WiP! A quickie!

It`s been a while since a WiP... sorry to disappoint my loyal followers! Here`s what I`ve been up to...

Jewel Squares - DONE!


Mme S-S's retirement quilt - I am fully stymied at this point. Must spend some time flipping through quilt books or trawling my Pinterest boards to get inspired and back on track!

K's Dare - no progress

Transformer - added the third set of blocks to the quilt top. Am starting to feel like it`s finally big enough!

Ocean Strata - no progress 
2012 M1 quilt - almost done, just need to add the class name and date
2013 M1 quilt  - no progress

I am pleased to say that all the partial quilts that started the year on my UFO list are now complete. And in honour of that, I decided to whip up a baby quilt and practice a new quilting style. It's like my wavy lines... only these ones overlap each other.


It doesn't have a destination... perhaps I'll just add it to the pile of quilts to donate to my local children's hospital. I took in a stack last June and plan to do so again this year.

I also started cutting blocks for another new project... found in on (surprise, surprise!) Pinterest and thought it would be a good scrap buster. It's from a quilt along over at In Color Order. Little did I realize how hard it would actually be to cut 100 (50 warm, 50 cool) 5 inch squares. I may have to call in the Squares to supplement my offerings!

Improv!

No, I haven't taken to doing theatre games in my spare time... I'm just branching out, people!

A couple weeks ago, my friend Ade over at Chezzetcook Modern Quilts started up an on-line bee - ModQImprovB Canada. She was looking for 12 quilters interested in a modern quilting and a block exchange - suffice it to say, it filled up quickly.  Each month for a year, one of is Queen B and chooses a block we'd like and the others make it and pop it in the mail... sweet, huh? We have a group on FaceBook to communicate and share pics of what we're working on.

So Ade was first up and shared this blog post to give us an idea of what she wanted. And the scraps started flying! The blocks aren't even due until sometime in June, but lots of people had them done already. You know me, I couldn't fall behind! Here's what I worked up on Friday evening.

Improv piecing is a lot of fun... not that I didn't know that before. I dove into my scrap boxes (Ade wanted scrappy!) and got to work sewing and snipping as I went. This 14 inch(ish) block came together fairly quickly.

I so enjoyed it that I didn't want to stop... improv blocks were the order of the day for Saturday and Sunday. I haven't spent much time at the machine lately and it was just the free form task I needed to recharge.

I made 8 inch finished blocks and sewed them together quite simply. You can't really see the blocks... which is pretty much what I was going for. I also took the opportunity to play with the quilting. It's quilted in a 1 inch grid pattern and I changed thread colour 4 or 5 times. Good excuse to finish off some of those partial spools I had kicking around! The backing is a funky green and yellow dotty print from Free Spirit Fabric's Wildwood collection that I found at Marden's in Maine. Gotta love 5$ a yard!

So happy to have spent the week-end sewing... just a couple weeks until I can sew the summer away! Even made a few other surprises to share later in the week!

Sunshine and Rainbows...

... as in it's not always. And when it's not, I keep making time to sew. Maybe that's why it seems like I spend more of my time in the studio than anywhere else lately.

Last week-end I whipped up some rainbows of my own. I dove into my stash with a vengeance and made these wonky log cabin blocks. Improvisational piecing just makes me happy!

This week-end, I got to quilting. Whenever I see a cool quilt motif, I pin it to a separate board on Pinterest (oh, so addicted). When I need inspiration to do something new, off I go to trawl through my pics.

I used the width of my presser foot, and a trusty Pfaff attachment (I don't know what it's called!), to guide my straight lines.  I had all the quilting done in one direction and almost stopped. It just looked so good! But thankfully, I fought the urge... here's how it ended up. 

Love, love, love! It's WAY more quilting than I normally do, but I don't know that I've been this happy with a project in a while!

I made a few other little gems this week-end, but technical difficulties are keeping me from sharing! Guess you'll have to see 'em another day! Stay tuned, loyal blog followers!

Here's hopin' you fit some stitchin' in this week!

J