Thursday, February 26, 2015

The Mystery Begins!

Have you ever done a Mystery Quilt?

This is my first.  It's a struggle for me to start a project without knowing what I'm making, but since it's a project that my local quilt guild is organizing, I decided to give it a try.

The fabric requirements include a light, medium, medium/dark, dark, and background.  I couldn't decide on just five fabrics, so I'm making mine scrappy.

I trimmed my half-square triangles to size today.


Cheers!

Friday, February 6, 2015

Assembly Line Sewing

Why is it that I can never make just one of something?  Whenever I find a cute tutorial for something I like, I automatically go into Assembly Line mode and crank out dozens.  Of course, then I get bored and have to find another project, but that's another story...

Anyway, when I saw this tutorial from Sew4Home, I was smitten... again...
They are the cutest little Lip Balm sleeves ever!


Using some left-over 2 1/2" strips from my bundle of Color Collection fabric, I dove into production mode and quickly cranked out a dozen of these.  They really are easy to make!

The instructions have you just use a D-ring at the top, but I opted for lobster-claw clasps so you can easily clip it to your purse, belt-loop, key ring, etc...

I've already managed to give all these away, so now I'm on to my second batch.  Time to start up the assembly line again!

Cheers!


Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Tasting Table Tuesday - 2 New Quilt Tops

I spent the "best-est" long weekend quilting with the "best-est" of friends at our annual quilting retreat.  Amongst the singing, laughing, eating, etc...  I managed to get some sewing done too.
Last week I showed you the shott cottons that I had cut, and here is the finished quilt top.

A Modern Churn Dash.


I absolutely love these shott cottons.  The colors change, depending on the angle you view them from.  It's hard to illustrate in a photo, but take a look at this block from straight on...


See how the background color changes when you view it from an angle?


It's all one fabric, but the warp threads and weft threads are two different colors - burgundy and turquoise.  It's really quite magical to see it change as you move around the quilt.  I'm so excited to quilt this one and see how the texture of the quilting stitches add to the effect!  Can't wait!
Now I just have to decide on a quilting design...

The other project I finished assembling was this circle quilt.


The blocks are made from this huge pack of Dimples Charm Squares that I won in an Andover contest a couple of years ago.


I'm not sure whether to do some free-motion quilting on this one, or maybe just lots of straight lines to offset all the curves in the piecing...

At least I've got a couple of projects to think about when I can't sleep at night.

Cheers!