Design Wall Monday - Geese & Stars

I finished the strips of flying geese and stitched some 5" friendship stars for the corners. The squares in the stars finish at 1 2/3" which caused some interesting measuring and cutting.

Now the challenge is to decide how to turn some of this fabric into

1. a border between the center panel and the geese,

   and

2. a border around the outside of the geese and stars to finish the quilt top.

There will definitely be some piecing in these borders, but I want to keep them pretty simple.

Click either picture to see a bigger version.

What's on your design wall? Visit Design Wall Monday at Patchwork times to see what JudyL and others are working on and add your own Design Wall Monday post to the Linky list.

Project Linus - Third Sunday Group - May

Our Fast & Fun quilt top for May 2012 was Modern Chain. Our Third Sunday group met at JoAnns Fabrics in Independence, MO last Sunday, May 20, to work on Project Linus blankets.

Modern Chain is a 36" by 50" quilt featuring 2 solid or near solid fabrics and a fun variety of 6½" squares. As always, Jodie had fabric kits and instructions for us.

Louise is back from spending the winter in Texas and picked the kit with green and orange strips. There are some fun prints in the squares and the green and orange is bold.

Marie stitched a kit with red and blue strips. Marie had the same print squares as Louise, but arranged the squares differently. The red and blue strips make a bright, cheery quilt top.

Jodie stitched a kit with pink and purple strips and some cool print squares. A pretty nifty quilt top.

I picked a kit with purple and pink strips and some of the same print squares as Jodie's kit. This kit got the squares left after Jodie made the kit she stitched, plus a couple of other prints. The purple strips are a different purple than Jodie's.

The pink strips are almost red and were the only strips in any kit that were not a solid color. I really like the tone on tone strips, but Jodie thought they were less "Modern" than the solid fabrics.

As we were wrapping up to go home, Sandy joined us after attending a graduation party for her grandson. She turned blankets in and picked a Modern Chain kit to take home and stitch.

Simple Skyp - Heel Update

Partly inspired by the fun color patterning of the yarn, partly revived by a 4 month break from sock knitting, I'm working on my Simple Skyp socks almost daily. I finished the feet and heels in 3 weeks!

Just look at the fun stripes produced by the Opal Hundertwasser yarn (color 750 (3206) "Blinde Venus"). I'm going to love wearing these socks.

Here's a top view of the instep so you can see the Skyp ribbing pattern. I switched from size 0 (2.0 mm) to size 1 (2.25 mm) needles about ½" above the heel for a little extra circumference to offset the ribbing on the back of the leg versus the stockinette stitch on the bottom of the foot.

Earlier post about these socks: New Sock Project - Simply Skyp

Design Wall Monday - Geese Attack!

The howling wolves have been joined by some flying geese. This UFO is back on the active project list.

Saturday morning, I spread the wolves on my cutting table to measure the length and width. I grabbed a pencil and some paper, did a few calculations and decided to make flying geese that finish at 2½" by 5".

Most of my geese are laying on the cutting table waiting for the corners to be trimmed.

Some are at the sewing machine patiently waiting for the second sky triangle to be stitched on.

The geese will be the middle of 3 borders around the center wolf section. My original thought was to use strips of dark blue for the other 2 borders, but I don't have enough dark blue and I'd like to make this from stash. I used fabric from a couple of fat quarters for some of the geese. I may use some of the FQ leftovers to piece border strips, maybe using some of the dark blue, maybe not. As usual, I'm designing as I go.

What's on your design wall? Visit Design Wall Monday at Patchwork times to see what JudyL and others are working on and add your own Design Wall Monday post to the Linky list.

Project Linus - Third Sunday Group - April

Our Third Sunday group met today, but let me play catch up and tell you about our Sunday, April 15, 2012 meeting. Our small group of Project Linus blanketeers meets at JoAnns Fabrics in Independence, MO on the 3rd Sunday of every month to make blankets.

Jodie is our dedicated leader and she creates quilt kits for us. There are also quilts ready to tie and quilt tops with backing fabric and batting to create the quilt sandwich.

