Sweet Faithful

This is a rarity, I'll have you know.

It's a rare day when I finish all the way to the quilted-and-bound stage of a project - in the same month that it was started!

With that statement made, I will introduce my totally finished Faithful, the sweet block that Lori at Humble Quilts has been doing as a quilt-along.

The scrappiness of it is what appealed to me from the start. I am also rather enamored with triangles. What a perfect pairing, right?

I can directly attribute the decision to machine quilt this block to the new Bernina that you met here. Lori's instructions were "quilt as desired," and since I need practice, I decided to just stitch in the ditch of each ring around the center. In addition, I did a little extra stitching-still in the ditch-in that center block. I'm getting better at it, and feel pretty confident that I could handle straight-line quilting on any smallish quilt. I'm not ready for anything full-size, and may never be, actually.

But I digress. The scraps used are mostly from recent projects, and are 100% stash fabric. Even the batting was a scrap that I pieced to make fit. To read the bits and pieces of my construction process you can click here, here and here.

Lori is hosting a Linky Party today on her blog. This permits us to see the finishes of others who participated in the quilt-along. I think you will enjoy seeing the variety. Click on the link to view them.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Accomplishments

I read several blogs and find it totally amazing at what some quilters can accomplish. I have good friends who are also quite the overachievers and who do much more than I do. It's dizzying just how some folks manage to finish so many beautiful projects.

So while I am about to brag about these 3 little quilts, I do keep my perspective: these don't even begin to compare with what so many others are cranking out.

Maybe because I have had sort of a funk about sewing, projects, quilting, etc., I feel extra excited to share these with you.

I have finished hand-quilting the little doll quilt, Midnight Stars, and have the binding ready to stitch down. I love the red binding. I will tack it this weekend.

Back in March I sewed together a charm pack of a Moda fabric - I think it was called ABC123. And that was all I did. About a week ago, I had a note from a new momma that I know, and she asked if I would make a quilt for her little boy. I found the inner border pieces in my scrap bin, and I'd purchased the outer border from the sale table at Old Town Fabrics. And, there is enough left to use for the backing! I am going to quilt this on the new Bernina, so I will have this in the arms of our new mother very soon.

And last, but not least, I put the final row of triangles on Faithful, and added the outer border. I just love this, and am so glad I happened upon Lori's quilt along on Humble Quilts. Come to think of it, that Midnight Stars, above, was also a quilt along from her blog. I do like her projects!

Here are all three, tacked up on the design wall. It gives you a better look at the size of each project, doesn't it? I am so eager to get all of them completely finished. I think I will make that my goal for the upcoming weekend.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Faithful

A week or so ago, I was reading one of my favorite blogs - Humble Quilts. Lori, the blogger, offers some great quiltalongs several times each year, and I have had fun making a few of them. Here are pictures of the projects I have made in the Humble Quilts quiltalongs.

Abundance

 

Midnight Stars

 

Pink Lemonade

So, when I saw that Lori was doing a new quiltalong, and that it was full of scrappy goodness, I decided that I would join in. If you would like to read the blog post that provides the first set of directions for the project, just click here. Then you can go back to earlier posts to see tidbits about it, too. She calls the project Faithful, and it just looked like it would be a lot of fun to make. Here we go!

I pulled my 6.5-inch-already-made block. I explained yesterday how that it was really closer to 6-3/8 inches, but I figured I could make it work. I can't explain why this look so red, because it is in reality burgundy. I did some photo editing, but never could get the color to look true.

Next, I had to cut a border, so that is where the Paula Barnes red floral (mentioned yesterday) came in.

This was to be a border around the center block. Here we go!

This was simple, easy and fun, so I kept going. Lori's next step has us creating a pile of little half-square triangles. I used scraps from the leftovers of Carson's Courtyard, which I made a couple of months ago. Because CC was a rather dark quilt, I need to add in some lights.

Now, the next step is to create strips of triangles which will be attached all around the block. If everything is measuring correctly, I would need 2 strips of 8 HSTs, and 2 strips of 10 HSTs. However, because I was trying to "fudge" with a somewhat smaller original block, I only needed 9 instead of 10. It seems to look okay, at this stage, so I am plowing ahead.

After the row of triangles, we are to add another solid row, and this time I chose a reproduction gold-ish yellow. Again, I am unhappy with the color in the picture, and I just don't get what I am doing wrong. (Maybe I should use a regular camera instead of my phone.)

This is where I stopped, but the next step is to add another row of triangles, somewhat bigger than those in the first row. I will try to get those made and added soon.

This is a fun and happy little block, and I love the scrappiness of it. Scrap quilts - there's just something about them that seems homey and loved. Maybe because our grandmothers made scrappy quilts from dresses and shirts out of necessity, we have a special fondness for them.

Happy Quilting, Friends!