A Few New Finishes

 It seems I have been getting a lot done lately... Here are a few new finished quilts

1 It's A Puzzle--3" blocks. Based on an antique crib quilt, circa 1920, this has 300 3" blocks. The top was 45" x 60", it's a little smaller now that the quilting is done:

The quilting started with a diagonal line through the half square triangles, to create rows to add feathers. It went pretty fast and I was very happy with the improvement in my feathers:

As a class sample I made 4" blocks, which only requires 90 blocks to create a decent size crib quilt. Students can choose to make either size block--I find they prefer the 4" blocks to learn the technique, since making 90 blocks seems much less daunting than making 300. Here they are side by side:

The quilting on the smaller one is simply diagonal lines, using ruler work, fast and easy. It's a Puzzle 4" blocks, 36" x 40":

Many quilters have made "COVID" or "Stay at Home" quilts over the past year. Mine is called "Pandemic Paradox"  If only the virus was NEON GREEN: 

It's about 48" square and each group of circles includes one "bad" one--the NEON GREEN we need to avoid. I used Applipops and Karen K Biuckley's Perfect Circles. The lettering was printed directly on the border fabric, written in Word, and then run through the printer on 8.5" x 11" cuts of the fabric, with freezer paper on the back for stability in printing. 

The quilting is a combination of ruler work and free motion swirly lines: 

I include a hanging sleeve on every quilt I make. The Tutorial can be found above, in the list of Tutorials. Another Tutorial discusses binding and another one talks about adding a label to all your quilts. 

Now I am trying to finish Afternoon Delight Made Easy ,see that post HERE.  Then a BIG project lands in my lap that will take quite a bit of time to complete. I'm never bored nor wonder what I'm going to do each day. I hope the same is true for you.

Let's quilt.

Barbara

Recent Finishes

An unusual FRIDAY edition of My Joyful Journey.  I have gotten a lot of machine quilting done in recent months as I took a break from piecing all the time so I thought I would share. 

Patriotic Pineapples, a Quilt of Valor for my husband, that has been in the making for many years:

Detail of fan quilting, done by machine:

The  second Quilt of Valor is for a friend of my husband. There is more information about this quilt in a blog I wrote as I was piecing it: Red, White and Blue  I call it Broad Stripes and Bright Stars:

Detail shot: 

With these done, I jumped on Janet's Happy Village, a top I got from my friend's estate sale and have written about here: Quilters Estate Liquidation Sale  A wonky size, 45" x 76", I am working on finding it the right new home. The panel says HOME IS WHERE YOUR STORY BEGINS. I think Janet would be pleased to see this finished: 

This is the back--a Hoffman panel I didn't know what to do with but loved. I couldn't cut it so I enlarged the quilt top and added a border to this back to make them fit together:

I was only when I saw this PHOTO, just the other day, that I realized this is actually TWO panels. If I had  seen that months ago, I would have cut it in half and used them for different quilts:

Another quilt I finished, I'm not prepared to show in full just yet but here it is waiting for the binding to be sewn in place. It is my COVID quilt--aren't we all making one of those?

Another thing that keeps me busy is teaching a ZOOM class to 14 quilters in England and Spain. Some are part of the "Thursdays at Three" one hour gathering where we talk quilting and life with each other. Western Sun was my backdrop and I got talked into teaching it to them. About half of them are hand piecing the blocks so I feel sure they won't be making theirs king size like mine is. Here is their efforts after the first 3 hour class:

Since I am teaching both Color My World and Western Sun locally this Saturday, I had to take them off the design wall. It really bothers me to have an empty design wall, like maybe my brain is empty too, so I stuck up the various projects I am either working on or have finished--so I have happy things to greet me when I walk in the studio:

That's all that's new for now. Back to our regularly scheduled posts, Sundays and Wednesdays.

Let's quilt. 

Barbara