I am excited to be here today (on the warmest day of the year so far!) to share some fun quilts and a new adventure with you. Let's start with the quilts - as you may recall from last month, I had a very quilty February and got two big quilts quilted. I just needed to get the binding on and that was a goal for the month. They are both done now and I am so happy - without further ado, here there are!
End of the Rainbow is from Irish Chain Quilts by Melissa Corry and I loved it from the moment I saw it. You might even say I bought the book just for this pattern. I decided to make the blocks as part of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge last year as a new bed quilt for my son. His last quilt, which I made around 2010, has become too short for him. The finished top is full of scrappy goodness - I love seeing the scraps from different quilts I've made and the variety of royal to dark blues that make up the background. I quilted it with a royal blue Glide thread with the Spiral Squares pattern. I really like how it turned out, and even better, my son loves it. I bound it with some blue grunge, which picked up the blues in the background.
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| End of the Rainbow behind the first of the spring flowers |
The second quilt is Midnight Mystery from Meadow Mist Designs - this was a mystery quilt back in 2016 and I think Kate at Life In Pieces got me started on the Meadow Mist mysteries - I built the whole fabric pull around the polka dot fabric in the middle of the stars - I added the teal, scrappy oranges, and a nice cream for the background. I love how this quilt turned out and then was scared to quilt it as I didn't know how to quilt it without messing it up. So it sat in the stack of UFOs for 6 years - I pulled it out this year, googled images of these quilts to look at options for quilting, and decided in the end that simple was best - modern quilting for a modern quilt. I used the channel locks on my longarm to quilt straight lines and they worked really well - hooray! I ran out of all my oranges while making the quilt, so took it with me to one of my local quilt shops and wound up with a bright orange grunge to bind it. I think this may be my newest favorite quilt! I quilted it with So Fine thread top and bobbin in cream and I think it works very nicely with the fabrics.  |
| Midnight Mystery Finished! |
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| Midnight mystery close-up |
Unbelievably, I finished another UFO the same day I finished the Midnight Mystery. Pressing Matters is a kit that I picked up in 2010 when Laura Wasilowski of ArtFabrik visited our guild. I started on it last year during a sewing day with my mom. I worked on doing the hand stitching in February, which really added to the fun of this quilt - my favorite is the wrapping around the cord. The hand-dyed fabric and thread came with the kit and I am so glad I bought them all at the same time. I will need to find another great project for this beautiful thread. The binding is cut with a pinking blade and then fused onto the quilt - it was a new way to do a binding and really quick! It wouldn't make sense for a lap or bed quilt, but I may use this method again for a wall quilt or a mini.
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| Pressing Matters |
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| Close-up of the embroidery and lovely thread |
Three finishes just over halfway through the month isn't bad at all! But wait, there's more - not another finish, but the new adventure. For those who are stitchers, you might be familiar with Flosstube, videos that stitchers film about their projects and post on YouTube. Over the last year, I've watched a lot of Flosstube and over the summer, my mom and I got to talking about starting our own. It took a while to get ourselves together, but we finally did earlier this month and we filmed and posted our first video. It was really fun to do and we are looking forward to the next one - we've had an amazing response from the Flosstube community and friends. It will be another fun way to share our projects - we plan to share quilting, crochet, knitting, and embroidery in future episodes too. If you get a chance, you can watch to see what I am like in 3-D :)
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| The screen capture from our first video - we were amazed to have so many views so quickly! |
Hope you've had a great start to your March with some fun projects and adventures too! I've been stitching too, so will be back soon with an update on all my stitching fun through March.
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