Bright Autumn Colors

I was so taken with the colors in their pumpkin fat quarter collection when I saw them in Keepsake Quilting's summer catalog that I went to my stash and pulled a collection as similar as I could. No idea what I wanted to make with them of course, but there was the stack of fabrics on my sewing table; waiting.

In an unrelated quilt gawking, I saw this quilt

in an advertisement for the Fat Quarter Shop and thought it would be perfect for those fabrics.

So for the past few months in my spare time I've been making lots of HSTs.  Lots. Assembly time is sneaking nearer and I hope to have the quilt finished in time for the fall Blogger's Quilt Festival in a couple of weeks.

100 Day Hustle Wrapup

Kelsey's 100 Day Hustle sure helped!  Everything on my list except this quilt got finished!  I even got the small projects taken care of.  This red quilt is completed,

this christmas cutie is all done,

it started out as a panel and charm pack from Sandy Gervais' Reindeer Games line.

and I've already posted here and here about the other items on my list being done.

Thanks Kelsey, the linkups have been super fun to follow and it always helps to have friends' support!

You can see how everyone else did on their 100 Day Hustle list HERE.

Frittering Away the Time

My granddaughter and at least four of my children and their partners will be here for christmas.   First time in maybe ten years that this many of my kids could all be together at once.  Once they grow up it really gets hard to schedule holidays.

So Christmas is about thirteen days away and I have absolutely nothing better to do than quilt, right?  This adorable little panel and a charm pack of the related fabrics went together with some navy i had in the stash to make a top that I'll quilt up and throw on a piece of furniture in the livingroom to cosy up the space during our celebrations.

Beats scrubbing floors and ordering spare parts for the old crib I need to get set up!

One Down 23 To Go!

Here's Americana laid out on my Design Floor.  There are a few last minute reorganizations to perform right before sewing it all together, but nothing major.  I'll shuffle through my leftover neutrals and find something good for a two inch border and then it'll be ready for Terpsichore.  Anyone else working on this one?  

I'd love to see pictures of any of these quilts as you make them up.  It is always fun to see someone else's interpretation of a quilt.

Simple stripes are next.  After all those triangles something easy will be most welcome.

It's Orthogonal to be Square

but it takes forever!

Fortunately I have one more day this weekend!

The Only Problem...

 

...with designing lots of HSTs into a quilt is that Someone Has to Sew Them! There are at least 260 HSTs and about 40 QSTs in my Americana quilt.  Squaring up is next.  Guess what my next complainy post is going to be about?  :)

FINALLY!

Yes, I do realize six of the half-QSTs on the short ends are backwards, and maybe I'll do something about that someday, but probably not.  I also think adding the navy inner border around the corner stones would improve the effect.  But even still, it's finished.  This quilt has been my problem child for years.  I'm going to make these smallish changes and then hang it in the quilting queue and get it finished.

Thanks Tim for keeping me company while I got the borders on it today.

Pressed and Finished Lemonade

Ok Edna, I agree.  Purple border, green binding.  How's it look?

Thanks to everyone who offered advice.  Edna I'm putting you on the payroll.

Lemonade in the Making

Babs wanted swappers to use her focus and any fabric that was just the colors from the focus to build any block they wanted.  She got back a few like that but mostly they were blocks with lots of neutral background and not much color.  At least they all used her focus!

She brought them over (was it more than a year ago now Babs?) one day when our group was meeting.  She fiddled around with them and just got less and less happy with them until eventually she pitched them towards the trash (at least figuratively).  I rescued them; she gave me the "you can't make anything out of that mess!" look.  They sat on a shelf gathering dust and feeling sorry for themselves until 3 days ago when I rediscovered them.

I laid them out on the kitchen floor, my "design wall" (That's why I never play along with design wall monday - I NEVER leave things on the design wall.  People might step on them!).  I did lots of leaning over and shuffling blocks.  Babs was right, these were really difficult blocks to balance. 

Evenutally I hit upon the idea of framing each block in a color that wasn't in the block which upped the odds that I'd be able to lay them out without having blobs of color coagulating in different corners.  Here's the top nearly finished. 

I don't have any of her focus fabric, but I do have a very similar green with tiny white polka dots.  I'm thinking green border as wide as the frames (one inch) followed by one inch of the neutral followed by a 2 inch color block border made from the framing fabrics and the green and then bind it all in the too dark purple that is seen in a couple of the blocks (hopefully fooling the eye into believing that the dark purple is there on purpose).

Suggestions?

Snowball Update

Babs thinks I should use some of the HSTs I've generated from this project in the quilt borders.  The first thing I thought of was pinwheels.  What do you think? 

Scrappy 9 Patch Part Deux

Just a few of the motifs quilted into the snowballs on my scrappy 9 patch over the weekend. I still have seven left to work, but at least all the decisions have been made about what to quilt where. Some of these designs have gone faster than others of course. No telling what this monster will look like when it is all finished, but it really has been fun to play with.

Current Project Updates

I've updated the pictures (haven't done any actual work mind you!) on the First Focus (quilt as you go) sampler and the WOW Row Robin. You can now see all the wow rows and all the blocks for the focus swap are spread out so you can see them too. I'll keep all the older photos in the album as I work on each project, but I think I'll update the sidebar links to always show whatever is the most current.

Wild Coffee has been updated as well but this is because I appliqued another block for it Saturday while my quilting friends were over. Three down, six to go! When I finish appliqueing the basic shapes on these blocks I get to do all the fancy work to them. I can hardly wait.

Rainbow Sherbet Summer

You might remember this quilt from way back when it was just a pile of inexpensive fabric purchased on the cheap from my favorite store. I was inspired from the moment I saw the fabric to assemble the top (it only took a couple of days from the time of purchase to completed top!) Quilting it up was fun and easy. I used a different simple motif in each diagonal line of color. Swirls, lady bugs, flowers, and Thorin's Leaves all went into this one.

Unlike most of the bed quilts I make, this one wasn't made for anyone in particular. Quilts have a way of finding their way home though, so I won't worry too much about it.