Sunday, August 31, 2014

Block Happy 1

The Great Lakes Modern Quilt Guild meets in person every other month. To keep us busy during the off months, we hold an online activity. A block is chosen (that's actually part of my role in the guild--to choose the block for this activity--such a fun "duty"!), and anyone who wants to participate makes one (or more) block(s), posts them on Facebook, and then brings them to the following month's meeting. One lucky person wins the drawing and goes home with a quilt full of blocks. You may remember that I won last September's improv herringbone blocks and stitched them into this quilt.

I'm catching up here, so I have a couple month's worth of blocks to share:
First, the tipsy stacks block (this first photo is oriented the wrong way to understand the name...check out the second block, with turquoise, for the name to make more sense).
The color rules: Use black and white fabric with shades of a single color in the center.
Find the guild post about this block (including link to the tutorial) here.


Second, the "X Marks the Spot" block.
The color rules: shades of gray for the background, a solid for the "X" and a coordinating print for the center square.
Find the guild post about this block (including the link to the tutorial) here.

This awesome spiderweb block is the online activity for our September meeting. We held a text fabric swap at our July meeting, and those fabrics make up the center of the block. The rest is just scraps. Can't wait to see all of these blocks together, going home with one lucky winner!
Find the guild post about this block (including link to the tutorial) here.

I think this last block design is going to be in particularly high demand at the next meeting...I've heard that everyone is hoping to win these!

Thursday, August 28, 2014

August ALYOF Goal: complete!

This month might have been my earliers ALYOF goal completion ever...although you wouldn't know it since I'm not actually blogging about it until the very end of the month! 

I've mentioned a couple times that my due date for baby #3 was in August, and I wanted to get my goal (quilting the quilt you see below) done before the baby came, figuring life might get a little crazy afterwards. 
And guess what? I did get it done. About a week before this little guy arrived:
(My mom and I sewed the animals before my first son was born, back in 2009. They are part of my  nursery decor, so I couldn't resist a little photo shoot today of Mr. B., who is one week old!)


Oh yeah, back to the quilt. I pebble quilted all of the white areas except the outer border, which I really liked and actually enjoyed doing. The quilting on the colored parts of the disappearing ninepatch squares as well as the outer border is a back and forth wavy line. It works fine as a filler, but it's nothing exciting. However, I'm happy to have this done! Thinking my September goal might be to bind it...



Tuesday, August 5, 2014

August ALYOF Goal

So...I didn't make my July goal for A Lovely Year of Finishes. While this was not the (whole) reason why, I still thought I'd share.

See the belly?!?!

What kind of crazy person makes a goal that involves basting a quilt (albeit small) when 8.5 months pregnant? Oh yeah, I guess that would be me.

I could have finished. But it would have involved staying up late the last two nights in July, and quite frankly, I'm craving and conserving sleep right now before the baby comes!

I'm almost halfway done, and it looks like this:
I really like the pebbling in the white. I'm a little less enthused about the wavy lines in the colored parts, but I think the white is what will stand out, so that's what matters.

I'm repeating my July goal for August--to get this quilt top quilted. And being almost halfway there, even with a baby on the way, I should make it!