Circling the center

Hello, friends! Louise here with more quilts made with your orphan blocks. Today's post will feature pieces that have medallion-style centers. Check out the two gorgeous blocks in the middle of this first one! I believe they were both donated by Jan. I surrounded them with two borders made of various smaller blocks in bright colors, many donated by Priscilla. I tried to keep each color grouped together for a bit of cohesion.

On the back, I used this pretty red and white floral. This was also donated, and I'm always grateful to get big pieces for backings. 

Next up is a subtler color palette, featuring more blocks by Priscilla. It was a bit of a puzzle to make 10 small blocks and 10 medium blocks work as borders, but I love a challenge like that.

The center medallion was stitched by Christine. Isn't it lovely? Tumbling leaves with multiple delicate borders. Nice piecing!

Someone donated this super fun Wizard of Oz fabric for the back. I hope this quilt ends up in the hands of a Judy Garland fan!

Last but not least, here's another autumnal quilt. Lots and lots of different blocks making for a kind of grown-up I-spy piece. My favorite is the little cat on a dark green background on the left edge.

The center is a very nice pineapple block panel donated anonymously. It looks like it was very complicated to make! Sometimes while finishing quilts with these fancy blocks, I think, "I'm so glad someone else made this so I didn't have to," and I'm grateful for the reprieve! 

Many thanks to the many hands who stitched up these blocks and sent them in. And thanks to Kat for both washing and photographing this batch for me.

 

Dangerous Depths

Happy Friday Quilters! I have been working on this batik Mariner's Compass quilt with a sea monster theme for a while now and I finally got it done! 

This isn't a CiL quilt, it's a personal one. I really enjoyed the process of brainstorming, looking at references, sketching out a design and taking it to completion. Designing a quilt and seeing the design come to life is my favorite part of quilting. 

I made a somewhat similar batik mariner's compass way back, so it was fun to approach the same design in a different way.

I tried something new with the quilting on this one, mixing in some ruler work with the FMQ. I used a ruler to make the straight lines and the wavy ribbon of quilting in the outer border. 

The center was paperpieced and I thought that would be the most difficult and time-consuming part, but I seriously underestimated how tedious it would be to line up all the diagonal borders where they pass "under" the square borders. 

After quilting I used a (machine) blanket stitch to applique the sea monster's tentacles coming around one of the corners. To make these I traced templates from my computer screen and used those to cut out the fabrics. 

Initially I was going to put the cardinal direction into the points like I did in this quilt (so I guess I've actually made 3 mariner's compass quilts.) But I decided on monster eyes instead. I made them by essentially arranging 4 cathedral windows around the yellow fabric. (How many different techniques can I use in one quilt?)

After the first photos were taken I decided to make the eyes rounder by rolling the cathedral window edge back again, essentially making a double fold. I didn't take a whole new set of pictures, but you can see the difference in these last 2 photos compared to the ones at the top. I think it made a big difference. 

One of the biggest things I have learned in the past 6 months or so is how much I missed the creativity and freedom of quilting and how much I had let that go by the wayside because I was so busy with the charity. Setting aside time for personal quilting is definitely going to be a lesson I keep going forward.

Happy Quilting!

Linking to Finished or Not Friday

Another Friday

 Hello friends, sorry I've been MIA for a few weeks. I ran out of quilt photos I'd already taken and it's been too dang hot to get outside and take more.

Cousins with grandpa

I went on a couple of good weekend trips to see family and friends. I rediscovered once again that I am not built for the beach. 

Fancy wedding hair

Got to see one of my good friends get married in a beautiful state park in Tennessee and catch up with everyone I haven't seen in too long.

I have been sewing, still working on the batik mariners compass I showed a few weeks ago. It's almost done.

Me and the kitties are doing our best to stay cool. I'm finally putting my flooring back down today after repairing some water damage, so of course the AC started to limp a couple days ago. It's always something!

I'll get out and take quilt photos soon so we can get back to our regular posts, promise!