Waiting

I've been waiting for an order of batting and fabric for awhile so I could finish up two quilts in progress.  It is currently sitting at the local UPS distribution center less than 5 miles away waiting for Monday.  Only slightly vexing because two weekends have passed since it was ordered. Without further ado, here is the work of the past two weekends.

While waiting I have pieced the backing for the Freebird Unwind quilt.  

I pieced two complete Starburst blocks and 2 partial blocks while I wait for the Moda Snow to arrive.  I decided to use up the additional Stonehenge Gold leaf Metallic fabric leftover from my sister in law's quilt and make the same quilt for an unknown recipient.  I might donate it to one of the local school auctions, but I haven't decided.  

I organized the solids in my stash by color and decided to make a HST quilt with the different blues.  The abundance of blue in the stash originates from the blue obsession of the 5 year old for at least the last 3.5 years.  Her favorite colors are Pacific and Ocean from the Kona Color Card.  There's a mix of FreeSpirit, Art Gallery, Michael Miller, Northcott, Kona, and Bella Solids.  There are quite a few that are very similar in shade, but I'll do my best to pair them up with contrasting shades.  We'll see how that goes.  Squares are cut and ready.  

I'm still pondering how to mark all the diagonals on the squares if I'm unsure which ones will get paired up.  I guess I need to decide if it is efficient to just mark the line on all of them to do more random pairing, or plan it out ahead of time and draw half as many lines.

24 hours have elapsed since I wrote the above and I've decided to plan and draw the lines as I go rather than all at once.  I need a few additional blues to round things out.  Only the navy and the light powder blue ones have been matched up so they are disproportionately represented in this random arrangement for a photograph. Oh what fun the trimming will be!  

With my scraps sorted into bins by color, small snippets and strings, I decided to try to use up my strings by making Scrapper's Delight blocks from Sunday Morning Quilts.  I wanted to try it after looking at the book but then made up my mind to do so after the Pink Chalk blog post linked above.  My strings seemed pretty dark so I stopped without completing the three blocks yet.  

Hopefully I can get Starburst 2 blocks completed and maybe the Unwind quilt basted this week.  

Unwinding Freebird

For my 4 year old niece, I made a Jaybird Quilts pattern, Unwind, using a Freebird jelly roll I purchased in my first year of quilting.  

I see the stars right away and have to think about the zig zags.  My daughter saw the zig zags (her name for them), and had to be told about the star shapes.  Still waiting on the backing fabric to arrive.  I found some Freebird yardage for $3.50/yard at Del Ray Fabrics and figured it would be better to get that for the back and save some other fabrics for a different quilt back.  

I ended up needing to trim the blocks to 12.25" because I didn't manage to sew the triangle pieces as straight as I should have.  Perhaps next weekend I'll manage to baste and quilt it.  My niece's birthday isn't until May so I have some time to finish this one.

March Mittens

Laura asked for pairs of mittens using the tutorial from Bee in My Bonnet.  I did really like how I could easily use up odds and ends of white fabric without cutting big pieces.  

 I need to improve my technique of sewing across a square on a diagonal.  The machine did not suck the fabric down but it got close and it doesn't end up nice and square without trimming for me.

Now the 5 year old would like me to make her a pair of mittens.  

Finished Starburst

Melissa happened to announce her Starburst quilt a long at the same time I was pondering which pattern to make for my sister-in-law's quilt.  She had already picked out her choice of fabrics and I was trying to decide what pattern after only being in her house 3 times, the latest being 3 years ago.  This seemed to be perfect to match with her fabric choice, Northcott Gold Leaf Metallic.  

Since it was about 10 days before her birthday and I still needed to quilt the her sons' quilts, I decided to quilt it with just a small meandering stitch.  Thank you Melissa for your great tutorial.

 Fabrics: Moda Snow and Northcott Gold Leaf Metallic
Pattern: Starburst by Melissa Corry (the 32" block size)
Quilted by me with a smaller meandering stipple
Backing: Ivory flannel by Kaufman

Size: About 76 x 76"