Mountmellick is a finished top

Whew, back from our trip to Oklahoma to move our son and The Texas to visit family. All went well and I have spent the last several days trying to get back into the routine of things and trying to get motivated in the sewing room. Though I was feeling the urge to start on something new, I resisted and put on the borders for Mountmellick, the mystery quilt by Di Ford that was in last year's Quiltmania magazine. I am so glad I did as I love how it turned out.

Part of what took so long is that I couldn't use as much of the strip as I wanted as there were not enought full repeats of the pattern to cut it the way I needed. So after much deliberation and advice from quilting buddies, I ended up just using the darker portion of the stripe. Turns out that was the perfect solution, but in future I guess I better check the stripe repeat before getting my heart set on how I want to use it.

Next up, the hand quilting. I am trying a wool batting for the first time and my LQS only had Quilter's Dream Wool in the size I needed. Seems a bit puffy so far but hopefully once I add the fill around the appliqe I will like it better. Still deciding between echo quilting or grid work as the fill. I like the look of grids but hate the marking and stitching. I love doing echo quilting though so it may win out once again!

 

I did get this month's Quiltmaker bitty blocks done. These finish at 4" and were a fun way to get back to my machine and use up more of my scraps. This will end up as a cute row quilt at the end of the year and hopefully I will see a dent in that scrap basket by then!

Finally, you may remember a quilt, Science Fair, that I finished quilting a few months ago. It was draped across the bed in the room that our son was expected to live in at the end of the summer. However he was only here for a few nights before moving to his permanent job and I had forgotten to remove it from the bed when he arrived. He saw it in the room and said how much he liked it. The next day he sheepishly hinted that he would like to have it to hang in the office/sewing room in his new apartment and I was thrilled to gift it to him. After all, isn't that the best purpose for our quilts, to surround people with our love. I was delighted to get this picture of the quilt hanging in his room, haha, a constant reminder of mom!

 

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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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An Appliqué slump means more piecing

Today I realized that I have not been doing much appliqué lately. I assume I am just having a slump and I will get back to it soon. Still working away on the Di Ford mystery but not much to show right now.

Instead I started another quilt, Science Fair by Jaybird quilts. Frankly at the cost of the special ruler I figured I better get some use out of it to justify the expense! One of those impulse buys that shocked me at the cash register. Anyway the pattern uses 2 1/2 in strips and I had a jelly roll just waiting to be used. The lap size only requires 26 strips and I originally planned to just use strips from my Comma by Zen Chic jelly roll. But sadly I could not find a suitable background in my stash to work with both the black and the grey in the line.

Instead I decided to split the jelly roll, add a few strips from my stash and I ended up with enough to make a lap size and a baby size. Here is the lap size fabric with the dark fabric for background and a few of the blocks laid out. I decided to remove the yellow and add a bit of teal. Yes, I do love this color combination and it goes well in my guest room so I keep coming back to it when I am working in brights!

And here is how they are on the design wall right now. I need to ponder this layout to make sure it doesn't need some adjustments.

And the fabric left for the baby quilt with the light solid background. It reminds me of bumblebees so perhaps a few little bee accessories would make this a fun baby gift.

Finally, since I ended up with one extra of all the triangles, I arranged them into this large scrappy hexagon and will make a little pillow.

 

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