Baby Panel Progress

I've been having fun slowly working with my rainbow scraps.  All of the colorful scrap fabrics are now cut down to size for making triangles.

I cut my fabric for making half square triangles with a one inch allowance.  The standard 7/8ths allowance for HSTs always has me running up against the edge of too small, and that is no fun.

One yellow scrap got removed from the running because it was too narrow, but I have more than enough yellows.  And having one less fabric helped make my layout work more smoothly; now I will have four triangles of each color.

Seams Easy "ruler" for marking HSTs

The other side of these colorful HST blocks will be black to match the inner and outer border, so I also cut 42 black squares.  That went much faster!

Instead of using chalk for marking this time, which leaves thick lines and extends my seam allowance, I went to Joann's and got a new tool.  It's a mechanical pencil by Fons & Porter.  I thought the marking medium was a very thin chalk, but it's not.  It's similar to pencil lead.

So far I'm quite happy with it.  It leaves thin, clean lines; and the eraser works well for removing the lines both immediately and after several days of sitting.

I also attached the first round of borders to the panel.

There was some math involved in making the inner borders.  First the panel didn't come out to be a nice even size, I believe the finished size was 22.25 x 27.25.  That seemed odd to me, why an extra 1/4 inch?  Then the borders also had to be coordinated with the size of the triangles in the middle border so that the corner triangles would line up correctly.

Panel built up to 27x33

Don't forget that voting is open for the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  I hope you'll consider voting for my little duckies.  Please and thank you!

Linking up with Let's Bee Social and W.i.P Wednesday.

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Rubber Duckies!

With the hand quilting section of the Blogger's Quilt Festival brought back, I wanted to come out and wave my flag of support.  Many thanks to Karen for bringing the loss and reinstatement to my attention and to Amy for keeping the hand quilting section open for all of us.

I have made a baby quilt for many of my coworkers' first babies since I started working at my current company.  There was only one miss, and that's because no one told me they were expecting!  Silly people.

This was one in a series of three quilts with this fabric (It's amazing how little fabric you actually need for a baby quilt!), but the quilting on this one is my favorite.

I started by sketching a picture of the two ducks splashing each other (from the blue duck fabric) and added some free hand waves.  Then I enlarged my design to fill the center square, cut it out, traced it, and quilted it in light blue Gutterman thread.  I love these little duckies.  They are so playful!

Linking up with Let's Bee Social and Fabric Frenzy.

A Little Bit of Everything

I worked on a little bit of everything this week.  Everything, that is, except for getting the borders on my maple quilt.  That's okay, it's not like I'm bringing a finished top to a quilter this Saturday.  Oh, wait...

So instead of working on the maple leaf borders, I started pulling fabric to make borders for a baby quilt that has come up.  It took a bit of finessing, but I'm finally happy with all the color transitions.  Now this quilt is waiting for me to want to make little HST.  So much for swearing off triangles after all those maple leaves.  It didn't take me long, the maple quilt isn't even finished and I'm back on the wagon.










Next up I started cutting fabric for a quilt that was supposed to be made at a mystery weekend two years ago!  I was sure it had been patient long enough.


I do like my rainbow palette, but you probably can't tell.


Last but not least, I'm still trying to finish April on my cross-stitch sampler.  I gave my little critter a face and now he needs ears.  Almost there.  I might not even get to May before the end of the month at this rate!

Linking up to Let's Bee Social and WiP Wednesday.

Woodland Sampler - April and Completed Leaves

It's time to show some progress on my woodland critters.  I'm really lucky that May didn't start until Thursday last week or I would have had a really paltry showing.  Most of my progress has been made in May.  Oh well.

Even with the extra time I wasn't able to finish the whole square but I'm happy with my progress considering how much time I've put in on another little project I've had going...

So without further ado, I'd like to show you some leaves!  Ta da!

Very Nearly Finished!!

I played around with the blocks and decided to have like leaves touching instead of having all the blocks going the same direction.  I thought it looked better this way.  However, I find it interesting how different something can look on a screen versus in person.  Those paired leaves really stand out in this picture!

Now I just have to decide on border sizing and call the quilter.  The top contender is a 2 inch inner border and a 6 inch outer border.

Linking up with Let's Bee Social and WiP Wednesday.

Lots of Leaves

My goal for this week was to have all the full blocks made.  But with three blocks left to do as of last night, I wasn't sure I was going to make it.

It seems last minute Rachel has pulled through yet again!

Almost there!

In related news, the backing that I ordered was delivered last week.  It's a little lighter in places than I was expecting but since it's going to be on the back, it's close enough.  It's all starting to come together now!

Backing.

Linking up with Let's Bee Social and W.i.P Wednesday.

Half Square Triangle Fatigue

I didn't do a lick of actual sewing this week; instead, I did a whole lot of trimming.  I now have 144 half square triangles and 36 stems all prepped and ready to be made into leaves.

I'm hoping that by next week I'll have all the remaining blocks put together.

I didn't properly appreciate how many HSTs there were in this quilt.  There are 240 HSTs!  I'm looking forward to my next quilt.  It's not going to involve a single triangle!

I also did a little fabric shopping.  I went to find backing at a LQS Saturday... except I ended up walking out with approximately 8.5 yards for a completely different project and no backing.  Whoops!  So Monday I ordered a couple yards of wide back online.  There goes April's budget!  And I had been doing so well this year.

Linking up with Let's Bee Social.

Fabric Remnants

I've finished sewing all the stems for the remaining maple leaves.  I even made the stems for the block I forgot about.  That's thirty-six stems!  Someone needs to remind me, the next time I think about making a leaf, that I should just make bear paws instead.  All these stems were a bit annoying.

I have half of the leaf points sewn as well.  There's still a lot of trimming and ironing to do, but I may be ready for block assembly by the weekend.

Yesterday I found out that my tooth is going to require a bit more help and a little more time to heal than I anticipated, so to pick myself up I applied a little retail therapy.  A half yard of red polka dots helped quite nicely.

Last but not least, I recently had some fabric passed on to me by a friend.  I took part of it, but there are some pieces that I know will find a better home with someone else.  There's some flannel...

A large piece of upholstery weight stripes...

And a handful of creamy batiks.

I'd love to give them to a quilter that can use them, so if you're interested please let me know which fabrics you want and what you would use them for.  My apologies to my international readers, but preference will be given to those with US mailing addresses.

Linking up to Let's Bee Social.