Orange You Glad It's Finished?

Well I sure am!  The Vertical Chevron Quilt is finally finished. This quilt will be a crib quilt for a special addition coming later this fall/early winter. It measures right around 32x48.

The last time I mentioned this quilt it had been quilted and I was awaiting a binding selection. We decided on the Stitched Road Granite by Art Gallery - what a great binding this made!

This quilt is made up of fabrics from my stash. Since teal is one of my favorite colors and I am always drawn to teals when just browsing I had ample teals. I did have to purchase most of the bright orange fabrics as I didn't have many of my own although I knew I wanted to take a look at a few fabrics by Lily Ashbury, she has amazing selections when looking for fabrics saturated in colors especially pinks, orange and greens. The white paisley on orange is one of her fabrics from the Folklore line which I adore! I headed down to my lqs and found some great Botanics in tangerine that went great with this quilt as well.

This particular crib quilt was straight line quilted and lined with a super soft minky dot backing in Charcoal. Thankfully I did not experience the minky pulling through to the white front fabrics this time around! Remember the dog quilt with they navy minky - I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous. Thankfully everything worked out just as it is supposed to.

Perfect for a winter baby! Since I enjoyed working with these fabrics so much and had a few scraps leftover, I went ahead and made a coordinating pillow using the fabrics from the quilt top. This pillow was featured at Quilt Story: Fabric Tuesday!!!

If you guessed this pillow had an invisible zipper you would be right on. Honestly I will use every opportunity to practice the invisible zipper! The backing of this pillow is coordinating charcoal minky dot. The pillow is a bit of a surprise so I hope it will go over well.

This was the first 60 degree triangle quilt I've done. This pillow was small - only 16 inch square. The triangles were '3 inch finished' - I'm still not really sure what that refers to but I saw it on the ruler I was using. I'm thinking it must be the horizontal top (or bottom) of the triangle as my math was way off and I ended up needing way more rows both horizontally and vertically to make up a usable pillow sham. I did straight line quilting across all the seams, which is a look I really like on this type of quilt.

Don't mind the lumps - I don't have a 16 inch pillow insert so its just some folded up towels in there!

Link Parti's 

Take a look at the linki parti's I get down with here or by clicking on the Linki Parti's link above. Linking up to Stitch by Stitch, Quilt Story My Quilt Infatuation, Richard and Tanya Quilts, Whoop Whoop Friday, Quokka Quilts and crazy mom quilts 

Best,
Heather

The Same Breakfast Every Day

I didn't quite make my goal for Finish Up Friday - at least not the goal that I had set out to complete! I got pretty close though and I'm not 'in' to rushing just to get done especially if the quilt is for someone else. I did finish the quilt top and added straight-line quilting to the Vertical Chevron Quilt, formerly known as the aqua, orange, grey quilt (I also named the quilt!). Just the binding and lots of clean-up; minky dust is absolutely everywhere! I'm waiting on the new mama to let me know about the binding and I'm planning something a little extra before I send this one out the door next week.... I am just not finished with these pretty fabrics yet! This quilt will be the crib quilt for a special addition this November/December.

Speaking of babies - our son Tyler has been at Marine Core boot camp since August. Sounds like things are going alright for him; he doesn't have a lot of time to write and hasn't been allowed to call since the first week. He is not used to the '20 second showers' and 'same thing for breakfast every single day,' but says that he 'doesn't mind the yelling' - I guess we must have broke him in for the yelling bit. And what's so wrong with eating the same thing every day for breakfast? I've been eating half an English muffin with peanut butter for breakfast for literally years! Sometimes I have my peanut butter with oatmeal or steel cut oats instead, but always, always peanut butter. Moving on. He was quite sick when he got there and had to go on Rest but has been feeling much better lately. We'll be seeing him on his graduation from boot camp in early November... it sorta feels like a long way off even though September has just flown by. When he left in August he only had the clothes on his back, no cellphone, gaming system, favorite snacks, not a thing. After graduation we should be able to speak with him more regularly as I think he can have his cellphone back. Here we all are at his 'Good-bye & kick-ass Tyler' party this August - it is one of my favorite pictures ever! And look, there's my hubby, sans the dog costume!

And here's the cake, because there is always cake! That's how we roll

Link Parti's 

Take a look at the linki parti's I get down with here or by clicking on the Linki Parti's link above. Linking up to Sew Can She, TwoLoQuilting, Blossom Heart Quilts, Fresh Squeezed Fabrics, Sew Fresh Quilts and Freshly Pieced 

Best,
Heather

A Winning Streak!

