Thursday, April 25, 2013

Granny Square Quilt, Finished

finished granny quilt 
I finished this quilt a couple days ago. Maybe I should start keeping track of when I start new projects... this one took quite a while but I just made a few blocks at a time, and then used several of my blocks in my charity version of this same quilt. My sewing machine had a computer malfunction partway through quilting this. I was still able to quilt, but the computer screen is stuck on bobbin winding mode. I have a Janome MC4900... any other Janome users have this problem? It's been at the shop for a few days and I'm waiting to hear what the damage will be.
granny quilting detail 
I free motion quilted a curvy corner-to-corner thing on all the squares, and then did a simple stipple in all the background space. We went to Utah for spring break earlier this month and my mom let me bring home her Juki for a while, so I finished the quilting using that machine. I am liking the Juki, it's so fast!


And here's the back. I started with the pink/orange section in the middle, I wasn't thinking of anything I could use that Amy Butler piece for, and then used a few other fabrics I am ready to be done with to make it wide enough. Then the green... the remains of some of my very first quilt shop fabric purchase are in that chunk. I have moved on from the dusty sage green love of the late 90s, for sure. After I finished up the green, I thought I was going to use a black and white Chinese character fabric for the rest of the back but it wasn't meant to be so I put together another section made from blues and then separated the 3 colors with white/white-ish 6.5" strips.

The binding is 4 colors--aqua, pink, purple, and yellow. I was going to do it all with the aqua/green Heather Bailey bead fabric but it would have used it almost all the way up so I mixed it up a little bit.

Thanks to Blue Elephant Stitches for the Granny Square Quilt tutorial and to traceyjay quilts for the setting triangles directions!

Wednesday, April 03, 2013

Bee Blocks

I've finished up my March blocks for do good stitches (because I'm doing all of them on time this year)

March believe block 1 
These were the easiest bee blocks ever. They are 12.5 inches, not small at all.
March believe block 2 

And I'm in charge for April so I have those ones done too. I'm requesting scrappy trip along blogs in red, yellow, and blue with your choice of neutrals (white, off white, tan, brown, whatever looks good). And an obviously dark or light strip down the center. 
April block 1 
 (Since I had to use that diagonal stripe in the above block, I decided green is ok too.)

April block 2