Lovely New Additions

My Spring Fling Round Robin-3 piece has come home to me this week. This is the 3rd session of this swap which I host, and in this session the recipients of each quilt were allowed to make their own center 8" square. This was the mechanism that each person was given to convey their style, color preferences and general likes to the other unknown people that would work on their quilts. Here is what I made. And here is the finished 20" quilt...
I selected fabrics that are in the quilt currently on my bed (and with incomplete quilting in this picture) as well as in the flimsy which I hope to have quilted by the Amish later this summer (also destined for my bedroom). My desire was for this to be a busy, colorful piece, in shades of cranberry, greens, aquas, limitted soft beiges, etc.

Here is the back. The quilting is an all-over pantograph-style quilting. It doesn't show up too much in this picture.

And here you can see how it might coordinate with the new quilt. It doesn't have as much of the aqua, but the cranberry and beige carries it well.

And it's actually a dead ringer with the old quilt. I say "old" - This has been on my bed just 5 years. It's not old, but it's before I really got meticulous about triangle points and some details which today drive me nuts. I created the center block using EQ6, and modeled it after some of the geometric blocks on this quilt - wanted a somewhat "flower" and star look - with lots of triangles. I think the 8" center block had 120 pieces in it!

The quilt is very nice. My thanks to Marlene, Alicia, and Amy for working on this for me (even if they didn't know it was for me!). Marlene said she suspected that it was my quilt she was doing a 1st border for, but I don't really know why she'd guess that! And the green that Alicia selected is just perfect for coordinating with both quilts. It couldn't be a better match.

On to my second nice delivery this week... This (the runner) came from Lisa and was PIF gift. It came with a couple nice pieces of Martha Negly prints which I can't wait to use. She's got great fabric taste (despite her love of brown :-)))

I thought that her choice of runner was ironicly unique. I never would have guessed Lisa do make anything not paper-pieced, as she's fantastic with this medium. The cathedral windows and excessive handwork really surprised me. I just told her to make something that she loved (preferably not brown), and that I'd appreciate it too. It's totally lovely, and coordinates fantastically with the two NYB pieces in red and purple in my dining room. Pretty convenient that my smaller buffet didn't have a matching piece, huh? I just finished a small 9"x12" piece for Kate as a part of a swap in this same Cathedral windows pattern. I cannot fathom making another, so I love that someone else did it for me. Look below...The detail is sweet - Little birdies in the center and on the two ends. It's very pretty - Thank you. And, Lisa, my trick to not make the white thread show, was to use a black sharpie to cover up when I had to take white stitches on the black material (it was a black&white print)!

Now, back when I signed onto Lisa's PIF, I did post about one of my own. Apparently nobody was interested. I will repost soon, or hold some form of another giveaway. Stay tuned..

The rest of this week is dedicated to working on a smocked birthday dress and the finishing points on Sophie's quilt, which must be delivered for the Maine Quilt Show next Saturday!