Sunday, April 27, 2008

The week's events

in no particular order...

Yesterday I attended an annual Project Linus Make a Blanket event in my area. I was easily the youngest person there, but it's a great day of fun, happy quilters. I dug out 2 of my unfinished tops to sandwich & bind. My mom and aunt came too, and I knew they wouldn't bring projects so I was able to put at least one of them to work for me! Here's one of the lively tops that is now a finished quilt. The other is here, although this is not a finished picture, as the quilt is already packed away downstairs.
One of the other tremendous perks of going to the Linus events is that there is usually free fabric, and copious amounts of it. I was able to get many, many pretty pieces of at least a quarter yard, some as much as a couple yards, 2 pieces of red (from Red Cross) fleece that are for a king sized bed - probably 15+ yards of fabric not counting the fleece. It's fun to supplement the stash for free!

A week or so ago I got a bit of fabric (I know, shame on me!) from Ebay. It's mostly batiks and Kaffe large prints - drop dead gorgeous, but the larger prints are challenging to work with for me. Here's part of a mini-quilt top that I will pbobably not use for a swap. It's more just a fun play with color, but I don't think it's my partner's taste.

So here is onto my 3rd try at a quilt for Kate's ALQS. Without giving away too much info about my partner's likes, dislikes & style, I am trying to do something unconventionally, traditional (if that makes sense), in simple colors (or not too many), yet modern fabrics. Several of the ones I have used came from the AWESOME little packet of squares Janice sent me with this. They are leafy and swirly and I just love the little kiwi's (she's from New Zealand). It was kind of hard to use them to make something for someone else, but they do look good. It kind of reminds me of a frog in a blender, but I will probably need to come up with a better name!
I'm going to use some of these too. Not sure of the exact placement of the curves yet.
And some curvy paper pieced flying geese. How fun!
Phew...
Something simpler.
A little skirt in some fun, flirty fabrics for my daughter. I made the pattern so if anyone is interested, let me know. It's not hard, and doesn't take a ton of fabric.
Once I get the elastic in the waist, I'll take a shot of her in it. She loves to twirl in circles, so I knew it needed to be a full circle skirt. At 20 months she couldn't care less that we can see her undies!
The rick-rack remindes me of more flower petals.
And when the ruffle flares up, there is fun orange swirls underneath.
Enough for the pictures...Here's the rest of the week's accomplishments/events:
  • I was lucky enough to inherit 40-50 quilt books and old quilty magazines from my aunt, who is clearing out her sewing room. These are awesome.
  • I mailed my block of the month block to somebody
  • Mailed my Doll Quilt SwapIII to somebody. I'll post about this quilt after it is received.
  • Lucky got his binding. I'll show pictures of him soon enough. He's quilted now obviously.
  • I am also pushing away with my Amish star hand quilting. It's nearing the half-way point.
  • doing all the fun (ha ha) quilt tracking for the 4-Seasons quilt swap which is nearing it's shipping date.

For those of you that opt to leave comments, thank you. I love to read them. Even if I do not respond or always comment myself, I do enjoy snooping at what everyone else in the quilt world is doing. It is a source for wonderful inspiration.


4 comments:

Janice said...

Wow! I'm very impressed with how hard you made those 5" squares work! They do look good with the red too. I'll have to take another look at all my 5" squares now...

Anonymous said...

Frog in a blender" too funny! Hubby got a kick out of it too, you should keep the name, it will definitely stick!!! Love the apple fabric and kiwi's. That's a long list of things done, great week!

Mom said...

they were closer to 6.5" and many coordinated wonderfully!!

bettsylyn (Lynda) said...

It is interesting to see someone else going through similar thought processes with the quilt swap. I think I have finally decided on an idea - hopefully it will work for my partner when it actually includes the fabric. But that's why I like swaps - they provide a nice little challenge and make me move off my normal design pathways.