going to be an autumn quilt.

The next color to go on is a green, followed by a gold, then some deep gray sashing.  More on that later.

Moving Along on the Bright Quilt

So I decided to shorten the quilt that I blogged about last time instead of making the cross in the center of the quilt.  I'm happy with my decision.  What I'm probably going to do is take some of the extra four-patches and incorporate them into the border somehow, possibly floating around the side.  

Here are a few pictures of my progress.  The first picture is of all of my four patches that will be going into the quilt.  The second one is a picture of the solid square and stripe strips.  The third is about 2/3 of the top pieced together.  I still have a few more rows to stitch together.  

  

Once I finish this top I'm really going to start focusing on machine quilting some of the tops that I've accumulated. Last year was the first time that I began machine quilting my quilt tops.  I'm still somewhat new to it, but I'm getting the hang of it.  I've been holding off quilting several tops until I'm much better at it.  I think I'm going to tackle the "One Block Wonder" quilt that I made a while back.  If you haven't tried it, I'd highly recommend it.  It was super easy and you'll never look at fabric the same way.  The best thing about it is that you can piece it together in rows. Below are a couple of pictures of that quilt.  It was originally a tropical piece of fabric that has been transformed into this quilt.  As I'm piecing the quilt shown above I've been thinking of how I want to quilt this quilt.  I'm thinking it's suited for some meandering or swirls... basically an all over pattern.

 

It's back to work tomorrow.  :(  I've enjoyed being able to spend so much time quilting during my vacation.  I probably won't be posting quite as much since I'm starting a new role tomorrow and don't quite know what to expect.    

Yet another Quilt

I've just been knocking them out lately.  I guess that's what happens when you're on vacation and your husband is working.  

This quilt, which I still have to piece the top together, is from M'liss Rae Hawley's Phenomenal Fat Quarter Quilts.  

I encountered one issue while piecing together the pieces of the top, I didn't have as much fabric as the pattern called for.  It wanted 15 strips of one particular fabric but I only had enough fabric to cut 13 strips. 

 

In the end, I needed 157 squares of the 3 stripe block (see below) and ended up with 156 squares.  I tried a few different arrangements of the pattern including reducing the size or changing the center pattern.  I'm still unsure what I'm going to do.  I might try a few other options because I'm not quite satisfied with either option.

The first one below is just a smaller version of what is called for.  I'm not sure if the proportions work.  The second one I tried putting the blocks into a cross shape.  Right now I'm leaning towards the first option.  We'll see how I feel after a few days.  Opinions Welcomed!