I have really been on a winning streak lately... it's a little creepy. I hope it stops soon because you know how things have a way of evening themselves out.... and I'd hate to see what the opposite of this streak is!  On my birthday post I mentioned winning a gift certificate from Pink Chalk Studios - an awesome prize! Reminds me that I need to do a little shopping over there...  A week later at the dog walk I won a raffle prize which was about a years supply of dog treats, also very awesome.  A couple of weeks ago I visited Nancy Zieman's blog - now Nancy is a Wisconsin sewing staple, she also is a huge deal at the Madison Quilt Expo which I mentioned in an earlier post - Nancy was giving away all kinds of awesome stuff to promote her new book Quick Column Quilts. I headed back over there on Saturday to take a look at the winner list and wouldn't you know it I won the mother of all prizes, a new Baby Lock Tempo Sewing Machine!! There was much screaming, squealing and heart palpitations followed by taking deep breaths. All I can say is wow! Maybe I should just buy a lottery ticket or two just to make sure the streak is over...

Quilts

Since Nancy's new book is about column quilts I thought it would be appropriate to share a recent column quilt finish of mine. The Glimma Quilt was a kit from Fat Quarter Shop - they have the best kits over there! 

This quilt was supposed to have an a white border between the green stripe fabric and the binding, which by the way is Michael Miller Couture in Mermaid. It was already big enough for a twin size bed so I nixed the extra border....  The fabrics are from Glimma by Lotta Jansdotter.  There were lots of scraps leftover so I pieced this backing with Kona Ash and Michael Miller Couture Mauve. I like the backing enough that I would use it as a front! 

 

And, all folded up nicely - gosh I love a teal binding! 

My favorite part of this quilt is the quilting - it took forever, but totally worth it. I free motion quilted the sashing in a random square pattern. I quilted each block differently. The texture is really cool. It's killing me not to wash it to find out how it will look when washed, but I've added this quilt to my shop so I'd rather send it to its new home crisp and new! Someone else will be able to enjoy the amazing crinklyness of this one. Yes, I am sure that crinklyness is a word - I have just used it. The solids totally show off the wonky, improv-y quilting on the backing. Here's a close up of the free motion quilting on the front

When finished with the quilt I still had enough scraps to make another project. I used them to create this improv log cabin block quilted pillow. Actually I pieced and quilted this pillow before quilting the bed quilt... it was also a bit of a practice piece since I hadn't used this square quilting pattern before!  

And I still have more leftover scraps from this kit! Fat Quarter Shop is always generous with their kits - thankfully because I've had plenty of whoopsies  and needed that extra fabric! Sometimes I have even used up all the fabric! I can't say enough good things about Fat Quarter Shop! The Glimma Quilt and Pillow are both available in my shop. 

With all the excitement I've still been able to make some great progress on my teal, orange and grey quilt. Blocks are all lined up on my design wall - ok, its actually the floor - and several rows have been sewn together! I hope to have it ready for Finish Up Friday. I don't have any progress photos - I sew in the basement and it gets dark early now so my photo time has been greatly reduced... And now you know, I sew in the dark, in the basement, I am a vampire sewer. Oh well, suits me just fine and I'm happy to have my own space even if it is dark and in the basement. Summer has returned to Wisconsin again... I've been out enjoying it so progress has been a little slow. I did some last minute tweaking of the fabric so I'll leave you with that

Link Parti's 

Take a look at the linki parti's I get down with here or by clicking on the Linki Parti's link above. Linking up to Quilt Story, Fresh Squeezed Fabrics, Freshly Pieced, My Quilt Infatuation, Two Little Aussie Birds, Richard and Tanya Quilts, Can I get a Whoop Whoop Friday Vals Quilting Studio and Sew Fresh Quilts.

A Gaggle of Ghastlies!

Ok, 'gaggle' technically refers to at least five geese according to wikipedia.  I don't have five geese here but I do have five finished Ghastlies mini quilts!  Gaggle sounds appropriate anyways so totally using it... and with gusto! Here's the finished gaggle of Ghastlies mini quilts. This gaggle was featured at Richard and Tanya Quilts: Finish Up Friday!!!

The two minis on the top were made for Halloween last year. The three on the bottom were new additions this year. The little girl on the right gave me the most trouble, I think because of her sharp angle at the bottom but in the end she turned out just fine. My favorite is probably the fellow with the pink martini, followed by the gal with the umbrella. The backings were all done in coordinating prints - I love all of the backings!