Our April quilt top project was Fat Quarter Big Blocks, a 38" by 54" quilt top made from 6 fat quarters and 1/3 yard of accent/border fabric. This was a really Fast & Fun quilt top and 5 quilt tops were finished instead of our more typical 2 or 3, or occasionally 4.

I lost track of who stitched most of the tops, so I'll just dive in and show the tops.

This first one is bright and reminds me of summer. I think it's the combination of the tone on tone green print (grass) and the flowers and butterflies on the navy background that give me that summer feeling.

Can you say "ORANGE?" Put your sunglasses on before looking at this second quilt top! It screams "orange" and the red prints and green flower print just add to the brightness.

Stand up and salute the 3rd Fat Quarter Big Block quilt top. Red, white and blue with U. S. flags and a sky blue print. Just picture those flags flying in the breeze. You can't get more patriotic than this.

With pastel prints and Easter eggs (or are they jelly beans), this quilt top says "Spring." Jodie stitched this top, proving that even the person who writes the pattern doesn't always read and follow directions. She stitched the blocks with all of them oriented the same way instead of rotating every other one 90°.

Child's Play: with Mickey Mouse, colorful toy trains, and a yellow print with the alphabet, this quilt is for the child in everyone. I stitched the top at our April meeting and took this picture after layering it with a back and batting and quilting. I deliberately strayed from Jodie's written instructions and did the corners differently.

I had a fun Cars™ print on flannel that my sister found at a thrift shop that fit the "Child's Play" theme. It wasn't long enough, so I used some red flannel to lengthen it and used it for my quilt back. I quilted in most of the ditches and stitched an 'X' through the large patches. That is enough quilting for the Warm & Natural batting that I used.

Sandy turned in this Beary Fun double four-patch quilt last month. Isn't it cute? She used the serpentine stitch on her machine to quilt a grid based on the four-patches.

As always, click on any picture for a bigger view.

Design Wall Monday - It's Empty

My design wall has a big empty space today. I stitched together the blocks I had on my design wall last Monday and added borders to create this Fat Quarters Big Blocks quilt top.

Here's a view of one corner that shows all 7 fabrics in the quilt top. I really like how these fabrics work together. The top looks so great, I hated to take it down to layer it with a back and batting. But I did take it down, so I can get it quilted and ready to turn in at our 3rd Sunday Project Linus group meeting next weekend.

What's on your design wall? Visit Design Wall Monday at Patchwork times to see what JudyL and others are working on and add your own Design Wall Monday post to the Linky list.

Design Wall Monday - Big Blocks

The late news was on when I came upstairs last night and got ready to start a new project. I removed the paisley blocks from my design wall and started looking for fabrics that coordinate with the howling wolves pillow panel that I adopted nearly 4 years ago and haven't touched in almost that long.

I found several fabrics that should work for the design I have in mind. But I need to sit down and do some drawing and measuring and calculating before I cut any of that fabric and I wanted to start cutting fabric to sew.

So I went to my collection of fat quarters given to me by a fellow Project Linus blanketeer a couple of years ago and selected 6 for a Big Blocks quilt. Fat Quarter Big Blocks is the pattern from our 3rd Sunday Project Linus group's April meeting and it is a good one to reduce that fat quarter collection a bit. (I still plan a report on our April meeting, so check back once in a while.) I cut pieces for the big blocks and headed for bed.

This morning, I started by finishing the quilting on my Squares Afloat quilt top from our March Project Linus group meeting. I quilted the floating squares in the ditch and then stitched diagonal lines in the border and sashing areas creating some diamond shapes.

After a break for breakfast and a walk, I started stitching Big Blocks. I quickly had my 12 units stitched and ready to arrange on my design wall.

I'll experiment with the layout a bit before stitching the 12 units into 6 big blocks and stitching the top together. You can't tell from this picture, but the green accent strip is the green print that I auditioned with the paisley blocks. It was perfect for these fat quarters.

What's on your design wall? Visit Design Wall Monday at Patchwork times to see what JudyL and others are working on and add your own Design Wall Monday post to the Linky list.