Quarter 3 : Ready, Set, Quilt!

Even after finishing a good number of quilts in the last year & a half with the Finish a Long, I still have a decent list of those unfinished WIPs.  So here's my proposed list for Quarter 3 and here's hoping I can make some good progress on each of these!  Linking up at The Littlest Thistle (#96) and then getting down to  business on these.

Nancy Drew #1- Meant to be a gift for a friend, I need to piece the backing, baste, quilt, bind & gift this quilt.  I'm planning an all over type design to keep it simple and snuggly. Backing & basting this one is my July ALYOF goal as well - motivation abounds!

Nancy Drew #2 - This one's for me and I plan to quilt it the same way as #1. (At least for now anyways).

Improv quilt - My quilt from taking a workshop with Denyse Schmidt last Fall.  I need to figure out how I want to quilt it and then get going on this one.

TDF quilt - My whole family watches the Tour de France each July and it's fun to cheer on our favorite riders.  Last year was the 100th Tour and Momm & I each decided to make a themed table runner/small quilt to celebrate.  I've got fabrics pulled and an idea/design in my head at the moment.  Since the 101st Tour kicked off last week I'd like to have this one finished soon.

Pantone Radiant Orchid-  My first try at working up a design to use the Pantone color of the year and (I think) I'd like to finish it up.

Watercolor Quilt - This quilt was my project from the class I took with Katie Pasquini Masopust in May.  It'll be fun to try out some different FMQ designs with this one.

July Goal

With a great finish in June on my Swoon quilt (see more here!) it's hard to come down from that thrill and pick the next project for this month.  I'm also preparing my list for Quarter 3 of the Finish a Long at The Littlest Thistle and will have plenty of projects to be working on over the next few months!

As my one project for July at A Lovely Year of Finishes I'll be hustling to get one of my Nancy Drew quilts backed & basted.  Even though the picture is still in blocks, the top is already completed on this one!  Linking up over at Fiber of All Sorts it's #81.

Pure Seaglass

Two years in the making, but this one is finally bound & complete!  I've been talking and working on this quilt for so long that I'm not sure what to say now that it's actually finished.  Momm came down to visit this weekend and helped me get some fun photos of me with my quilt.  Thanks Momm!  :D

I love all the steps involved in making quilts and especially love the actual quilting.  Even though this is Queen-sized quilt and I FMQ all of it, Gilbert held steady and it was smooth going.  You can read more about how this quilt came to be in the following posts:

Sunday Snapshot #8

Sunday Snapshot #9

Swoon WIP:: 4/16
End of June

However, a picture (or three…) is worth a thousands words and I'll leave you with these beauties!

the back

I'm linking this up as my third finish for Quarter 2 of the Finish a Long over at Littlest Thistle #281 (and will start planning Q3)!   Also linking this at Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it up Friday.

High Street Twist

I'd forgotten about this small quilt until last week when I was checking on my Quarter 2 list for the Finish a Long.  Here I sat thinking it was already finished, until I went looking for it and realized - nope, not done.  Ack!   I had the backing and batting ready, but not cut to size so I pulled it out over the weekend so I could work on it.

I made the top with the Twister ruler and a charm pack of High Street by Lily Ashbury.  The orange border fabric is one of the prints from this line as well.  Aurifil threads in matching colors of Pink:4020, Orange:2225, Yellow:2115, Green:1231 & Grey:2600 added a bit of interest to the quilting.  I kept the quilting simple with straight lines, but put them at an angle to keep with the twist in the pinwheels.  

I used one of the decorative stitches on my machine for some extra pizazz!  I machine bound this one and used the Orange thread for some color in the grey.

Linking this up to The Littlest Thistle for the Quarter 2 Finish a Long!  So glad I thought to check my original post and have the chance to finish this wall piece.  It's number 214 in the finishes link up party.

end of June

As part of the Lovely Year if Finishes, my June project was to finish quilting my Swoon quilt.  I wasn't sure it would happen as it's huge!  But I spent several nights with no distractions other than Netflix and some snacks to tide me through.

So here it is all quilted and ready for binding.  I'm super thrilled to have gotten to this point and stopped into Hancock's of Paducah after work Friday to find the right piece for binding.  I knew I wanted to go more aqua/teal and love love love the Sketch prints by Timeless Treasures.  I didn't have this color in my stash of Sketch and was super glad to find it and buy some on the spot.  In keeping with my aquatic/ocean theme of the quilt (sea glass, sea foam quilting) the name of this particular color was Pool - a perfect match.  :)

I even managed to start the final step Saturday and will have to get some finished pictures this week to share.  I don't care that it's summer and 90 degrees - once this is complete I'll be sleeping under it!  
Linking up at Fiber of All Sorts for the June finish party.

Sunday Snapshot #22

Yesterday was a beautiful day and full of adventures.  It started off with an early wake-up call and I headed out to the airport for a 5K run.  That's right - we ran on the runway of the airport!  It was awesome - gorgeous day, no clouds in the sky, flat course and a lot of fun.  It helped support a local organization as well which is always a great way to go.  

watch out airplanes!

My main goal was to run the whole thing as I'm not a regular runner and I did just that!  I ended up 61st out of 117, with a time of 33:17.  Not too shabby, considering the main reason I signed up was because it was on the runway - when would I ever have that chance again, right?

Watercolor to Quilt Workshop

At the end of May I was able to take our first workshop of the year at work with Katie Pasquini Masopust.  Katie had us painting with watercolors and creating a variety of techniques and little 'sketches' using things like bubbles, india ink, straws, resists and color combo ideas.  This was a lot of fun and I would like to try it again with a little more time to experiment with all the different techniques.

straw-blown paint

We then looked through our paintings and found small cropped sections that we liked.  Nothing too big - mine were mostly 2"-3" x 3"-5" in size.  I chose a section of the sketch where I blew the paint around with a straw that had all the colors I had chosen: turquoise, purple, orange and yellowy-gold.  

This was  copied into a line drawing and enlarged to be about 36" in height.  One of my Junior Quilters, E, was also in the class, and we had a blast with the paintings!  We had a silly moment with the india ink and went all Doctor Who graffiti-style on one of our paint sketches.

Day 2 had us creating templates from the enlarged piece, cutting the shapes out of our fabrics and pinning them up to the wall on a copy of our enlarged designs.  Very cool to see the fabrics come together to look like the painting I'd made.  

I got all of my pieces cut that day and worked with fabrics exclusively from my stash - score!  E & I had lunch at Kirchoff's each day, with cookie of course, and ate down by the river.  Gorgeous weather and conversation was filled with quilt talk, Doctor Who, books and old movies.  :D

Day 3 I went about turning and pressing under all the raw edges.  Each piece was set in place and final changes on fabric or prints were made.  I managed to turn all the edges under before class ended.  After everyone else had packed up and headed home, E & I walked over to get ice cream cones to wrap up the workshop.  Yumm!  What a fun class and it was great to share it with E.  Katie is a fantastic teacher and she made each step of the process enjoyable.  She's very encouraging and I would definitely try this technique again in the future.

I managed to get my pieces all stitched down at home the following day so I now have a completed quilt top from this class.  Quilting it will have to wait until next month (or after I finish Swoon) but I'm looking forward to all the fun designs I can quilt into each of the colors and sections.

finished top!