These were a lot of fun to do and I'd love to do a full size quilt with this print in the future. I don't think I could bear to part with it though. I quilted these guys all in simple straight lines, some in the ditch, some in a top stitching fashion and some just-winging-it style.

I'm still hoping to finish my Ghastlies pillow cases before Halloween too. I hope I'm not saying that a month from now! Here's a peek at the pink scallop edging I created with my mom a couple weeks ago for the pillow cases

Before they are attached to the pillow cases they will be folded in half to create a double scallop or cut in half and then attached for a single scallop look. Not too sure how its going to work out just yet... In the meantime I've been working on my orange, teal and grey quilt project. The charcoal minky backing arrived yesterday from fabric.com. I have all the white squares marked down the center with a pencil line, just need some serious sewing machine time to sew together all the squares.

I'm looking forward to sewing the squares and my goal would be to have them all sewn together by the end of the weekend so that I can start sewing together blocks sometime next week. Looking forward to some fall activities this weekend, football, more football, and maybe even spending a little time at the apple orchard picking out mums, apples and winter squash! It feels like an apple crisp kind of weekend!

Link Parti's 

Take a look at the linki parti's I get down with here or by clicking on the Linki Parti's link above. Linking up to Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Richard and Tanya Quilts, Sew Fresh Quilts, TweLoQu's MOP, Val's Quilting Studio

Sew much to do!

I think it's fair to say that this weekend was our first fall weekend here in southern Wisconsin. We turned on the fireplace, I dug out my wool socks and flannel shirts, switched from white to red wine and made chili for the Packer game today - sounds like fall to me! I love fall so all is good! I had planned to work on my Ghastlies pillow cases this weekend but we had a busy Saturday. This was the weekend of the cocker spaniel fundraiser we have been looking forward to. We woke up around 5am on Saturday to make the two hour trek to the event. My hubby and I both volunteer for the rescue with a bunch of other great folks - we all worked hard yesterday and accomplished a lot. My hubby's favorite job for the event - Mascot.  He loves it!

The weather was cool but not rainy, there seemed to be a lot of people in attendance and an excellent time was had by all. My hubby and I came home with lots of goodies from the silent auction. The dog quilt I made sold in the silent auction too - It felt really good to have made something for the auction.  We have enough dog treats, toys and collars until the next event in 2015. I cannot tell you how cute our Laci and Peanut were when we unloaded the stuff and started unpacking. It was like Christmas for these guys. There are toys laying everywhere right now!  My favorite part about the event was taking our 12 year old Peanut to the lure course. If you aren't familiar with a lure course - it's an instinct testing event where a flag or squirrels tail (fake, fake, fake) is pulled around a large course on a string by a pulley system. Some dogs are in love with the 'chase' - Peanut loved the chase and the catch. For an older guy he bounded after that tail barking all the way until he caught it and then shook it up and then did it again, round and round he went. Laci understood the concept - she chased it but quickly decided it wasn't very lady-like to chase squirrel tails and sniffed the grass instead. They were both cute cute cute in their different ways!

Ghastlies Improv

Last year about this time I made two mini quilts using Ghastlies fabric by Alexander Henry. They ended up being my first improv blocks ever!

 

I especially like the guy on the right carrying the pink martini! I've had these two guys listed in my shop for just about a year and finally sold them on Friday. The buyer asked that I made three additional mini's to complete the set. Even though it wasn't the Ghastlies project I was planning on, it seemed like pretty good timing. My stuff can always come later (tell that to the material I bought for my purple spring throw pillows)! I got to work today on creating three different mini quilts, starting with the following prints from the Ghastlies fabric

Once I had my girls picked out and cropped from the fabric, I grabbed my scrap bins of orange and grey/black and got to work.

Each one will have a totally different personality. I've put together and ripped apart twice the 'pointing girl' on the left. For some reason her shape is tricky to me... or I just keep making really bad choices with her... maybe she isn't really pointing, but giving me the finger instead (the nerve!). I might take her apart again or scrap her altogether if she keeps it up. Ah hem, the other two are coming along quite nicely.

I also had some time to work on the teal, orange and grey bundle I showed you a couple weeks ago! Here's a little work from today on those pretty fabrics. I've ordered some charcoal grey minky to complete this quilt.

The Ghastlies mini's and teal, orange and grey quilt will be my wip this week. I plan to complete the mini's by Friday and hope to get a solid start on completing the teal, orange and grey quilt with a planned finish of sometime next week for that one.

