Scattered Flowers Postage Stamp Baby Quilt

Subtitled:  Spring Has Arrived Here....Turned Out it Was Only a Quilt

I've been piecing this baby quilt out of leftover fabrics from the grandmother's flower garden quilt I'm working on.  All the squares that don't have 6 matching pieces for flower petals or are in the same pale green that my background colours are for that quilt got tossed in a big ziploc and emerged as this baby quilt.  (Plus some yardage of a blue flowered print from 3 Sisters Shangri-la)

Since I was finishing this quilt during (another) snowstorm (the kind, incidentally, we have been getting about every few days since October 26, 2013.....) It is my only Spring. I will hold it, I will hug it, and I will love it. And then, if Spring every comes here for real, I will sell it in my Etsy shop :)

Pieced in Aurifil 50 wt in white and quilted in ivory. The backing is a textured solid in Tapioca from Pink Castle Fabric (not sure of the manufacturer) and the binding is from 3 Sister's line Paris Flea Market. Size is 36.5" by 43.5".   Did you know Spring could be so soft and crinkle-icious?!

William Morris Tree of Life Quilt

As if I didn't have enough hand quilting to keep me occupied with the king size Swoon! As the old saying goes, a change is as good as a rest, so I picked up this quilt and decided to hand quilt it too:



Changing it up a bit by using traditional weight thread (as opposed to the 12 and 8 wt. I am using in the Swoon). I think this Gutermann hand quilting thread (with a lovely wax (?) coating to make it oh so tangle free) is a 40 wt.



The fabrics, as you may have guessed from the title, are reproduction William Morris prints.  I thought them very appropriate to turn into tree of life blocks as the Tree of Life was a popular theme in William Morris tapestries.



I am enjoying it immensely!! I am almost done with the trees, and then I will have to expand my hand quilting skills and figure out how to quilt some kind of garland motif in those big blue squares... should be fun!

Sister's Paint Box Quilt

A year ago I bought two jelly rolls at a quilt show, one was Metropolitan Fair by Barbara Brackman and the other was Paint Box by Edyta Sitar for Laundry Basket Quilts.  When I got them home and unrolled them (no, I cannot leave them all nicely packaged, I must inspect) I noticed how nicely they matched!

So they sat, and I waited until a jelly roll quilt pattern fell into my brain. And I thought Sister's Choice might be a good choice, as it has that traditional feel that the fabrics did to me. But the patterns I looked at would require some messing around with cutting. But then I found Miss Bonnie Hunter's pattern. All 2.5 inch squares and rectangles. Perfect!!

 My star points are all pretty scrappy, and I wanted to use the low volume prints, which there were plenty of, for the background instead of a solid (which is also what Bonnie did). It worked perfectly and I had enough stripe-y jelly roll strips left from Metropolitan Fair to make the binding!

Some yardage of a matching dusty blue Robyn Pandolph print in my stash became the backing.   Now I have a quilt that actually matches my house too. Most of the brighter, more modern quilts I've made don't actually co-ordinate with my living room which is more traditional colours. (Not that it stops me from strewing bright quilts all over it!)

Final Stats

Dimensions: 46" by 65" 

Fabric: Metropolitan Fair and Paint Box (both by Moda) 

Thread: Aurifil in the most typical (and boring? haha) Sand colour (2325) for both piecing and quilting 

Backing: Bed of Roses by Robyn Pandolph for Moda 

Batting: a recycled flannel sheet 

Completed March 2014

Swoon, Swoon, Swoonedy Swoon

Still hand quilting this one.  Just a quick update and some pictures.

Continuing with the Giant Quilts Theme...

Meanwhile I'm hand quilting the giant Swoon quilt, this Farmer's Wife quilt is sitting and waiting (much like it usually has since 2011 when I started it...) Yes, these are colours you don't usually see on my blog. It's a gift for my parents.

I'm pretty happy it is all together and I love all those little blocks.  But.  How, how, how shall I quilt it?  How.

 
I think I did myself a favour by making it in two parts to quilt separately, and then join after quilting. I hope this is a favour to me and I don't mess it up. I also think I might use something with a bit more polyester for batting than my usual. I don't want this one to crinkle as much as I want most of my other quilts to.

Any other tips for me?