Before and After - Quilt Finished!

This the finished top for the special little girl.  I call this the "before" picture.

I finished all the machine quilting (all in the ditch around all the images).  I was trimming it up in preparation for adding the purple binding and managed to slice through part of the quilt!!  My rotary cutter never works that well through many layers when I want it too....

Anyway, I cut off the top three rows of the quilt, reattached the border (had to do some piecing as it had to be longer now)  and added some scraps of the backing that I luckily had lef  over as well as some batting.

This is the quilt all finished and it looks better a little shorter and it's  still long enough for a 3 year old!  Ended up being about 40 x 60 inches.

The little girl has a unicorn that she carries everywhere so I took the cut-off part and made a small quilt for the unicorn. 

They were both a big hit but especially the unicorn quilt.

II decided that I would sew these 2 tops together for a good sized quilt for my daughter.  I put black binding on it and am sewing it on and hoping to get it in the mail.  It has music fabric on the back in case she doesn't like this side.  Both she and her husband are into music.

In the meantime, I am madly machine quilting a number of charity quilts.  Hopefully I will have the batting for the 10 baby quilt tops I have finished sometime next week!

 

A Day of Dyeing!!

I have been busily spray basting quilts and doing some  initial machine quilting -- whew!  My Juki 2010Q is a dream to work with.  Even without a walking foot, it does better than my faithful Bernina 170 with nice even quilting.  Right now I am just stabilizing the tops with straight line stitching but look forward to the free motion which I enjoy more.

I spent the day yesterday dyeing with a friend.  I wanted to experiment with mixing Golden Yellow with Sun Yellow to see if I could get something approximating Tangerine (all ProChem names).  I used too high a concentration though so may overdye those darkest pieces.  I use a lot of  yellow in my quilting.   The amazing part to me with the yellows is that they looked a lot more splotchy before I washed them.  They are pretty even in color which is what I expect from yellow.  I did a gradation of a new navy blue that I got from ProChem which I thought was a pure color but isn't noted as such on their website.  I must say that there are no hints of anything but the blue in all the concentrations so maybe.  I like it better than the Deep Navy which is a pure color.  To my eye, this looks like it tends more to the red than the other navy but will have to check my book where I keep my records.  The darkest is an 8% concentration.  The purples are two different mixed dyes from ProChem.  The one I really liked and thankfully have the most of is Eggplant.  It doesn't give as much of a solid as some colors and acts a bit like fuchsia does but you can't spot the colors that make it up.  The Deep Purple on the other hand does break down into its components of red and blue.  I will definitely be ordering some of the Eggplant as I really like it!

Altogether I did 28 yards of fabric yesterday which is nowhere near a record for one day of dyeing!!  (I think 70 is my record but I was younger and did have my ankle problems then.)

Here is a close-up of the Eggplant at about an 8% concentration.  Just the purple I wanted!!  I suspect it is a combination of Grape (a pure color) and one of the blacks.

 

I Spy Done !

I had enough of this Christmas fabric for three quilts this size.  I managed to finish two of them but still need to make the blocks for the third.  I used my hand dyed green for the triangles.

I didn't have enough of the green for the second quilt and decided against the red as I would pre-wash and was too lazy to do that!

The second iteration with more of the white.  I have used up 25 yards of white in my latest binge of quilt making and luckily found another huge bolt of white with the dye stains which I just cut around!!  Bad idea to store the whites in the basement!

Each morning I worked on the I Spy quilt and finally decided that 21 rows were enough -- it was beginning to look too long and skinny.  Sewing the rows together was tedious as each row took about 20 pins to make sure everything lined up.

Took this picture with my phone so a little wonky but the top is finished and I still have blocks left over!  I do overachieve in cutting.  I decided the leftover blocks would make good borders on neo-natal quilts.  They were so much work (all that fussy cutting), I want to use them all!  The top measures 40 x 72.

I have been busy the last two days cutting the backs for all the charity quilts, the I Spy quilt and a big quilt that I think will be a Christmas gift.  I cut batting for all these as well (11 tops altogether).  I have spray basted 7 of these.  I actually have consolidated a bit and have three empty boxes (good sized) so must be making some inroads in getting rid of excess fabric!!

 

I Spy!!

