A Finish, and SO MUCH FABRIC

I finished Baby R's quilt finally! Remind me to never do a quilt with this many pieces again...or with pieces that finish this small. Uggggggggggggg. Seriously.

Overlook all of the missing points...

The main blocks are a design I pulled from my copy of 5,500 Quilt Block Designs - design number 2460, "Rosie's Purina Whirligig." I drafted the alternate blocks myself, with the small squares finishing to .75", and the center square finishing to 2". Again, why do I hate myself? The fabrics in the chain of the alternate blocks are the same as the sashing in the recipient's older sister's baby quilt, though, and I didn't have much of it to work with.

It got a little warped hanging over the rocking chair.

I backed the quilt with a light blue fabric with brown polka dots on it I'd gotten on clearance from Fat Quarter Shop, and just so happened to have a perfect binding to go with it - a brown batik with light blue grass blades on it. I love when my stash comes through for me!

I love the binding!

Judy over at Patchwork Times isn't doing a stash report link-up anymore, but I really want to keep track of my fabric usage. I made a HUGE purchase at Joann's this week, and while everything has a project to be a part of...it's a LOT of fabric. So I've got to make lots of quilts to get back into the black! I did finish another quilt this week, but it's currently in the wash so I'll have to blog about it later. I'm counting its yardage, though - I need all the help I can get!

Fabric Used This Week: 11 yards
Fabric Used Year to Date: 22 yards
Fabric Added This Week: 30.25
Fabric Added Year to Date: 36.5 yards
Net Fabric for 2017: 14.5 yards gained

I also bought batting, since I was out of crib-sized batting and I still have 6 more quilts to make for friends, family, and coworkers. Here's a picture of the fabric I bought:

Most of what I got was from the clearance rack. I have 3 distinct themes for my next quilts - a green/pink quilt (the greens at the bottom, and the backing second from the top in the back pile), a school-theme quilt (the two fabrics on the right, and the backing is the third in the pile), and a pink/red/gray poppy theme quilt. I had very few lighter reds, and almost no grays in my stash. This is no longer teh case. And I found the best backing ever - poppies on a gray plaid background.

Hold me accountable, people...

Work In Progress

My quilting time is pretty scarce these days but I have been doing what I can when I can (okay, not always...the internet is far too easy to get lost in). But I am making a lot of progress.

Baby J-kwelin had a baby sister born on my birthday last year. Of course, since her older sister had one of my quilts this little girl needed one too. There was a block design in my 5,000 Quilt Block Designs book that actually had her name as part of it, so I picked it and haven't looked back. Funnily enough, this design is VERY similar to J-kwelin's design...like turn four half-square triangles in a different direction similar. So the sisters will have similar but different quilts.

Five blocks to go, then the alternate setting blocks.

I love how the design is turning out, even if every block pretty much has at least one place where a point has been chopped off. Seriously, it's a block made entirely of half-square triangles and flying geese. It's going to happen.

In other news, I won some fabric two weeks ago (but didn't have time to post last week)! Annie of Annie's Ruby Slipperz had a giveaway for 5 fat quarters on her blog when she recently came back into blogging. I won! I got to choose the color I wanted so I picked *gasp* neutrals. This is what she sent me - they'll be perfect for adding some variety into my stash. I've been using a lot of neutrals.

Yay new fabric!

Finally, I've been doing leaders and enders almost since I got seriously into machine quilting back in 2009-ish. For several years, my leaders and enders have been paper-pieced blocks from The Civil War Love Letter Quilt book by Rosemary Youngs. I've finished 34 blocks from the book so far. My book didn't come with paper piecing patterns, but I used phone book paper and drafted the blocks based off of the picture/pattern in the book. Some of these have some really small pieces and paper piecing definitely makes me more confident about the way the block will turn out in the end. My current block is this one:

First of five of these stars complete

What the block will look like

I've changed the colors from what they are in the book on all of these blocks. I'm sticking to a similar color scheme as the log cabin quilt from my last post - brown, green, orange, and blue.

Finally, my stash report:


Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 11 yards
Fabric Added this Week: 1.25 yards
Fabric Added Year to Date: 6.25 yards
Net Fabric for 2017: 4.75 yards used


I'm still in the black! I've got a lot of quilts to make (this one, 3 friends are due in April and May, my neighbor's daughter in law is due in April, and a coworker of hubby's is going to be welcoming his first sometime soon as well) so time to sign off here and get sewing while I still have a chance!

Linking up with Stash Report Sunday and Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times!

A Short Update

I entered my first quilt show! I didn't place, which I pretty much expected, but I had 3 quilts in the show all with my name on them! Aaaahhhhh!

The first quilt was Niece Quiche's Star Wars quilt. My sister was kind enough to send it back to me to put a hanging sleeve on and compete with.

The second was for Twig, my one year old son. The top has been done since...um...September? October? I knew I wanted to quilt it on my new mid-arm machine but kept procrastinating because I didn't feel ready to do it. Like I would mess the quilt up if I did it. I spent a lot of time picking out the quilting and actually had the machine break down but the owner of the company that made my machine was very helpful via email and we got it working again. I finished this quilt the day before everything had to be turned in for the show.

I called this "Twig Cabin" since we called my son Twig until we decided on his name.

 The third was for baby H3, my nephew. His nursery was ocean themed so I designed and made this quilt in less than a month. When the mid-arm broke down I immediately switched gears and prepared it for quilting on Jenny the Janome. The quilting was simple and pretty fast, and this was finished the day before the show as well.

Linking up with Judy at Patchwork Times for her Stash Report:

Fabric Used this Week: 11 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 0 yards
Fabric Added this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added Year to Date: 5 yards
Net Fabric for 2017: 6 yards used