Another finished top, and some play time

I added the borders to Tom's Primitiva quilt, and now it is ready for quilting.  It is bigger than I usually do, so I hung it over the backdrop in Tom's photo studio to take a picture, since it doesn't fit on the design wall very well.  Here is a close up of the corners and the border fabric.

I love this fabric, but it does two things that make me crazy.  It sheds strings everywhere, and they all stick to the orange.  The other thing is that the orange is the most wrinkle catching fabric I have worked with in a long time.  I iron it and by the time I get it ready to hang up, it is wrinkled again.  Hopefully, this won't matter when I get it all quilted.  I have no idea what I am going to use for a backing for this.  I have looked in my stash, and there is nothing that will work.  I may have to take Tom to the fabric store to select something he likes.  It is a good thing he likes to visit the fabric store.

After I finished that, I decided to work on my Modern 8 March challenge.  The challenge is to take an orphan block, and make something small just for ourselves.  I have a ton of orphan blocks from when I first started quilting and thought I would be a traditionalist.  I looked through them, trying to find one I could cut up and do something wild with.  Then I found the little moth.  The original block only goes out to the gold/orange squares.  I made it because I found this 3" square with the moth in my stash.  I fell in love with it and didn't want to lose it.  Today, I added the turquoise border, the quarter inch "flap", and the leaf border.  My new thing to learn with this piece was to include a three dimensional "flap" portion to the border.  I realized, too late, that to get what I wanted, I needed to miter the flap piece and the leaf piece.  I still like it, but next time, I will remember before it is too late.  I have drawn on some quilting marks and will do that tomorrow.  It will finish up just over 12" square, and I will hang it on my wall of mini quilts. 

The last thing I did was play with some of my improvisational blocks and see how they would look with

the turquoise.  I still have more blocks I want to make before I fully commit to a layout, but I am leaning toward the turquoise for improv sashing.  What do you think?

I have a few bee blocks I need to get done, and a doll quilt to start, and all those tops to quilt.  Where is my resolve?  Until tomorrow, joyful quilting, everyone.

Something new

Does your normal everyday life ever intrude seriously into your quilting time?  That is what happened to me this morning.  I had to spend far too much time dealing with state bureaucracy and a financial institution this morning.  Unfortunately, it was necessary.  Fortunately, it all worked out well.  After I got that taken care of, I got the Primitiva top put together and ready for borders.  The border fabric arrived this afternoon, so I will put it on tomorrow and post another photo.

Then, I had room to put this newly arrived work on the design wall and audition some fabric for my addition.  This is round three of the Improvirobin I am taking part in.  Willa, my wonderful sister in law, did a stunning and incredible piece of transformation on my round one piece.  You can see it here.  It has now traveled on to a new person for round three.  The piece on my design wall was started by Stephanie at Venus de Hilo, and added to by Jackie at Canton Village Quilt Works.  I have some ideas what I want to do, but I will let it gel for a few days before I jump in.  I will post what I do at the end of the month.

Tomorrow, I have a bunch of little projects that need my attention in the studio.  Until then, joyful quilting, everyone.

Primitiva quilt update

All the snowball blocks are now pieced and everything is on the design wall.  It is always amazing to me how the camera will pick up and focus on oranges and yellows to the detriment of all the other colors.  This entire quilt is very vibrant, and while the orange is very bright and exciting, it doesn't dominate this much in real life.  Tom is really happy with how this is coming along.  We had an interesting discussion about adding a border or just binding it as it is.  I was in favor of the latter because I felt a border would put a stop to all the energy flowing out of this quilt.  Then, we started looking at some of the different fabrics, and found one we thought would encourage the movement.  I decided to order it, and will add a border after all.  It is really great to have a husband with a good sense of color and design who is willing to enter into these discussions with me, and understand what I am talking about.  I am already thinking about quilting.  I would like to hand quilt a motif in each of the orange blocks, but I haven't come up with a brilliant idea yet.  There are some really big and bold flowers in some of the prints.  Maybe I will do something like that, and probably do it with the machine. 

After I cut off all the snowball corner triangles, I ended up with 84 half square triangle units to play with.  I am looking forward to making a smaller quilt with these later in the spring.  For now, I am going to put them away.  I need to get my stack of finished tops quilted.  Starting Friday, I am going to start getting some things quilted so I can get them finished.  Having a bunch of tops around is fun, but it will be more fun to have finished quilts.

Tomorrow, I start my weekly three days with Bella.  Until Friday, joyful quilting everyone.

Winner of the Traveling Box

I still haven't figured out how to put the Random Generator thing on my blog, but I did it and the winner was #1, Sarah Craig from Confessions of a Fabric Addict.  I have emailed her to let her know.  Thank you to the rest of you who entered.  Don't give up!  If you keep playing, one of these boxes will come to you one of these days.
Joyful quilting, everyone.