Getting Linki With

Quilt Story: Fabric Tuesday
Sew Can She: Show off Saturday
Stitch by Stitch: Anything Goes Monday
Tweety Loves Quilting: MOP
Val's Quilting Studio

crazy mom quilts

Happy Birthday to Me and a Friday Finish

Hey it's my birthday!  September 11 that's my day! 

It’s my birthday and for me birthdays always mean cake and wine…. Also acceptable is wine and cake – either way. And just to clarify, not whining, but w-i-n-e! Cake demand request to my hubby went in earlier this week so we’ll see what he comes up with! I think there will even be dinner out included at an awesome Cajun restaurant nearby. Liliana’s can make any day feel special. Birthdays. Are. Good.

Also, in the theme of presents, gifts and good things, I was a WINNER this week (do you see the word w-i-n-e in there??). Pink Chalk Studios hosted a studio showcase this summer and I was one of 50 winners. Thanks to them for their generous giveaway! I love their What Goes With What series which shows off coordinating solids for different designer fabric lines.

Ok, last thing about presents… or gifts…. Last week I told you I was planning to attend the Madison Quilt Expo. It’s pretty much as close as you can get to quilt-y overload! I didn't get nearly as much stuff as I did last year. Here’s my haul from this year

Those zippers were just 50c each – they are all long enough to use for quilted pillows. This year at the Expo I hardly bought any fabric, just 4 charm packs and 1 fat quarter… that’s hardly any right? My mom came down to attend and stay for a visit. She brought my dad and their cocker spaniel, Chloe, to visit too. Just to clarify neither of them (dog or dad) went to the quilt expo. It’s no wonder I didn't get much sewing done last week…. Lots of shopping, eating and touring the countryside while they were here. My mom and I did start a Halloween sewing project before they went home. I know, I already said that I was done with Halloween projects this year but what the heck I'm going for it. My mom came home from the Expo with a Quick Points scallop ruler. I pulled these cute Ghastlies fabrics so that we could try it out. Another WIP to add to 'the list.' We used the ruler to make some cute scallops from the pink fabric; it worked really well although I think I need some practice sewing curves. I'm not usually a 'frilly' person and don't do much - read never - with edging, piping, rickrack or whatnot. I'm not sure what the scallops and rest of the fabrics will be yet, I was thinking Halloween pillow cases for our bed maybe. I've never made pillow cases before, seems doable though. If you know of a tutorial for king size pillow cases, point me in the right direction!

Back to the Expo. I went to two modern quilt lectures, one of them hosted by Lee of Freshly Pieced! I got to see a bunch of her quilts from the new book she co-authored, Vintage Quilt Revival: 22 Modern Designs From Classic Blocks, in person. Oh yeah, I bought that too…. But that was it, I swear! I love that you can mingle traditional with modern and still consider yourself a modern quilter.

Now the Finish

My Finish Up Friday is a little early this week (did I mention the wine… I’m planning ahead here). I managed to finish quilting the Argyle Pinwheel Pillow, install an invisible zipper for the second time ever, (side note - I hope by this time next year I will be able to do this without reviewing each step because there are a lot of steps!), and put it all together for photographs. Yay! When quilting the bottom half of the pillow I mimicked the quilting on the top only the lines were going in the opposite direction. It looked better on top, there was a great big open space in the lower left that I didn't like. I added the three straight lines going in the opposite direction to fill the area. Much better! It actually ended up a better size for an 18 inch pillow insert instead of the 20 inch I thought would work. No matter. I’m happy with this little creation, I really like how the band wraps right around the pillow and disappears.

And

This pillow is available in my etsy shop.

Linking up this week with 

Crazy Mom Quilts - Finish Up Friday
Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Pretty Bobbins
Richard and Tanya Quilts
Sew Many Ways
TGIFF at Quilt Matters

Argyle Pinwheel Pillow

Pinwheel Progress

After a crazy week last week - house guests both human and dog, the Madison Quilt Expo and a short work week - I've made some progress on the orphaned HST blocks that I shared last week! I went ahead with the pinwheels I was considering since it has been awhile since the last time I did pinwheels. They were small, only 3 inches when finished and squared. How cute are these mini pins?

I had kind of an asymmetrical float-y mod pinwheel idea but not any real plan. I decided to put the pinwheel blocks on point surrounded by bright pink on a neutral background - it was the first time I've done a project with blocks on point. The oat-y solid is Linen by Timeless Treasures and the bright pink is called Cherry. The solid colored blocks are also 3 inch square.

