Sunday, July 20, 2014

There Goes the Neighborhood

I'm happy to report that home construction has come to an end for some of us.  Yes, I'm talking about the Country Homecoming quilt blocks.  I'll give you a peek at all 12 of my blocks up on the design wall:


And here's a look at blocks 11 and 12 made by three of us--first up are Tina's houses:



Sheryn's houses 11 and 12:



And finally mine:



You'll also want to check out Tanya's blocks over on HER BLOG. Tanya also shared a photo of Paulette's quilt and I'll show you Anna's.  Paulette and Anna were part of the original blog group who inspired the rest of us to make this quilt.


Just a reminder:  This quilt is one of the patterns in a book called Primitive Gatherings:  Quilts and Accessories.   It will be a couple months before you see our tops finished--we're allowing ourselves extra time to get the sashing and all of the border applique done.

Here's another little project I recently finished--it's a monthly Buttermilk Basin pattern for August.  If owls are showing up on our quilt projects, can fall be too far away?


It's hard to believe that summer is almost half over!  Happy quilting!

Addendum:  Check out Nancie Anne's houses HERE.

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Hard to Believe, I Know . . . .

But I FINALLY have a finished quilt project!


Remember Scrap Basket Sunday?  This was my ongoing project over the past year or so.  The pattern is called Pie in the Sky and it's from Kim Diehl's book, Simple Graces.


There were all sorts of stops and starts on this one.  I went along making four blocks a week okay for quite awhile, but then piecing it all together took some time, partly due to the size of the quilt top and partly due to other personal distractions.


And then there was the quilting.  It was hard to decide what color thread to use, but the backing of the quilt is a purple fabric, so I decided on purple thread.  This is a king size quilt that I quilted on a domestic machine, and the weight alone made it very tiring to quilt.  And once I finished quilting the main blocks, I ran out of gas for a couple months until I made up my mind to just jump back in and get it done.  I had to fill in a some open areas in the sashing and block intersections with a quilt pattern, and after looking at what I'd done so far, I ended up quilting a couple of different sized circles in those spaces.


Deciding what to pick for my binding was a no-brainer:  I pulled out my bag of random leftover sashing pieces and pieced quite a few together for a scrappy binding that matches the scrappiness of the rest of the quilt.  I love the finished quilt--it seems like the perfect scrappy, happy combination of colors to dress my bed through the summer months.

Now onto the next project . . . .