Basket Weave Blocks on my Wall

I pulled out a UFO recently and made the final two blocks needed. The rest of the blocks had been made by my friends in Sew Bee It. 

Here the blocks are on the wall but I see some rearranging I need to do before I sew them together.

The top will get a narrow inner border, the same width as the strips, and a 4" outer border. I'm still looking for fabric for the inner border. I want a very dark maroon or russet or burgundy. Hopefully I can find something, then I'll use the same olive as in the blocks for the outer border.

Maybe I can continue to move this UFO along. I should at least be able to get the center done, even if I get stuck on the borders due to lack of fabric. And any progress at all is good, right?


Link Ups:
Quilt Fabrication
Finished or Not Friday
Confessions of a Fabric Addict
UFO Busting with Tish

May Stash Report and Goals Update

I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that May felt like a weird month. I didn't stay focused on my goals very well, but I did finish a couple of small quilts.

Beach Baby for new grandma Valerie

May Stash Report:
IN this month: 3 yards (charcoal background for bright strippy spiral)

OUT this month: 6-3/8 yards (FG baby quilt binding, 3/8 yard.  Bee blocks, 1/4 yard. Green strippy (AKA Sea Glass) top, 2-1/4 yards. Pink Cats, top, backing and binding - 3-1/2 yards)

IN YTD: 29-1/2 yards

OUT YTD: 70-3/4 yards

YTD Net Change: 41-1/4 yards out

I'm so bored with my stash! I'm looking forward to the time when I can shop live for fabric again. Online fabric shopping has more often than not been a disappointment for me. 

Flying Geese Baby Quilt

Goals Update

May Recap: 

1. Make baby quilt for new grandma Valerie. DONE

2. Talk to Sandy about quilting How Many and Corona Medallion; get and/or prep backings. No, Still need to figure out backing for How Many. Batting finally arrived.

3. If possible, start quilting Color Spoke Puzzle. No, awaiting invisible thread. 

4. Layer, Baste, and quilt Keep Positive for Hands 2 Help. Not done.

5. Quilt and finish baby quilt for Operation Shower. DONE, flying geese baby quilt. This will go to Little Lambs for H2H instead of Operation Shower. 

6. When background fabric arrives, finish piecing bright strippy spiral top. Progress: Charcoal background is cut, rows are halfway pieced, columns are clipped for piecing as I can get to it. 

7. Look through UFOs and find something to move forward. DONE: Pink Cats baby quilt, which will go to Little Lambs for H2H. Progress: Basketweave Bee Blocks. 

Other: Pieced green/aqua/blue strippy columns baby quilt top, now named Sea Glass. 

Sea Glass in progress

June Goals: 

1. Finish piecing Bright Strippy Spiral.

2. Talk to Sandy about quilting How Many and Corona Medallion; get and/or prep backings.

3. If possible, start quilting Color Spoke Puzzle. 

4. Layer, baste and quilt Sea Glass baby quilt.

5. Finish piecing basketweave bee blocks top. 

6. Piece another strippy top using already cut strips. 

7. Design something new and complicated to piece.

I also need to get all the Hands2Help quilts mailed out, which I will do this week. 

Pink Cats Baby Quilt for Hands2Help

I don't know how focused I'll stay in June. I actually didn't feel like writing goals this month. Maybe my goals for the month should just be:

 - pet fabric

 - piece something

 - quilt something

 - and my stretch goal: buy fabric

Maybe those I can achieve!  ;-)

Linking up with Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

Hands2Help 2020

Once again this year I'm participating in Hands2Help with Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. This year I'm sending one quilt to Quilty Hugs for Happy Chemo and three to Little Lambs Foundation for Kids. 

Have Faith is going to Quilty Hugs. This quilt's story is here. 

Purple Chunky Churn Dash is going to Little Lambs. This quilt uses materials given to me by Wanda of Exuberant Color for use in donation quilts. 

Little Pink Cats is also going to Little Lambs; story in yesterday's post, scroll down. 

And Coral Flying Geese is going to Little Lambs as well. Here's this quilt's story. 

Thanks, Sarah, for all your hard work organizing and hosting Hands2Help 2020!

 

A Small UFO Finish

Okay, so who has tops waiting for batting or backing? I'm sure I'm not the only one.

This little quilt's top hung in the closet for awhile, waiting for batting cut-offs of the right size to Frankenbatt* together. Some other recent finishes yielded more batting cut-offs, and finally I had the size needed for this UFO.

At 37" by 41" it's perfect for a baby quilt, and the sweet cat print is just too cute.

Everything's from stash. I know the cat print is relatively recent, one of my LQS's fat quarter sale finds from within the past couple years. The stripe goes back to one of my earliest trips to Paducah in the late 90's.

This little quilt is destined for Little Lambs Foundation for Kids as part of Hands2Help 2020. I've sent them children's quilts before, and this year they also want baby quilts. I'm including it in my Rocking Chair Quilts, see tab above. After a tumble through the washer and dryer, it'll be on its way.