This is the beginning of an "I Spy" quilt for a special girl.  I found these blocks when looking for projects to work on when laid up this summer.  I made two quilts 11 years ago with more of these blocks and have enough left for a good sized quilt for 3 1/2 year old.
 

Making quite a bit of progress on the top  It has been a challenge putting it together as I tried to put pairs together so that I didn't have quite as much variation in the surrounding triangles.  I had randomly added the triangles to the hexagons.  I still have about 10 more rows to go and then I will start sewing the rows together.  I do a little each day but am still trying to make a dent in all those stack and whack blocks I have.  I am currently working on 3 from the same fabric as I had 117 blocks!!

Another top from the blocks that were a little larger than the baby quilt blocks.

This is the baby quilt made from the smaller version of the above blocks.  I have actually been dipping quite a bit into my hand dyed fabric lately for these quilts and may have to dye some more yellow, purple and green!

A Couple More Tops and a Random Block!

This top and the next one are made from more blocks I found from summer.  Of course I wanted a different set and think this one really shows off the blocks to full advantage.  I haven't yet decided whether I will do them individually or combine them into a queen sized quilt as I still have a few leftover blocks.  I am leaning to the queen sized quilt (but doing each half separately and then sewing the together after machine quilting).

The start of another baby quilt!

This is a block I made a  long time ago in a Paula Nadelstern class.  It was very wonky and has been sitting on my design wall for years.  Yesterday, I decided it was really an 8 sided shape if I trimmed some of the edges which I did.  I also tightened up the middle so it's not quite symmetrical anymore.  It will be a pillow cover.  It's about 13 inches square and made up of many fussy cut fabrics! 

Two More Done!

I found a plastic bag full of these four patches as well as the makings for more.  Couldn't remember what kind of quilt I made before so looked at my Pinterest page with all of my quilts!

I didn't do exactly the same set as I rarely do!  I went through my bag of blue 2 1/2 inch strips and found enough of these to surround the four patches.

I thought I had given away all my 1 1/2 inch strips but found quite a few and just sewed them randomly together.  With my Juki 2010, it was super fast and they don't stretch like they do on my Bernina.  I basically made the whole baby quilt  top in a few hours..

I found another bag of blocks I did this summer and it contained several more plastic bags filled with blocks!  These were pretty flower blocks.

I needed to decide on background and fillers betwee the blocks.  This was my first thought.

This is what I thought I was going to do when I stopped for the day.

I ended up doing this, however as I wanted the flower blocks to be shown at their best and the other sets were too distracting for my eyes.  I do like radial symmetry. This was also done in just a few hours.

Next are some large posie blocks -- 71 of them which will be made into 2 good size quilts for Sweet Charity.  The fabric for these is a bit boring.  

I am a compulsive finisher and want to get all these blocks made up into tops at least.  I really know now that I really have to like the fabric to do stack an whacks justice and not bore myself to death.

 

Three Baby Quilts and one Sweet Charity Quilt

I am trying to finish all the UFOs that I have accumulated over the summer and last spring.  I have made a couple of quilts already from this fruit fabric and found enough blocks to make one more.  As usual, I try to do different sets and also sets that use as many of the blocks as I can.  Here is a new beginning!

I tried to find a variety of fabrics to surround the blocks, all from my various scrap bags.  I found enough so that I didn't have to cut any more strips.

Here it is laid out before sewing together.  Had to decide what to do for the outside triangles and finally decided to use one of my darker had dyes.

This is the fabric that was used.

It's done and a pretty good size as the blocks were fairly large for posie blocks.

I made a couple of quilts from this fabric last summer but had enough posie blocks left over to do a baby quilt.  I used some of my hand dyed green to make the four patches.  Using a scrappy four patch took too much attention from the posies.

Laid out and ready to go!

Finished it with more of the green hand dyed fabric.

I had a ton of this rose fabric which has a pretty small repeat.  I had made a bunch of posie blocks when recovering from my surgery and decided they would make good baby quilts.  I made two quilts (shown below) and cut fabric for the backing of both of those (40 x 40 inches) and still have enough left over to make kaleidoscope blocks!  Won't be doing that any time soon!

I did a controlled scrappy set for this one and used some of the above fabric for the border.

This is even more scrappy!