Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Rectangle Wrangle

I started the blocks for Bonnie Hunter's Rectangle Wrangle back in October, but only made a few and then put them aside while I worked on some other things. I got them back out and finished making the 84 center blocks. I LOVED working on these...each one was so exciting to see how it would turn out! Here the blocks are, all laid out, but not sewn together:
It's wonky because some of the edges on some of the blocks are turning up. They just wouldn't behave and lie flat!! This is a big quilt....it will measure 86" x 98" when done. Good thing, because it is going to the friend of my daughter Jess. His name is Nick and he's a big guy. He's getting it because he made me this great sculpture:
I just love my bird!! Hope he likes this quilt as much. After I put it together, I still need to add borders. Bonnie used Ohio Stars as her border for this quilt, but I'm not fond of that for this quilt, so will have to come up with something else. I ended up with a LOT of teensy 9 patches to add to my leader and ender quilt making these blocks. The only bad thing is I thought that since it was a big quilt, my scraps would diminish, but they didn't!! How DOES that happen?? I'm getting excited because I have quite a few projects that are nearing completion. I've been working on and off on so many projects that I wasn't getting any finishes, but it looks like they'll all be finishing around the same time!! Yay!!!! Well, off to bed now. Check back in a few days and hopefully I will have this quilt center all sewn together!!!

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

First Finish of the New Year

My Starry Nights in Winter quilt is all done! This pattern is in the book, At Home with Country Quilt by Cheryl Wall. You are going to be seeing a LOT of quilts here from that book. I am in love with them ALL! I took longer than normal quilting this one, as I wanted to on some different types of quilting.
You can see the quilting a little better in this pic. That is my one and only goal for the year...to improve my quilting. So, while I will still have quilts that I just do a quick meander over, you hopefully will be seeing more quilts with more detailed quilting on them! Practice makes perfect, right? On my sew date with Shellie and Judy, I grabbed a few ufo's in case I had some time to work on them. The first one I grabbed was some apple cores that I had cut out in Oct 2011. I started putting them together and decided that I was going to make a baby quilt out of them for my first grandbaby! Yes, my oldest daughter and her husband are expecting their first baby in July! Woot!! I have a HORRIBLE time with "cutesy" baby quilts. So, this little baby is probably going to end up with quilts that are all just small scrap quilts! lol This is an awful pic, but here is the top:
Now, off to grab another UFO and get stitching on that. I am hanging with Patrick today, so am restricted to whatever stitching I can do downstairs. As soon as I am able to work upstairs, I will get the baby quilt top all quilted and have another finish...woot woot!!!