Pearls 'n Pinwheels

So a week after my half-square triangle catastrophe, I've completely started over and finished this quilt top.  I LOVE IT!  Gotta get backing soon and get this off to the shop to get it quilted before the baby arrives.

Pinwheel Progress

Thanks to Jen's help in obtaining replacement red and white fabric for the center pinwheels, I've been able to make a bit of progress on the Pearls 'n Pinwheels quilt! 

Here's a photo of four of the blocks, completed through "round 1" of piecing around the center square.  I'm really liking it thus far and am amazed at how quickly it's going together due to the pattern's strip piecing instructions for constructing the side units.

Looking forward to more sewing this week and am crossing my fingers that this doesn't turn out to look too patriotic (I don't think it will)!

Reading Instructions is Important...

and advisable before you sew 160 or so half-square triangles and trim them up and then realize that the pattern designer did NOT want you to sew on each side of the diagonal line you drew on the back - you were supposed to SEW on the line!  So I have twice as many half-square triangles as I needed, and they're all the wrong size!  ARG.

And I no longer have enough of either fabric to continue work on this quilt.  This is a major bummer - I'd wanted to make some progress and can't really do anything else until I make the center pinwheels.  Here's the project - Atkinson Designs' Pearls 'n Pinwheels.

Maybe I can sneak out from the quilt show on Saturday to pick up some replacement fabric from Patched Works...  and now I've gotta figure out what to do with all of these ill-fitting blocks!

Anchor's Away!

Amidst the quilt show preparation, I found a bit of time to put this quick little project together.  It's not large (about 25"x29"), but I think it'll be perfect to hang on a nursery door, and it was nice to finish a quick project and feel like I'm getting somewhere!

Pattern is "Anchors Away" by Sandy Gervais, and the fabric is her Nautical and Nice line. I resisted this for a while, but ultimately, had to order the kit from the Fat Quarter Shop. I may be in trouble - when I just created those links, I discovered there's another pattern for a really cute sailboat quilt!!! Can I resist temptation?

Strips 'n Curves

About a year ago, at a quilt guild meeting, we were asked to write on a notecard a quilt-related "resolution" to finish a UFO (or more than one) and told to plan to finish it for a meeting at some point this year.  I decided to write down the Strips 'n Curves quilt from Louisa Smith's book of that name that I started in a class a few years back at Fabric Fusion in Brown Deer (unfortunately, no longer there). It got set aside because I needed to make some more strata and had to find some additional light batiks to do that.  Never mind that I did find some light batiks at the Chicago IQF not that long thereafter, yet I didn't pick up the quilt again!

Well... the show and tell reveal is next week, and I hadn't made much progress on my resolution by about 6 weeks ago.  I managed to get a few strata sewn in late January and then life got in the way once again.  I found some time this week to lay out the units and sew them together.  Here's the current progress:

I really do love the colors and need to decide if I want to put on a border of the orange-red batik.  Not so certain about the layout and geometric nature of the work.  It's certainly a bit of a departure from my normal work. 

I'd originally thought there was still some hope of getting this done by next Wednesday.  But now that I've got quilt show preparation duties taking up some time on both Saturday and Sunday, I'm not certain how reasonable that goal is (the top is about 45" square).  But I can still try.  Anyone have any good quilting design ideas?  Thoughts about thread colors?

Tuffets

I've squeezed in some short bits of sewing time over the past few weeks and completed the pincushions pictured here.  They're all from the Tuffets pattern by Miss Rosie's Quilt Co.  The pattern was great and I was able to make all six out of leftover charms from the Chocolat line by 3 Sisters for Moda that came out a few years back. I filled them with crushed walnuts (walnut bird litter), as recommended by the pattern and I have to admit it has a nice heft, fills the pincushions well, and wasn't as messy as I thought it might have been.

While I'm not personally much of a pincushion person (I keep all of my Iris pins in the tins they come in), these will go to the upcoming boutique for the West Suburban Quilter's Guild's show on March 19 and 20.  I'd actually be half tempted to buy (or keep) one or two of these... hopefully someone will be willing to pay $5 to take them home!

Where does the time go?

This month has been off to a pretty crazy start, which has not allowed for much sewing.  However, I'm a bit behind on the blog posting, so I figured I'd take a moment to post one of the projects I worked on a couple of weeks ago.

On the 30th, a small group of us from guild got together to work on making quilts for the guild's charity, the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin's Child Protection Center.  I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to work on, but decided to try to make something from my stash.  A fun pack of 12 fat quarters that I received back in February 2008 when I received the Fat Quarter Shop's Moda fat quarters every month caught my eye as it seemed perfect for an older girl who might receive treatment at the Child Protection Center.  Twelve fat quarters is perfect to sew up a lap sized version of Atkinson Designs' Yellow Brick Road pattern, so that made my decision for me.

The great thing is the pattern whips up quickly, so I pretty much had it done at the end of our session.  I looked briefly for a border for the quilt, but have decided to wait a few more weeks until I should be able to find yardage of Deb Strain's next line, Cherish Nature, which looks like it will be the perfect complement to this earlier line, called Daydreams.