Sunday, June 1, 2014

Quilt Blaster!

It's always nice when your husband says to 'bring your sewing machine in case it rains", when we're going on vacation for two weeks to Maine. Like I'm gonna argue??! NOT!!

I did, along with some projects. You know... those UFOs that you almost forgot you started and then found in a drawer or a box. I also have a baby shower quilt that needed to be done soon. This is the baby quilt, called "Jelly Belly Bucks". It was a buck a block challenge with a local quilt shop, where you buy the navy and white fabric strips, including thangles and instructions for a buck, then add one contrasting fabric (in my case it was the wacky jelly bean fabric. I had it pin-basted, and had the binding all set, so I set off machine quilting the individual blocks around certain parts of the HSTs. I meandered a curvy stitch along the light blue sashing, then added pink binding.

 The next project with I had all these blocks from a swap at my old guild.
  I decided to add yellow sashing with a navy blue fabric that had daisies in it, but used one daisy per square at the corners of the blocks.
 Then so it wouldn't get too yellow, I added a blue border. (I had all this fabric in a bag with the blocks, so I never had to shop for anything-- except I DID get some deals on fabric at Marden's in Ellsworth and Sanford, ME.
This is some of the fabric I got....these were all an additional 10% off.
 Some Christmasy type fabrics... very rich looking.
 Then I did have one more quilt to put together, I found these three fabrics for the backing and made a pieced backing. I used the purple as the main backing, put a tomato red stripe down the back and inserted some straggler blocks from the front's leftovers, then used aqua for the binding. I didn't have batting, so that's as far as it got.
 I did buy this just because I thought it was interesting.
 This autumn panel was adorable.
 then I got some Dr Suess fabric, and other fun fabrics, .... just because.
The last project was to connect the jar blocks together (we'd had them pinned to the back black fabric), and then I found the wood slat fabric, for the pantry shelves. This will be fun to finish (plan to work on it this weekend at a 6 hr event).
Very productive vacation.... kind of glad it rained/overcast for a few days.