Jars

A couple of years ago, I picked up a set of fruit & vegetable fabrics, from the free table at one of my guilds.  At the time, I knew I wanted to turn them into a jar quilt (something on my bucket list, but not something I wanted to actually go out and buy fabric for - so this was a perfect find).  They sat around for a while, until I needed a project to take to retreat last year.  I made more of the jars there, but ran out of fabric for the lids and background, so the blocks went into a box and languished for a while.

I finally pulled them back out for another retreat, added some fabric to replace the missing bits, found sashing fabric (a nice wood grain for the shelves) and trucked it all back to another retreat.

After sitting in the UFO closet for several months, I pulled it out last month and finished it, as part of my March finishing blitz. This will head out to Victoria's Quilts this month, where I hope it will find a good home.

One-block Wonder

This is  a mini one block wonder I've been working on. I had a lovely fabric, with a very small repeat.  So I thought I'd turn it into a one block wonder, but in miniature since hte repeat was so small.

Turns out I made a slight miscalculation - the pattern repeated across, as well as done, so I ended up with some duplicate blocks in the end. But I went with it anyway. Then I took the opportunity to try out the 3-D cube effect in the result. The first picture is how I designed it - but I realized when I got home that all of my cubes were upside down/inside out.  So I turned it over.  Now the lighting is right for the cubes, but my lights are in the lower right  I suspect that will be the final layout/orientation anyway - because I am not unsewing any of this.

Giant Scrappy Swoon

It's DONE!

This quilt started as a quilt-along on the Quilting Board. A giant scrappy swoon block, made from 3" squares of fabric.  I dug into my purple and gold fabrics, and managed to get the center block completed.  Then I realized that a 76x76" top wasn't all that useful to me, so I added some borders to turn it into a rectangle that would fit my bed.

This was started in March 2015, and I finished the top in February 2016.

The backing was a saga in itself.  First attempt was the completely wrong size, because I forgot I'd added the borders to the quilt and didn't bother to check before making the backing.  Second attempt went much better, and resulted in the backing seen here. The purple/black stripes are arranged in a fibonacci sequence.  The gold stripes at the top are made from all of my gold scraps - sewn together randomly to make a strip of fabric long and wide enough for this border.


May 1 Update:
My April UFO (#5) was already done, so I pulled this one from the "missed" list for one of my UFO challenges, and decided to finish it up for this month.  And Bonus - it is the UFO drawn by Judy over at Patchwork Times for May. So a double finish :)  I'll pick one of my other misses - either my Kaffe quilt, or 150 Canadian Women - to finish this month instead.  And in the meantime, I'm linking up over at Patchworks Times.

3D quilt

This quilt top comes from a class I took a year or 2 ago.  We made turned regular blocks into diamonds and created the 3-D blocks from those. The class included fabric for 1 block - which I managed to stretch to 2. Then they sat for months waiting for me to find other options to go along with the original fabric.

I finally pulled some out, took it to a retreat and made a few more blocks. The 3 9-patch blocks are where I got tired of doing the work to translate triangles into half-diamonds :)

I used an ombre fabric for the background, and matched it up (as best i could) to shade the same way the light is falling on the blocks - light in the upper right, and darkest in the lower left.  It's a nice lap size quilt, and now it just needs to be quilted - hopefully sometime this year as part of my UFO challenge.

April UFOs

Well, how adorable is this.  Both of my UFO challenges picked the same number this month - #5. Which just happens to be an "extra" I finished in January.  So, an easy month (already done)?  Or do I pick a replacement?  Time will tell.

Giant Scrappy Swoon just needs binding now.  And Kaffe Jacob's Ladder has a backing ready, but it really wants custom quilting. I'm not making any commitments today, since I didn't finish last month's plan and I'm feeling a bit behind on customer work right now.  Maybe next week I'll have something more definitive than "something will probably get finished this month".

In the meantime, I'll just bask in the glory of my 3rd finish for March.  My scrappy pineapple quilt is complete and ready to be donated.  Quilted with a rainbow variegated thread, and my favourite "Swirls" pantograph.

And I love the flannel backing I found for it in my stash.

Guild Mystery Reveal

One of my guilds was doing a mystery this year, and I decided to play along. The mystery called for 5 colours, with very little guidance about the various relationships. One looked light a background fabric, based on colour sample given. So I picked a white fabric with coloured dots from my stash.  Then I pulled 4 more colours which matched the dots, thinking I would end up with a scrappy, colourful quilt.

Well, clue 1 came along, I started to regret my decision.  This block was not exactly what I was hoping for. 

But I persevered and played along for a few more months. There were some better successes in my choices, which actually used my background fabric in some pretty combinations.

Then the reveal came out.  That horrible bright yellow from clue 1 is actually a secondary background colour.  Um, No!  So, I considered tossing the whole thing, but I hate to give up. And the quilt was really pretty, when done with decent colours.

Instead, I figured I had enough fabric to replace the yellow with my original background colour.

I re-made clue 1, and a few other bits that used the yellow fabric, and here is my finished top.

Not wanting to waste the other blocks, I decided to turn them into a quiltie for the guild. Some baby girl will be bright and cheerful in this quilt.

And the other bits I replaced will keep a boy warm.

Blackford's Beauty

As I mentioned last time, I'm trying to push a few UFOs through the longarm in between customer work these days. This top was a block party project a couple of years ago. I provided the fabric and instructions for the block to the rest of the group, and they each made a block for me.  Plus my own, that made 12 blocks, which I think finished at 13" (they were a weird size).  The pattern is a variation on Blackford's Beauty which I found in a magazine.

I decided to set it with a narrow sashing and red corner stones to complete the diagonal lines in the block. Originally I had planned a piano key border from all the coloured fabrics, but when I tried that it seemed to heavy for the rest of the quilt. So I chopped it in half and turned it into this square border instead.

The quilt finished at 55x72", just a bit too big for Victoria's Quilts. So I backed it with some fabric I had on hand (a wide back, which I have no idea why I bought it originally, but it was the perfect colour for this quilt). A scrappy binding finished it off - it seemed appropriate for a scrappy quilt. And I'll donate it to Victims of Violence through one of my guilds next month.