2023 Quilt Along

For the past several years, I have designed a quilt - either a mystery quilt, or a quilt along/block of the month - for a couple of guilds I belong to.  This year's quilt-along was a bit challenging. Usually I use EQ8 for designing, but it doesn't play nicely with non-standard settings, and this one was definitely non-standard. So I reverted to the trust pencil and graph paper to sketch it out.   And I enlisted the help of a pattern tester to make sure it was correct, and achievable.

This one is called "A Wing and a Prayer", because I mentioned to a quilting friend that I pulled fabric from my stash that "looked like enough" to make my version as I designed it. So, before I knew the fabric requirements.  I got lucky for the most part.  I ran out of background twice, but my fill-in matches pretty well, so you can hardly tell. And the binding is not what I would have chosen, but it was what I had enough of to make it. So it has a little flange of my 3rd background fabric, and the main binding is the blue.

The center section is made as a square, then turned on point, and the corners with the 9-patches were added, and finally the top/bottom border. The quilt ended up 66x90" - a bit bigger than I planned, so I also offered instructions & fabric requirements for smaller versions - a baby quilt that ends with the triple border around the center square, and a lap quilt without the top & bottom borders.

There are 2 months left in the quilt along, and I can't wait to see what everyone has done with it.

Down on the Corner

 I participated in a virtual mystery quilt in January, with Quilt-agious quilt shop.  They do one every year, and this is my second time.  The pattern was a lot of fun to put together, and the weekend was great fun.  The finished quilt had 12 blocks and was sized for a double (queen?) bed.  I decided to split the blocks in half to make two donation quilts for Victoria's Quilts Canada. I added borders to bring the half quilts up to size, and substitutes a couple of blocks on the second one to make up for the missing bits, so that I didn't have to remake any blocks.

I do wish I had used a different background for the stars, but that is the risk with a mystery quilt.

Goats in Pyjamas

 I was inspired by a pattern the other day, and decided to make myself a little baby goat in pyjamas. The pattern is from Art East, and it is just the cutest thing!  She was just the right size for a laptop bag, so I used some faux-suede I had sitting around for the background/body of the bag, and a few bits and pieces from my scraps for the goat herself.

My new laptop fits perfectly, and Chloe is an adorable addition.