30th Anniversary

Today my parents celebrate their 30th anniversary!  Happy Anniversary to them!

(Here they are at Versaille during our trip to Paris last year.)

It's been no secret that this quilt is their 30th anniversary present.  This weeked, in anticipation, I finished putting the binding on. I came home from vacation and the quilt was waiting for me at the post office, freshly quilted and waiting for its binding.

Now I just need to add a label and a hanging sleeve.

Judi from Green Fairy Quilts did the machine quilting.

I really love how this quilt came out.  Judi did a great job quilting it.  Soon it will hang in my parent's beach house. 

Storm at Sea Top is FINISHED!!!!

I finally managed to get some halfway decent photos of my completed Storm at Sea quilt top. I love looking at all of the different patterns that emerge as you look at this quilt.  When I show people this quilt, I'm always interested in what stands out to them first.  What pops for you? 

I LOVE this quilt top.  The colors are more earthy that I would have picked for myself, but because it's going to be hanging at my parent's beach house, on a yellow wall, this quilt will fit perfectly there.  It finishes at 57" x 66".

Here's a view from the side.

And here's a picture of the back.  I love how neat the back of a quilt looks when you remove the paper.  All of the seams are pressed so nice and it looks so neat.  I just have to go back with some tweezers and remove some of the tiny bits of paper before sending this along to Judi at Green Fairy Quilts to work her magic on. 

The Storm at Sea Continues

Well, I haven't finished all of the 72 diamond blocks, but I've begun assembling the quilt top with what I have done. 

I was losing interest in this quilt with the monotony of the blocks, so I went ahead and began piecing the top together despite not having all of the diamonds done.  I'm so glad I did!  Seeing this begin to take shape has really motivated me to keep moving and try and finish up. 

The stars you see below the Storm at Sea are some UFO blocks that I was thinking of turning into a baby quilt.  I know of at least 11 people that are having babies in the next 6 months, so I'm sure I'll be making some baby quilts in the near future.  These stars were supposed to be part of a larger mystery quilt, but I hated the final quilt, so I've decided to turn the random blocks into smaller quilts instead of one large one.

Progress on Storm at Sea

I've been trucking along, working on my storm at sea quilt whenever I have a few minutes here and there.

I have stacks of blocks in multiple stages of completion...

I would say I'm probably 2/3 done with these diamond blocks.  Once I finish them, I can begin assembling the quilt top.  So far, these diamonds have been the most tedious part of this quilt.  I think it's because I'm anxious to begin piecing the top and see how it's going to look. 

Continuing Storm at Sea

This past weekend I busted out the 32 6.5" square blocks for the storm at sea quilt that I'm working on for my parents.

Now, these may not seem that complex, but they sure seem to take a long time.  Maybe that's just because there are 32 of these.  Multiply that times the number of seams in this block - 8 and you have 256 seams.  Okay, now that makes sense.  Add in another 32 pieces because there are 9 pieces in this block and you have 288 pieces that were cut for just this block.

 Add in the 42 blocks that I already made and that's a lot of pieces.  This quilt will have 1026 pieces to it. 

It's coming together though.  Only 72 more blocks to go!  At least those blocks just have 5 pieces to them.

For some strange reason, Dorie from Finding Nimo just popped into my head singing, "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming..."  Hmm, I might be swimming in blocks by the time I'm done with this...

Storm at Sea Progress

I began planning and making a storm at sea quilt for my parents a while back but put it aside to work on a few other things recently. 

Here's the rough sketch that I did a while back based on the fabrics that I am using.  The colors are totally off shade wise, but It's good enough to get the gist of things.

I finished the 42 3" small squares yesterday and I'm going to move to the large squares next.  I think there's 30-something large square blocks.  I'm paper piecing this quilt because I like the accuracy it gives me without having to worry about my 1/4" seam being off a bit.  That's the beauty of paper piecing, you don't have to worry about that.  Just sew on the line.

This is what a stack of 42 3" paper pieced blocks looks like all trimmed up. 

Progress on Storm at Sea

 I've been working on the Storm at Sea quilt for my parents lately. 

I'm paper piecing the whole thing.  It takes a bit longer, but I get much better accuracy doing it this way. I'm sure I'll be posting a lot more updates to this quilt as I progress, so stay tuned.

Starting a New Project

I've begun working on a new project, a quilt for my parents.  They wanted a quilt for the stairway leading to the second floor of their beach house.  We picked out some colors together and I decided on a Storm at Sea pattern since it fits nicely with a beach house.

I found a blank template online and colored it in with the colors we were thinking of.  We had already decided on the Origins line by Basic Grey for the quilt, I just needed to figure out the pattern.

I also found some free paper piecing templates online, so I printed those out to use for this as well.  If you've read this blog at all you probably know that I really love paper piecing.  I love the perfect points that you get with paper piecing.

I've started to do some cutting but haven't finished.  I needed to order more fabric online since I couldn't find it near me anymore, so that delayed be a bit.

I haven't started a new larger quilt in a while, so it's been fun to get into another project, although I'm still working on trying to finish a bunch of other projects.  Oh well, the life of a quilter I guess - start three projects, finish one.  Right?

I likely won't have a ton of time to do much quilting over the next three weeks.  I've got a bunch of stuff going on for work including my company's customer user conference in Las Vegas in a few weeks, so I'll be leaving the DH behind to head out there.  I'll have to see if I can bring a hand sewing project with me.  We've got family in town from GA as well starting this weekend.  I hope to really pick up on my quilting again come mid-May.