Will You Get Lucky??!

I have hesitated to show too much about Lucky the Turtle (OK, get your head out of the gutter!) because it is going to my Miniature Booty Swap partner. But I really don't think that she has been to this blog so I'll post some finished shots. I need to afix the label, but otherwise he is done. Here is the top.
I don't profess to be a machine quilter. I generally hand quilt, and am happy doing that. I also typically do more traditional pieces where hand quilting looks appropriate. I thought this was an opportunity to work outside of my comfort zone, and practice the free motion quilting a bit. The turtle's back was satin stitch zig-zagged before I hand appliqued it onto the background. I didn't want to see the satin stitching on the back of the quilt. I free motioned inside each of the shell's pieces. Very tedious!... I did a tripple-stitch in a satin rayon variagated purple thread around the entire turtle & gave Lucky a simple glass bead eye. Voila!
The circular bubbles are out of some of my all-time favorite spotted batiks. I have barely more than what I used on the quilt left in my stash. I think they give a nice effect.
The dragonflies are hand drawn and then heat-set using sharpie pens. The little bit of pale blue embroidery was not planned, but it's there to cover up where I thought I wanted to draw the trails of the dragonflies. I decided the blue lines in pen didn't look right.
The back is scrappy from a number of my watery or fishy fabrics.
I'm not really sure what my partner's exact tastes are, but she did not request an ocean scene. He's far from perfect, but he is different and creative. I hope she likes it anyways!...

So, my original question...Will you get Lucky?...the quilt that is!

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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.

Lucky gets a Snack

One of the comments I got yesterday was that a turtle ought to have some water lillies & dragonflies. Now I'm no water lily expert, but I can handle a few dragonflies. I auditioned this perfect dragonfly fabric I had, but decided it did not work in so well. So...I got creative with my permanent fine-tip sharpie pens, which by the way are worth their weight in GOLD. I have bought the $3 a piece fabric pens and they don't write a clean line w/o bleeding. These are 28 pens for $12 at Sams.
Here's the purple turtle, Lucky in his water home (not yet sewn down). There are just a few sea-weeds and fun circular bobbles in some of my favorite batik scraps. I rarely do a satin-stitch applique because it looks so amateurish and tends to buckle and not lay flat. But Lucky needed this to designate the lines on his shell. There was no way I was going to stitch all of those pieces on separately. The other items on the quilt are needle-turn appliqued down.
And here is one of the dragon-flies I drew.

stay tuned...

Meet Lucky

Here's Lucky. He's a turtle and he is just dying to be made into a quilt.

Actually, I began by first making some "ocean" from my many blue choices of fabric. My blue stash is enormous because I made this a couple years ago. It was only after the ocean was created that I dreamed up that a turtle would look cute there, so I sat down with my pencil & paper and sketched Lucky. This will likely be a swap quilt. Ocean creatures are sort of personal. Some people like tropical fish, others like dolphins or sea horses. I don't particularly love any all that much, but I thought that the turtle might have wider appeal. He's going to be a purple turtle too...rather whimsical.

Stay tuned...