The finishing continues

Now that my longarm machine is up and running I am trying to catch up with all the tops that have accumulated over the last few years. I can't believe that I had about 30 tops waiting to be quilted - it will take a long time to finish them all but I am making a start.

Here is my Celtic Solstice, Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt from 2013. I am very happy with the colors in this one.

About a year ago I made this quilt called Science Fair. It makes a cute throw in the guest room that until recently was my sewing room.

And today I quilted and bound another Bonnie Hunter quilt, Scrappy Trips, a free pattern available on her blog. I have called it Scrappy Trip to France because I used mostly French General fabrics. I had forgotten how much I like this quilt until I was quilting it, I just love all these pretty prints combined. It is fun getting to know my machine again and to practice a different design with each one. My machine is not computerized so I must free motion quilt all the designs by hand. I need lots of practice!

I also finished another 1/2 size block from My Enchanted Garden. Lots of fun to work with these fabrics and threads!

 

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Progress

This week I finished a few more blocks for my Stonefields quilt. The Bracelet block.

This cute little flower block.

And a little hand pieced Sunflower block. I am machine piecing the rest of the blocks but figured I had a better shot with those points if I hand pieced this one. It was a bit of a challenge but I am considering making another as It is just so cute!

I also finished prepping My Poisies in the Valley. A few fabric changes were made along the way but I am pretty pleased with this layout and mostly I am pleased that I was able to clean up the table of fabrics that I had pulled for this project.

And finally, I prepped one more of the blocks from My Enchanted Garden. I am really hoping to finish prepping the rest of those blocks this week.

 

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Busy Prepping

Last week I realized that I had several opportunities to sit and stitch coming up but nothing was prepped. I get in a bit of a panic if I have no handwork ready to go so I spent some serious time getting things ready to go. First, I needed something to take to my Woolie group. I have been working along on a Sue Spargo BOM but I just wasn't in the mood to work on it so pulled out the book "My Enchanted Garden" by Gretchen Gibbons. The patterns in the book are to be enlarged by 200% but when I started to make the enlarged copies I realized that I didn't want to make something that big. I am really enjoying working smaller these days and decided to try and make the blocks just the size as printed. I am so happy I did. This is my first block finished.

And I have prepped 2 more blocks. I am using a mix of wool, cotton, silk and even ultra suede on linen. These are just so fun to do and at such a small size can be finished quickly.

My appliqué group has decided to work on a fun appliqué project. We are taking a Blackbird Designs pattern and reducing it to 1/2 size and several of us are making the same quilt. Thos is the pattern "Poisies in the Valley" from their book "In Full Bloom" which is now out of print. It will be fun to see how everyone interprets the same pattern. I had a few ideas of the direction I wanted to go but ended up doing version of my usual color palette as I think this will look nice in my livingroom. Next time I really need to do something different! Here are a few blocks prepped.

And a few more added to the mix. I even have a few stitched. You might notice that I have changed the arcs in one of the blocks in the photo below. This is why I love using my design wall, I can quickly see when something isn't working for me. The random fabrics on the wall are those I have chosen for the arcs in the last 4 blocks. Stupidly, I was not originally putting these on the wall as they were to be arranged in the quilt so I now must work to make sure I get the color balanced better.

I have also stitched a few more of the Stonefields blocks.

So right now I have a full design wall and my new studio is a mess with three separate piles of fabrics pulled to prep three projects. I think I need to get back to work so I can get this mess cleaned up!

 

 

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