Evolution Quilting

I'm quite pleased with my FMQ progress on Evolution.  I made dark blue narrow stripes by eye.  I think this will have even better texture after washing.   The center square flower I found on line and am happy to give credit to Lori Kennedy.  She even has a free tutorial at this link.   It was fun to make and I love how it turned out.  I like it so well that I used it in different colors on all the 4" to 6" squares in the quilt.

I tried a swirl with pebbles and feathers on a set of squares before I found the flower.

I tried a variety of fills on one of the corners.  Only one I like much is the feathers, but it is on a wider strip than most of the area I need to fill, but I am leaning toward feathers for the medium colored sections in the first photo.

I have been using up some varegated green thread.  I discovered a while ago that I'm not that keen on it for most quilting motifs that I do as the dark/light can make it's own odd, unpredictable patterns.

Back to the sewing room for me.  (After a glass of wine and looking for a design for the large square I need to fill.)

Evolution Framed

I was hoping to make this quilt a little bigger but I'm out of dark fabric scraps and I think adding the medium/light greens that I do have would detract from the overall look.  I'll stop here with the piecing at 60" x 74".  My goal is to make the backing and sandwich it tonight after work, quilting over the weekend.

Evolution Tipped

While this project sat completely ignored since July ( see that post at this link), I have rapidly made progress, mostly this week (progression post here).  I finished what I had been considering the "bottom" corners (now the left corners from this view) this evening and took this shot on the floor after evening up the edges.

At this point I briefly considered extending the outer box that appears from this angle.  But then I decided to simply be done.  I've added a narrow border of the medium blue all the way around and was in the process of adding a 6" blue strip and a 6" dark green strip on what would be the top and bottom of this view to widen that direction when I ran out of bobbin and declared today's session over.  The version in the photo is about 46" x 70".

I have some ideas for quilting this that I am looking forward to trying, so hopefully I will get to that point sometime this weekend.

Sunday Stuff

I spent the morning working on bits and pieces of UFO / WIPs.  This is my temperature quilt representing the first 3 weeks of January.  It's folded upon itself in this photo to get a feel for the color distribution.

The daytime high is 2" wide strip and the low a 1" strip.  Our temps have ranged 0 to 50 degrees over the past 2 weeks, with most 30-40

This quilt will finish about 80 x 102.

I wasn't ready to tackle the popsicle quilt and decided to start on something that takes less thought.
Evolution is some improv piecing taking off from a HST set on the right of the picture.  I found a couple orphan blocks (bottom) and a free sample of a dragonfly camo material that I got free from Spoonflower as a promotion.

Filling in with some neutral colors went pretty quickly.

I decided to cut one of the orphan blocks in half.  Here's me playing with some placement options.

Here is where I'm going to leave this project for the day.

Not hating it.

Not loving it.

Like using up bits.

And now to watch football and crocheting the cardigan.

Crochet cardi

I started crocheting a cardigan on our Christmas road trip to Arizona. Unfortunately, I didn't have a ruler with me on that trip, so I just had to trust that the stitch scale in the pattern was right. It has been a particularly long process since the yarn is super fine,  much of it was done in a car or in poor light,  and I haven't crocheted in years.   I was able to finish the sleeve sections this weekend while hanging out with a good friend, watching football in our PJ's.   

It's been a good take-along project since you work it in square/triangles then sew it together.  Working on the lower section (peplum) now, so have hope it will actually be a sweater someday soon.

Pillows

A trio of small finishes.

The Arizona pillow is in the mail to it's new home.

The concept test panel of the first steam punk dragonfly got a dragonfly fabric backing and is now a pillow at my buddy Bobbi's house.

And last night I up-cycled 2 card table sized table cloths from my friend Jana's grandma's stash into pillow cases for my BFF Rob.  The upper one is linen and the lower one is either a super soft cotton or a rayon.   They get delivered this weekend.

Check, check and check.

My original goal list post

Long Lost Popsicles

After finishing my errands and most of my chores, I decided it was time to put the Popsicle pieces up on the design wall.  I was shocked to realize I started this in June 2010 and last worked on it March 2011.

It was rather concerning to me that these bits are not very square which will make the joining rather interesting.

Task 1 was embroidering the signature on the lower left corner.  The artist is my husband's cousin and at some point I had her sign it in pencil to be extra legit.

After I took the first photo, I found 2 other pieced section of the background.

I have spent considerable amount of time trying to find this long lost project, and periodically think I'm missing more pieces.

I also couldn't find the original photo anywhere on my computer.  Thank goodness for the Internet.

Today's accomplishment was the upper popsicle - strip pieced and shading appliqued over top.   And a good start on the remaining half of the orange popsicle.

Hopefully this mix of methods  will end up flowing alright.

Pulling this project out is really amazing to see how much my skills and techniques have improved over 6 years. .  Where I started out carefully templated piecing,, I found myself today doing improv applique.  I'm also kind-of glad that I didn't finish it sooner.  I can imagine much different quilting than I had planned previously, which I think will add to the overall look, as well as hiding some inperfections.