Once I had all the blocks sewn together and had cut off the pointy tips all the way around my block I had a rectangle 8x19 in size. For the top and bottom of the pillow top, I cut a 19 inch WOF and then cut two strips the first around 4.5 inches and second around 8.5 inches. I attached the smaller strip to the top and the larger strip to the bottom and squared it up so that I had a 19 inch square. Perfect size for a 20 inch pillow insert! I like to make my pillows slightly smaller than the insert so that they have a nice pouf to them. When I stood back and looked at the finished top I realized it really had an argyle feel and reminded me of some of my old sweaters when I was a kid. I do love argyle! And with fall coming, it's no wonder I had sweaters on my mind.

Once I got it all basted and ready for quilting, I realized there was a lot of negative space to work with! I was thinking of something simple and straight... I just couldn't see a curve-y pattern working out very well even though curve-y patterns are more fun to quilt. I've finished quilting the part above the pinwheel block. The left most side has two more quilting lines. I liked it that way so I went with it. I'm top stitching the little pinwheel blocks. All of the quilting is done in a very light pink thread.

Now how to finish the quilting on the bottom half of the pillow... I'm still deciding on that! This entire project has been kind of a 'wing it' affair... and has been a lot of fun. I have been winging it more often and I like it!

Low Volume Swap

On a less bright - but happy - note, have you heard about the Tone It Down Low Volume Charm Swap over at Patch the Giraffe and From Bolt to Beauty blogs!?  If not, check it out and get ready for all kinds of low volume eye candy!

Linking Up with

  

Three Times the Charm Indeed

This weeks finish is from the book 3 Times the Charm, Book 2 by Me and My Sister Designs. Super fun book, lots of small projects with easy to follow instructions all made with charm packs. I've made the dog quilt found in the book three times. I think I'm going to need an intervention from the dog quilt, I may be a little obsessed. Needless to say I really like the pattern. The quilt features 25 pieced dog blocks. There are lots of little pieces for each dog. I focused on two or three dogs at a time so that I could keep them straight and not end up with funny looking dogs... because then I have to get my seam ripper... followed by grumble, grumble, grumble. Focusing on two or three dogs at a time prevents grumbling.

Here's my latest dog quilt all finished and just in time! This particular quilt is being donated to a silent auction fundraiser next weekend. This quilt was featured at Stitch by Stitch: Anything Goes Monday!!

The first two times I made this quilt I quilted the sashing and background in a tight meandering pattern. I liked the look but I wanted to do something a little different for this quilt so I chose an allover loopy loo design which I think is a design that can be used on pretty much any project!

I've done this quilt with a navy background in the same pastel colored dogs which give the quilt a whole different look, you can see bits of in in my Just Another Dog Quilt post. The pastel fabrics in all three dog quilts are from Chez Moi's Coquette line from Moda. It's possible I like that line a little too much! The white and green solids are from Kona. Snow and Celery I believe. You may remember in my last post I was deciding on which binding to use. I did end up going with the yellow, which is called Maize by Robert Kaufman Pure Organics. And I got to use a pretty new notion! Have you seen the new wonder clips by Clover that come in PINK for breast cancer awareness? Seriously. Pink. I can not resist pink. I've been getting by with 20 red clips for awhile, but it's never enough. I only use the clips for binding but with only 20 I would have to stop and rearrange the clips quite a few times depending on the size of the quilt. When I saw a box of 50 pink clips I knew they were meant for me!! More on these gems and their pink friends later.

I really love how the butter colored binding looks against the pink backing.

Perfect fit!  I'm so excited for this latest dog quilt to go to its new home :)  Here's a sneak peek of my new project

Linking up with 

Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts 

Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Quokka Quilt - TGIFF
Val's Quilting Studio - FMQ
Anything Goes Monday - Stitch by Stitch
Richard and Tanya Quilts

Blossom Heart Quilts 

This week's Work In Progress

I've had a little group of bonus half square triangles (HST) hanging around for a couple of months. These little guys were bonus pieces from the aqua star table runner I made earlier this spring. The bonus HSTs were cut from the points of the star blocks. One side of the bonus HST is a printed weave fabric in an oatmeal color and the other half is a multi-colored houndstooth print in aqua, bubblegum, orange and green. Both prints were from Michael Miller's Textured Basics. 

The bonus blocks are small, only 1 3/4 inches each once I pressed and squared them. No piece too small to save right? There were 23 of them. Now what to do... Whatever it will be it will be a small project. I'm thinking of pinwheels... and maybe a pillow. I've done a number of HST projects recently but none of them were pinwheels. Here's the little guys waiting to be pressed.  

