I didn’t really feel I needed the class, but I knew that if I signed up, I would actually get the quilt made. That turned out to be true.

This quilt required lots of different pieces of fabric. I used 4 colors and I dyed 4 shades of each color and 6 values (light to dark)  of each color so that made 24 pieces of fabric for each of my 4 colors for a grand total of 96 pieces. Thankfully I only needed a small amount of each fabric. I ended up using fat 16th’s (9×10 inches). That said, the quilt probably only uses only 40 of those pieces of fabric.

This project also got me to dry dyeing yarn. I’ve always wanted to try it, but have never gotten around to it. It was a lot of fun and it turned out much better than I could have hoped for in a first try.

Now that it is temporarily hung in the bedroom I think it needs to be a triptych. I don’t like the light just at one end. I think I will make a second one and cut it in half and hang one above and one below with the light on the opposite end. That way I visually get light at both ends. Hopefully it won’t take me another 3 months to make that happen and see if it matches the vision in my head.

I designed a quick layout of squares and rectangles. Two squares and one rectangle make up the quilt blocks. I played around with sizes and decided to make quick work of the project, bigger was better. A good size turned out to be based on 16 inch blocks.

To ensure that it was nice and cozy, I used flannel for both the front and the back. The colors didn’t come out exactly the way I wanted, but it worked for the purpose.

I have been working to complete some of the projects to give to the grand kids. My goal is to try to divide up what I have so that each family gets a lap size quilt. Since I only need 7, I think I will have enough pieces to work with. All but one of them are scrappy quilts. The projects that she was last working on were simple one patch designs using 5 inch squares of scrap fabric. I have one completed and she has enough squares cut and started for at least 1 or 2 more.

Another box contained scrappy 9 patch squares. She saved her small scraps and using a piece of cardboard and a pen, traced squares on her scraps and cut them out with scissors. Many she already had sewn together, but there are several fabrics left in the box to make squares out of. I think if I put some borders around the squares I can get 3 or 4 quilts out of these squares.

So the question is, do I border the squares in Light Tan or Black? Click on the pictures to see the full view.

Light Border Option

Dark Border Option

I decided to follow the zig zag patter of the braid across the quilt. I started with the middle row and quilted from one side of the quilt to the other. I then worked my way to the top and bottom of the quilt by quilting every 4th row. By only quilting every forth row I got the layers sabilized more quickly and it enabled me to give up sooner, if I ran into a lot of problems. I can’t say that I was super speedy, but it really wasn’t difficult. I was able to use my walking foot, since it was straight lines, so it wasn’t stressful at all. I ended up quilting every other row. At the top and bottom border I just continued the same quilting pattern.

I’m happy to say it is complete and it looks great in the guest bedroom.

I had to do a little bit of un-sewing to get the lengths that I needed for each border strip, but that was much easier than cutting and sewing each small square separately.

For my next version of this quilt I may do a little bit of rag edge for the large squares to introduce some texture.

It would be better if it was a little warmer. Since the studio is separate from the house, I hate to spend money to heat an empty room with fabric sitting in it. I decided to use the heating pad and just let the fabric soak longer.

The result is slightly less color depth than I like, but I am pleased with the result and am happy that i didn’t have to spend extra electricity to get something I liked.

I have a complex of not wanting to be Aunt Clara giving the pink bunny pajamas (A Christmas Story).  I love to make things and I love to give them away, but I know that my tastes don’t always match others, so I am a cautious home made gift giver.

I spent Sunday and Monday dyeing and rinsing flannel for the quilt. I knew I wanted tans and earthy greens. I don’t do a lot of tans so I tried creating a couple of gradations. They ended up a little closer in color than I would have liked, but do to the short time frame, I was pretty pleased with them and called them good.

Monday night Bill helped me to cut the fabric into strips and then use the AccuQuilt die cut machine to cut the squares.

Since it was Bill’s sister, it was his pleasure to pick the pattern for the quilt. He wanted to create blobs of color that kind of blended into the next blob. I don’t know if we were completely successful, but we had fun and it did break me out of my symmetrical and regimented patterning. We finished laying out the squares around 11pm on Monday.

Tuesday morning I labeled the squares so that I could keep them where they were planned and set them up for chain piecing. I spent the day piecing the quilt and was finished in time for bed.

Wednesday I spent the day washing and drying the quilt to get that nice snuggley texture and remove the extra lint before the sending it out. I also created my label pocket and label.

It was shipped on Thursday. Yeah! I love how fun these quilts are to make and the ease that the AccuQuilt adds in making them. With any luck it will coordinate with the home decor.

The photo is a little fuzzy. It was a quick overhead shot while standing on a bar stool, but it had to get in the mail.

I decided that my Note Taker cover was a little boring so I pieced a few extra pieces of fabric to the cover to add some interest. I also added a polymer clay button that I created to coordinate with the fabric.

These are some quick photos taken at my recent Guild meeting.

Mom decided that she wanted a very structured pattern for her braids so she is going to start her braids with the same color each time. I have decided to follow the book and have a more undulating pattern, but I did have to tweak what colors each of my braids were going to start with.

We spent the week sewing together our large braids. Since my colors were so close together I had to keep my fabrics labeled at all times. One of our classmates gave the suggestion to number some flower head pins and use those for labels. That was brilliant. It worked so well. I used one pin to mark each stack of fabric and a second pin in the braid I was sewing to tell me what the last color I used on a particular braid was. That allowed me to do a little bit of chain piecing. I still only worked on two braids at a time, but I think it was faster than not chain piecing.

Once I got a couple of my braids completed I decided that my small inner borders would be a very pale yellow. So, I also spent this week trying to achieve that yellow. It took me 3 tries, but I finally got the yellow I was looking for. Sorry, I didn’t take any pictures of the yellow, so you will have to wait to see it in the finished quilt top.