A busy weekend

 I scrapped the Bizzy Kid idea and went with Round and Round by Camille of Thimbleblossoms.  I'm using a completely different method since Bizzy Kid left me with 6.5 inch squares of various purples and blues already cut.  Camille's method would probably have resulted in less trimming, but a bit more fabric waste.  Now I am slowly working through the cutting, pressing and trimming of 225+ HST before attempting to assemble the circles.  It will be a smaller quilt than the original pattern, but I might make the white space a little bigger to make up for it.  We'll see what size it ends up.

 The fabric choices for the Starburst quilt.  Somewhere in the cutting process I realized that the recipient's birthday is January 31st.  How likely is it that I can get the whole darn thing done by then?  So, I decided to see if I could piece the top this weekend.

How easy it was to forget the 200+ triangles to trim in favor of the more glamorous part of quilting.  I do wish I would have chosen a different fabric for the bottom left star.  Green metallic leaves just aren't quite as bold as the red and the brown.  Solids for the stars probably would have been the best idea.  I still really like it.  It is waiting for backing fabric to arrive before I bind it and hope to start quilting it this weekend.  So, I am a participant in the quilt-a-long but on the fast track.  Now hopefully I managed to take all the right pictures for Melissa's assignments.

I also pieced the quilt back for Ring Toss.  No picture yet but that is basted and waiting for me to quilt it.  Perhaps I'll try to work on that tomorrow night.  That won't get sent until Nephew #2's quilt is done. Just not politically correct to send the two kid quilts separately.

Catching up

And now, for some work I haven't posted yet.  My Solstice Stars quilt for my dad.  The stars are composed primarily of Modern Meadow by Joel Dewberry and Hope Valley by Denyse Schmidt.  The blocks are framed with Kona Bahama Blue and the rest of the quilt is Kona Navy.  

 I quilted the negative space with wishbones (for lack of a better term) and custom quilted the stars.  It is meant to be a twin size quilt but my parents currently have it across their bed in the opposite orientation.

 The Spice Market Tote I made for my mom for Christmas/Birthday/Just because.  I also made her a pleated tote with the bird fabric from Cosmos by Laura Gunn.  Again, I did not take a picture so I guess I'll have to do it later.

 Somehow, during a conversation between my husband and mother-in-law I was asked or I offered to make a quilt for my sister-in-law.  I was willing to do so and was thinking of making a quilt for her next, just it was going to be a surprise instead.  In the course of the conversation with her, I ended up being asked to make quilts for both the nephews as well.  Long story short, after many months of waiting to hear what colors they were interested in and what kind of style, they told me their favorite colors and will be surprised by the quilt choice. They live 2500+ miles away and I haven't seen them for 3.5 years so I don't feel incredibly confident in my decisions.

After purchasing fabric for the two boys, they saw London Tube by Zen Chic and really liked it but it was a bit too late.  I did purchase the pattern and I'm not impressed by the lack of directions.

Nephew #1 chose red, platinum and gold.   I chose to have some artistic license on his colors a little bit and some might call the colors red, yellow and gray.  I didn't run into the metallic dots until after fabric was cut and I didn't really want to go there.  The pattern is Ring Toss by Cluck, Cluck, Sew.

  Besides Kona White, there is Nature and Oval Elements, Metro Living, Stof, Michael Miller Ikat,  Dear Stella (the red with white), Odyssea and Kaufman Spot On in Cardinal.  Hopefully this will be an acceptable interpretation of colors.  Now I am waiting for the backing to arrive.Nephew #2 chose blue, purple and pink and my husband chose Bizzy Kid also by Cluck, Cluck, Sew.  No pictures yet, but I am now waiting on some lighter blues and purples because my purples and blues in my stash are really dark.  The whole quilt was way too dark.  And I've been struggling with the incorporation of small bits of pink as his mom asked to minimize that for the day when society might tell him that it isn't cool for boys to like pink.

My sister-in-law's chose cranberry, gold, green and brown as her colors.  I had to ask style for further clarification and she chose Northcott Stonehenge Gold Leaf Metallic fabric.  Melissa posted about her Starburst quilt-a-long so I thought it might be the perfect match for her fabric choice and my guess at her more traditional styling.  My goal is to send the two boys' quilts together since it would not be politically correct to do otherwise.  I bought enough fabric for one block right now and intend to go back shortly and get the rest for the top.  

The block  didn't seem to take too long for the size of the block.  This is the 32 inch option.  I think I could do another king size quilt with nine blocks like this.  I am not sure why I am unable to realign this line of text.  Oh well.  The fabric fairy should visit on Wednesday and make it financially feasible to purchase the rest of the fabric needed for the quilt.  It'll be a mass FMQ party for me soon with these three and one other one that is ready to start tomorrow night.  

 Erica requested blocks inspired by Amanda Jean's birch trees quilt. Two very scrappy rows and one fairly coordinated fabric collection row that is tiny.

This made me want to organize my scraps, have the ironing fairy come and make them flat to work with and actually make a quilt with all scraps or start some sort of ongoing scrap quilts.  I now just have three WIP, the three above, which doesn't seem too overwhelming.

And finally, my mom and I took my niece and my daughter to the local sewing studio to make gnomes.  I don't have a picture of the finished gnomes at the moment but will try to snatch it from her clutches after I charge the camera battery.  The arms were stitched but the legs still had the pins.  It was quite a bit of fun and I did less of her sewing this time around than before.  

My productivity should drop off again as I go back to work.