Racing Stripes Complete

A friend found a quilt on Pinterest she liked and asked me to make one for her.  I contacted the original maker--she was happy her quilt was selected and kindly gave permission for me to duplicate it.

The Front

The Back
 

Here is the blog where the original was shown:  Between Quilts by Valerie.  I used Peppered Cotton by Pepper Cory for EStudio Fabrics for the gray borders--great stuff!  A little different than my usual work but it's good to stretch the wings from time to time.

A few garden shots--the pond is overflowing with pickerel, water lilies, parrots feather and goldfish.  It's time to do some serious removal of plants--guess I'll have to get in there this year.

And my small vegetable garden:  2 full size tomatoes, 2 cherry tomatoes, 1 zucchini, 1 cucumber and 2 pepper plants:

June is for red raspberries, these were picked 2 days ago:

Yummy!



July means blackberries, looks like a bumper crop this year, and August should be the vegetables.  Nothing like fresh produce from the garden.

Now that Racing Stripes is done I have to decide what to work on next.  There are swap blocks to do, String Blocks was the majority choice; I wrote about that here.  A large quilt needs the binding turned to the back.  I'm eager to hand quilt a finish from a few months ago, and several quilts to get back to.

Let's quilt! Think I'll go see what others are doing at Judy L's Design Wall Monday.

Barbara

A New Finish and A New Start

Finally finished my top of Antique Rose Star:

I had planned to add another border but when I got the blue on  I decided that was all it needed.  The blocks are mostly hand-pieced, though many are sewn by the hybrid method, hand-pieced the Y-seams and machine pieced the rest of the block.  Each block contains 72 kite pieces: 

The template is available from Material Obsession, a quilt shop in Australia.  I had the great good fortune to meet the owner, Kathy Doughty, and her husband, John, at Spring Quilt Market last month.  He remembered me because I've ordered these templates twice, the last time I got 20 and no one else in the US had ordered any.  They are great people and her books, Material Obsession and Adding Layers, are getting lots of attention currently, with big bold prints and pieces. 

This will stay a top until I teach the class for my guild quilt-in next month, so students can see the back.  I doubt anyone will want to do the complicated zig-zag setting with so many 60  degree set-in seams that I came up with, but if they do, they can see the back to see the process.  It was a fun quilt to make and I plan to hand quilt it, maybe with Big Stitch.

As soon as this came off the design wall a new one went up: 

Not my usual kind of work.  I'm making it for someone who found it on Pinterest and loved it.  This was just a quick snapshot so I wouldn't forget which colors went where, if the cat pulled them off the wall.  And there is a hunk missing from the right side, it's at the sewing machine.  Should have this done next week. 

I'm linking up with Judy L's Design Wall Monday, go see what others are doing.

Let's Quilt!

Barbara

Modern Quilt?

Here is a quilt, cuddle size, I made this week for my son's girlfriend.

It's 64" x 68" after washing, the perfect "cuddle on the couch" size.  I used 80/20 cotton batt and had not prewashed the fabric so I was curious about 3 things:

 

1. How much would the fabrics "run"?  I always use a Shout Color Catcher sheet when washing new quilts and this one came out light/medium blue SO the fabrics did run and I will tell the new owner to be sure to use a Color Catcher the next few times she washes it.  I dug deep in my fat quarter and smaller bins for blue, green and gray fabrics.  Some of these are old favorites, at least 15 years old.

 

2.  How much would the quilt shrink?  The package said 3% and that was about what happened.  The top was 67" x 71" when finished and the quilt came out of the dryer 64" x 68".  Fine with me.

 

3.  Would the shrinkage help to disguise the few areas of puckers on the back?  Yes, it did.  Now you have to look close and be picky to see them.  I had to baste this in thirds, on the dining room table, with help from the cats, so the back was not as tight as it should have been.  Lesson learned--the cats can't help.

I got the design idea from quilts on Pinterest and Flickr--I searched for Modern quilts and found a few easy but interesting designs I might try.  This was the first idea but as it grew on the design wall I didn't love it. So I added the gray strip in the middle and liked it much better.  The idea was to have an easy design so I could complete it quickly, and use as many blue, green and gray fabrics as possible. 

Free Motion Machine quilting is not my strong suit and that's putting it mildly.  I wanted to quilt this one myself and chose an easy wavy line design for the pieced strips.  While they are less than perfect, I concentrated on trying to keep the stitch length as regular as possible.  In the border I used a circular design, to mimic the circles in the border print.  Well, I had intended to do ovals but from the beginning I got circles so I just stuck with that.  It quilted pretty quickly, over two days and all in all, the quilting is OK and as a cuddle quilt, it's just fine. 

This week I'll quilt the X Block swap quilt and get my show entries ready.  Our guild show is October 11-13 and I have 4 to be sure are clean and have labels in place.  I always add a sleeve while applying the binding so at least that job is done.  Also have to get going on garments for Houston--that's only 6 weeks away!

Be sure to check out Judy L's Design Wall Monday to see what others are doing. 

Let's quilt!

Barbara