By popular demand

Here's a picture of the entire rainbow strings quilt. The border is made up of 100 different 2" squares. Joanne was kind enough to help me out with the final 13 after I ran out of different fabric. This quilt is destined to be a present for my scholarship donors; they'll be receiving it in a few weeks.

Rainbow Strings is finished!

I'm so excited to finally have another finish, all krinkly and soft from the dryer! I finished this yesterday but had to wait till today for pictures. This quilt started out with foundation pieced string squares from my scrap boxes and grew from there.

I was trying to mimic half square triangles with the colors. It finished at about 54" square. I quilted it with V-shaped lines to match the string chevron design. On the border I outlined the colored squared and did cross hatches through to white ones. The backing is a striped sheet. I'm super pleased with the way this one turned out.


For the record, this is what happens when I try to take pictures. Hope you had a good weekend!

More pictures later...

How did it get so late?

It's been a productive day

Thank to Joanne for helping me out with the squares I needed to finish off the rainbow strings quilt. It is now basted and ready to begin quilting. I didn't intentionally fussy-cut this quilt in the border, but isn't that just adorable? I've had a quilting pattern in mind for this practically since I first started it so I can't wait to get it done.

The other thing I spent time on today was developing a pattern for the Whirligig Quilt and revamping my etsy shop to sell quilty stuff. Hopefully within the next few days I'll have the Whirligig pattern stocked in there.

I got tired of looking at the box of scraps I brought home from my LQS a few months ago so I decided to reduce them all the 2.5" squares and start a leaders-enders project to make use of them. They're all nice quality fabrics but mostly odd shapes, some up to a quarter yard or so. I couldn't believe how many 2.5" squares came out of that scrap box! I don't know how much fabric was there, but it must have been a few yards. Anyway, a scrappy Double Irish Chain is now in the works, one leader-ender at a time. I hope you had a good day and you're heading for a good week!

I Need Your Help

The time has come to finish the rainbow strings quilt. It's meant to be a gift to my scholarship donors and since I'm graduating soon I need to get it done. Currently I'm stuck because I need 100 unique 2.5" squares for the border and as of today I am about 15 short. So, if anyone could stick a few squares in an envelope and send them my way, I would sure appreciate it. I need squares that will read as a solid in the ROYGBIV color wheel (plus pink) that I don't already have. It's unlikely our stashes will over lap much, but if you blow up this picture to full size you ought to be able to get an idea. I especially need reds, yellows, oranges, and purples. If you can help me out, leave a comment and make sure I can find your email address and I'll send you my address.

This weekend was the big bazaar fundraiser for my university's Moms' clubs. I helped out my mom's club, we did almost $2000 of business in $1 raffle tickets! That's money that will go toward scholarships for future students. Quilted items were popular; I picked up this bluebonnet wall hanging and a quilted ornament. The bluebonnets can be quite stunning this time of year.

Happy Sunday, hope you're looking at a good week!

Border audition

A completed draft of the thesis is done and my poster presentation session was this morning so I did some celebratory sewing this afternoon. I am still cutting 2.5" squares out of every mostly-solid-colored fabric I can find. In the process I kind of went nuts on my stash. There were fabric piles on every surface. I cut a lot of selvages off and they are heading off tomorrow to Jacquie who recently made a stunning selvage quilt. I have 73 squares cut. I strip pieced them all onto the white fabric and pressed them flat with my mini iron. Even though I still need 27 squares, equivalent to one whole side of the border, I had to array them and put them up to see how it looks so far. There are a lot of placement problems to solve, but I think I like the way it looks. At first I wasn't sure. Maybe a thin dark border to separate the center from the border? I'm not sure.

I also did my first paper piecing today - those circling geese you see at the top of the wall. There were 8 goose and 12 goose varieties of that block. I decided to start with the 8 goose block, which I think was a pretty wise choice. That one is done in some scraps as a learning piece, but I have plans to make quite a few of them to go with the striped diamond blocks. I'll give you a hint, I'm calling it "Kites and Geese" for now.

Not really a color person...

Until recently, if you'd asked me I would have told you that I'm not really a "color" person. I prefer browns and neutrals, in fact the only color I really am drawn to is blue. Nearly everything I own is blue - which can make coordinating outfits a problem. So, I don't know what the deal is, but scrap quilts seem to be bringing out my colorful side. First there was the whirligig quilt and now this rainbow string quilt. Strangely enough, I'm really loving the color!

I've been stitching on this whenever I got stuck on my thesis. I had the idea to sash it the other day and I definitely think it was the right choice. It's not done yet - I think the border is really going to put this one over the top. Before I can make it I have to cut a 2.5" square out of every fabric I own, no repeats! I think I need about 100 different squares. This is going to be a gift to my scholarship donors. I had another larger, in my opinion much nicer quilt for them nearly finished when it ended in a tragic quilt-tastrophe which I will tell you about another time. I hadn't been able to summon up the will to make another for them, but time is getting short and I think they'll enjoy this one almost as well.

On the home front, the thesis is coming along. Most of the hard work is done, whoohoo! I feel pretty awful today. The blood work indicated that my ferritin was low so I am taking a high dose of iron supplement. I had been taking an antibiotic for my cold but last night I started having a bizarre and painful reaction to it (at least let's hope the nurse was right and that's what caused it, otherwise I'll be heading to the urgent care clinic). So no more antibiotics; my stuffy nose and achy head linger on. Ew.

The Authentic Scrap Quilt

Today I'm featuring another old quilt. This was technically my first finish of 2010. I finished quilting it at my parents' house just after Christmas, taking advantage of their big dining room table to quilt it. It's made from the scraps left from the Authentic throw. That quilt was made by sewing jelly roll strips together in sets of four and cutting squares on point out of them. That generated a ton of triangles made up of little slices of jelly roll. I put those triangles back together into squares. The smaller squares I bordered with muslin and the whole jelly roll strips I had left.



The LOVE the muslin I used in these two quilts. I'm out of it at the moment, unfortunately. It is natural, offwhite color with some imperfections and it paired so perfectly with the Authentic line. I also really love the black and cream fabric in the inner border and the binding. I think it's the simplicity of the color scheme with the ornate pattern that makes me like it so much. I have just a little of it left. The outter border is a leafy dark green batik that's another favorite. I quilted it with diagonal lines at varying distances apart. The batting is Warm & Natural and it's really quite heavy, especially for this part of the country.

This is the quilt the is on my bed, it's about large twin-size but works well on my full-size bed. It feels the most "me" of the quilts I've made. It's simple and the colors are subdued and the design grew easily from the scraps I couldn't bear to waste.

Meanwhile, there is a rainbow string quilt coming together on the design wall while the squares quilt waits for motivation to return.