This is a busy week, the Madison Quilt Expo starts on Thursday and goes through Saturday. I went to the show one day last year and looked around and bought things. I might try to dive in and learn something this year by taking a class or two. There were lots of cool looking classes on modern quilting and scraps so I hope to check a few of those out while there... Last year I had a little too much much fun doing a full day of shopping, if that's possible! They also have an area to work on charity quilts; I hope to spend some time working on them this year. 

This will be my first linkup at Freshly Pieced Modern Quilting blog!  Check out her Nordic deer block - are you kidding me, how cute is that!

Just Another Dog Quilt

I have made a lot of dog quilts in the last year... really, I have made two quilts for dogs inspired by the Dog Daze pattern from Stitches of Love Quilting and three dog quilts for humans from the book 3 Times The Charm, Book 2.

 

Both of the quilts inspired by the Dog Daze pattern were a lot of fun to do! The Mr. P quilt was the first of the two and it came out of necessity. Mr. P is our pup Peanut. Whenever I was working on my sewing projects Peanut was always claiming the projects as his own, laying on fabric piles, dragging pieces of fabric around, taking a nap on half finished projects... so I just decided to make him his very own quilt! Now if he's getting a little grabby with my projects in my sewing room I just go grab his quilt and find a place where he can't get into trouble and he plops right down on it. He love's his blanket and knows that it is all his; no other dog is allowed to use it, or look at it...  Mr. P is not the best at sharing. The house, dog and name are all appliqued. This is a great scrap project; a lot of the fabrics in these two quilts came from my scrap bins. 

They both have minky backs which makes them soft and snuggly for napping. The Jake quilt has a navy minky dot back... it was quite an adventure quilting it. As soon as I started to quilt the white background fabric I noticed a very dark navy line showing through to the front following my stitches. The tiny minky threads pulling through to the front. Not good. I ended up quilting the white background with the backing on top, in other words, I quilted it upside down. This was tricky since I needed to avoid the house, letters and stick (Jake loved sticks). I ended up outlining the appliqued pieces with safety pins and then maneuvering through the pins. Thankfully it worked! I have heard of a few other ways to prevent the minky from showing through, but this is what fixed the problem for me. 

The quilt pattern from the book 3 Times the Charm, Book 2 is just too cute. I really like it.  I mean really like it. I have made this quilt three times in the last year! Each time I've used fabrics from Coquette by Chez Moi from Moda for the dog blocks. The first time I made the quilt I used a solid Kona navy backing. It is one of two quilts I have in my living room. I just love how the pastel dogs pop against the dark background. It was one of the first quilts I did with free-motion quilting. I quilted it with a tight meandering pattern between each dog which allows the dogs to be the center of attention without any distraction. I had a bit of a hiccup while quilting... I didn't know that it wasn't a great idea to use lime green thread on the back and navy thread in the front with the navy background fabric - yikes. The lime green popped right through to the front, which doesn't look so good against the solid navy. In hindsight I should have used dark blue or matching navy thread on the back. Oh well, I love it anyways! The backing is a fun paisley print in shades of blue, lime, purple and yellow with pops of red. 

 

The second time I made this quilt I used pastels throughout against a white on white fabric for the background. I did a similar free-motion quilting pattern on the pastel version - using white thread on the front and back the second time around. This quilt is around 35x43. 

 

My current project is a charity quilt for an upcoming fundraiser. Since the fundraiser supports the rescue my husband I volunteer for the dog quilt seems to be an appropriate choice for the event. 

This time around I used a solid white by Kona as the background fabric. I believe the white was Kona Snow which is the perfect shade to go with the pastel dogs. I've chosen a solid Kona green in Celery to underline the dogs and border the outside of the quilt. The inner border is a lilac colored lacy print; same fabric as the binding in the previous quilt. Selecting the binding fabric has been tough; it's always hard to decide the binding fabric. Sometimes it takes me days to decide! This time I've narrowed it down to a solid yellow or solid green, both in darker shades that coordinate well with the flowered backing. I kicked out the lighter yellow because it just wasn't right. Instead of a tight meandering between the dogs I decided on an all over free-motion loopy loo pattern.  

I'm leaning towards the yellow. The color is Maize by Pure Organic... It reminds me of the color of margarine - probably why I don't name the color of fabrics for a living.   

Best, 

HG

Linked up with