picnic stripes

I’ve been into stripes lately.

I made a strip quilt a while ago out of some Amy Butler Daisy Chain fabric, and I knew I’d want to make another at some point.

stack2

Then I came across this quilt at Anthropologie, and was instantly reminded that I had this in mind to make. I had already pulled out a stack of fabrics and thought they’d work perfectly.

strip-quilt1

I wanted this quilt to be wider than the last I made, so these strips are all pieced together to create a width just shy of 70″. I was a bit short on a few, so I pieced in some other fabric, then really liked the look and did the same for a few of the other strips.

As for the fabric — I used a lot of Anna Maria Horner’s Good Folks fabric, and suddenly I realized that it ended up looking somewhat like this quilt she showed over on her blog… I guess using the same fabric line with a strip quilt design will do that! In any case, I love how well her fabrics pair with so many other fabrics. I can see that she mixed in some Katie Jump Rope and some of her older lines, while I added in some solids, Cake Rock Beach, Lush and Alexander Henry fabrics.

Maybe this quilt should be the new picnic quilt (though I can’t remember the last time I actually went on a picnic!). It looks pretty good on the grass!

strip-quilt3

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Birds of a feather

birds-of-a-feather-quilt

Thanks to a rainy Saturday, I got this one quilted, bound and washed. You may recall that I made this quilt to feature one of my favorite (now out of print) fabrics – these great paint by number birds. They originally came in 4 colors, and thanks to some online friends, I had a bit in three of the four colors. I decided to use all of them in this one quilt – going for improv-style blocks  with one of the birds as the center of each block.

birds3

And as if there weren’t already enough birds in this quilt, I decided to use a few more for the back… just simple blocks here – each bird is framed with one of the fabrics used on the front, and then, because I couldn’t help myself, I had to add in one of the little flowers in the lower corner.

birds-back2

I used this pink polka dot fabric (MoMo Wonderland) for the binding, with one little section of the green polka dots. Love it!

binding

And now that this one’s completed, I’m kind of tempted to do something similar with the paint by number deer… overkill? Probably…!

Posted in [search] Wonky/Improv Quilts, 2009 Finished Quilts, Finished Quilts, Household Sewing - bags, napkins, pillows, Posts about Quilts, Quilts | Tagged , , , , , , , | 33 Comments

our guest room

All I can say is that it’s a good thing we don’t have guests too often. The guest room, and especially the guest bed, has become the storage spot for all the unfinished quilts. Some of these unfinished quilts are old… in fact, one is the very first quilt top I made (and then never finished!). For one reason or another they remain in various stages of completion spread out over the guest room bed.

This is the first one – a block quilt I made using some of the first fabrics I ever bought. I really like the quilt, and in fact, it’s all sandwiched and ready to be quilted, but I haven’t gotten around to it. Mostly because it’s kind of large. But even though it’s large, it’s going to end up a strange size – long enough for a queen sized bed, but once it shrinks, it will not be wide enough. Since I know this is the case, I keep thinking that I should take the time to fix it rather than just quilt it and accept the strange size.

block-quilt

And then there’s the second quilt I started, again, another big one, but not quite big enough. It’s a modified coin quilt, and it probably just needs another row or two to make it large enough… I really should get on that.

modified-coin-quilt

This next one is also ready to be quilted – sandwiched and everything! – but I can’t decide how I want to quilt it. I had a lot of great suggestions when I asked about it way back here. I’m thinking I’ll probably go with a spiral square…

echino-quilt

The bird quilt is also ready to be quilted – you’ve already seen this one this week, so here’s a little glimpse of the back. I’m hoping to have time to get this one done this weekend.

birds-of-a-feather1

And you know what? Instead of working on this pile, I started a new quilt. There’s no hope for me!

strip-quilt

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