Although I'm sorry for the circumstances of any child under the care of an agency such as Little Lambs, I hope this little quilt brings a bit of comfort for someone.

Linking up with Confessions of a Fabric Addict

*For those who are curious, I used iron-on batting tape to butt the edges of the batting pieces together, then stitched over the join with a serpentine zigzag. No ridge, no slippage, you can't feel the joining seams from the outside of the quilt, and it won't come apart within the quilt with repeated laundering.

UFO Progress: Basket Weave

One of the items on my Goals list for May is to revisit UFOs and see what I can move forward. I have a small UFO finish, which I'll post about on Friday.

I also pulled this project to work on. It's bee blocks, made for me by the Sew Bee Its the last time it was my turn to hand out. I don't even remember when that was. The blocks are made of strips, and when assembled they'll create a basket weave pattern. Apparently I got into strips even before my current obsession.

I gave each member the constant fabrics, olive and newsprint for the outside edges and Kaffe Fassett's Baba Ganouch print in the center. I asked them to add strips using the colors in the Kaffe print to drive the palette. These girls are really good at pulling colors that create a cohesive palette when I give them an inspiration print. They stretch the boundaries and the result is much more interesting than what I would have pulled myself, but since the colors all derive from the inspiration print, they all work together.

I knew I was short a couple of blocks. I miscalculated; I got 22 blocks back from the other 11 girls in the bee, and I made six but I should have made 8, so I was 2 short of the 30 needed.  

Two more blocks made, now I have enough for the center. The blocks finish at 9", using strips cut 1-1/2" wide.  

The next step will be laying them out on my design wall with the stripes alternating vertical and horizontal to create the basket weave effect, which you can see above in the instruction page I handed out with the kits. 

Link Up: Quilt Fabrication

Beach Baby

We've been going to the same stretch of beach on the Gulf coast since 1983. At first we rented a beach house, but when its new owner made it his private home, we had to find somewhere else to stay, so we went to the condo complex next door. We've been going there once or twice a year since '04. Valerie and Lawrence are the managers, and I tell you, the condo owners don't know how good they have it with Valerie and Lawrence in charge. While it's an older complex, it's always immaculate; Lawrence has very high standards. Together Valerie and Lawrence have handled everything, including multiple hurricanes. They couldn't be nicer people. Valerie is the sweetest, friendliest, most genuine person you'd ever want to meet.

We were booked to spend last week there, but of course due to the pandemic we had to cancel. When DH called to cancel, he and Valerie chatted for awhile, and she told him that they'd recently become grandparents. Well, every new grandma needs a baby quilt for when the new grandbaby comes to visit, right? Of course! So I had the pleasure of making one.

DH didn't get the details, so I don't know if the baby's a boy or a girl. No problem, I found soft beachy colors in my stash that work for either. So this is Valerie's grandma quilt, named Beach Baby.

 

Timeless colors, classic chevron pattern, modern spiral quilting.

Baby and parents don't actually live near the beach right now, but I'm sure they'll get there often. I hope this little quilt gets snuggled with baby, dragged through the sand, thrown down on the patio floor, draped over a porch rail for shade, and otherwise well used for years to come.

It's on it's way and should arrive today, May 22. I tossed my card with my blog's name into the package, so maybe Valerie will visit. If so, congratulations, Valerie, on your new grandbaby, and I hope the family gets to come see you often. We hope to get back to our beloved beach sometime later this year.



Link Ups:
Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Alycia Quilts
Wendy's Quilts and More
TGIFF

More Strips

No, not the bright strippy spiral, which is still on my design wall and is slowly being sewn into rows. When I cut all those strips, I cut all the colors of the rainbow.

Since I ended up using all the warm colors for the bright strippy spiral, I was left with a lot of yellow-green, green, blue-green, and blue strips, mostly brights but some lighter prints too. They kept calling me. I think it's the lure of the unknown, the fact that there isn't a pattern and no way to visualize what they'll become without jumping in and playing with them.

I actually had fewer of the cool colors, so this time I decided to make a baby quilt in the stacked columns style. I sewed pairs of strips together and cut them to 6-1/2" lengths, then randomly joined them together into long columns.

Since the bright strippy spiral is still occupying the design wall, I had to lay these out on my cutting table, but it worked well enough. Mostly I didn't want the same print next to itself or forming a horizontal line across.

I see in the photo something I need to fix, where the two middle columns have dark strips across from each other.

The strips were all from stash. I found something in my stash for the sashing, too, a whitish Grunge with green in it. Perfect! although it doesn't photograph well; can you see the splotches of green in it?

This is going together quickly.  Sashing strips attached to columns:

It will get top and bottom borders the same width as the sashing strips. Then I have the perfect green flannel for the backing. This quilt will eventually go to Operation Shower.

Meanwhile it's been fun to see it come together from just a bunch of strips without a plan. I've found that whenever I use analogous color palettes, even without a plan, the quilt usually turns out looking pretty good.


Link up: Quilt Fabrication