OOORah!

A quilt top finish!!!  And it comes with quite a story.  I started this quilt for a wedding gift for a  Marine who was about to be married and had a wonderful love story that made me melt.  I had some red fabrics in my stash and immediately started on this quilt with grand plans for it to be a wedding gift.  I lost my momentum.  I missed the deadline.

It had been a great plan.  Scarlet and Gold are the colors for the US Marine Corps.  By keeping the ring sections solid red (compared with a traditional Double Wedding Ring which has pieced ring sections) I thought it would look more contemporary, perfect for a young couple.

Determined to finish up some UFO's, I pulled this out recently and had to make decisions.

1) I could abandon the project since the event was past.
2) I could finish it and find a different recipient.

I spent Thanksgiving Weekend making "melons" to finish this quilt.   It is a throw size quilt - about 58" x 68".

Now I have a fantastic flimsy that I want to use as a fundraiser quilt.  The groups that I have in mind support injured/killed police & fire fighters or missing soldiers.

So quilters....how much would you pay for a chance at this quilt?

A break from quilting

My car broke down Wed, so I've spent the long weekend mostly at home.  I did bundle up and walk to the quilt shop Friday (about 2 miles each way) to buy some yellows.    I just realized that I need to make something for a Christmas gift to go with a quilt I made for a family member a while ago.  My yellow stash was looking slim.

But then I realized that I needed gold to finish a double wedding ring as well.   So I abandoned the hand quilting and the huge TV in the living room.  I found a place for a portable TV in my sewing space so I could still watch football while I pieced.  Cut out some yellow pieces and got to work on a UFO.

Before noon on Sunday, I had the melons done and laid out to distribute the different fabrics from the red rings.  When will I ever learn and pick out a pattern that doesn't require being strewn across the floor before it's put together?

Marley was confused why I was here and not in the living room.

Here's the half way point.  But I am Soooo done with piecing for now.

I'm headed back to the couch.

I do have more pictures of this project on Celebrate Hand Quilting where I was soliciting suggestions for how to approach the background fill.  Stop on over there if you aren't already a follower.

Finally Finished!

This afternoon I finished the binding and washed the double wedding ring quilt.   The finished size is about 70x80.  It's taken me 3 months to do the hand quilting.

The bamboo batting combined with limited density of the quilting makes the drape of this quilt extremely soft.

I had to really fight the urge to do more quilting.  I opted for "just enough" quilting, where all the rings are outlined with some echo quilting inside each "square".    This is before washing.

And this is after.   I was hoping for a wee bit more shrinkage, but even this adds some of the texture I was hoping for.

I still need to embroider a signature on the back before I can really call it finished.

Now it's time to decide which of my many unfinished hand-work projects will take it's place.

Feb at a glance

One of the things that I love about Fresh Sewing Day at Lily's Quilts, is that it gives me a chance to reflect on the month of February and realize that I actually did get things accomplished.

My FMQ is getting better with feathers that look kind-of like they are supposed to.  I realized after making this that I don't actually LIKE feathers in quilting, which is probably why mine never look amazing.

My FMQ confidence is growing, and I'm really glad I decided on these practice panels that are designed to be a whole quilt later.  This piece, for example, I think I could have picked a better background fill, but I still love the leaf.  This leaf deserves better than becoming a pot holder!

One of my 2012 goals was to do trapunto, and this practice panel was my first attempt.  I learned a lot about background fill from the leaf panel and I was quite pleased with the outcome.

I finished piecing the silk tie quilt, which removes 2 things from my quilting bucket list  - upcycling and working with silk.  I learned a lot from this project, most importantly that I'm "totally over" the need to quilt with silk and I can move on.

But I am keeping the bonus silk woobie because it feels so soft.

Although I don't really enjoy piecing, working with someone else's yellow scraps for this charity quilt was a lot of fun.  I need to sew with yellow more often.

My only finish for the month was the Quilts of Valor quilt that was a collaborative effort from my quilt group and a chance for me to use another new-to-me technique.

And I am finally nearing the end of the hand quilting for the Double Wedding Ring.  This has taken 96 episodes of Cake Boss, and I've moved on to watching LA Ink.  Unfortunately the tatoos give me ideas for quilting designs so I tend to get distracted.

For March, I plan to continue to practice FMQ, finish the hand quilting, finish the Executive Woobie and $2.25 Plus Tax, finish piecing the Citrus HST top.  I also want to work on something to use up the blue scraps for another QOV quilt, and I need to get back to some applique on my Hearts Desire.

Wedding Ring

The piecing is done!!!

Sadly, I can't even mark this off my WIP list, as it was a quilt that was in the planning stages that simply bullied its way to the front of the line.  And it still needs quilting.

Fortunately, after I took the picture for the progress update, I was able to figure out a way to put together what I had without having to unstitch anything.  The bad news is that process involved spreading out all the pieces on the floor and stitching 2 together and putting them back in place, since "the save" involved pieces that were in random orientation.  Aerobic piecing (stitch, iron, place, pick up next 2, repeat).  Now it's nicely ironed and folded and put away until fall since I want to lap quilt this one, which is something I'm not inclined to do with temps in the high 90's F. 

While all the scraps are out, I'm working on piecing them together for a variation of a mono-chromatic crazy quilt.  I'm calling this bonus quilt a "Grooms Quilt" so I can give the couple his & hers quilts for the wedding.  Hers will say "Welcome to the family!"  and his "Because we know that you'll be sleeping on the couch."

Now to figure out what it was that I was working on before I got distracted by this project.