Mom and I are making steady progress on our quilts. I don’t think I mentioned that we are making a French Braid quilt from the book French Braid Quilts by Jane Miller.

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.

Today is when the fun starts. I laid out of the fabric and started to add and remove pieces until I found the combination that I liked. I decided on 14 colors to expand my quilt to queen size. In playing with the fabric I also decided that I didn’t like the gray fabric at all for the thin inner border. It was very dirty looking next to the bright yellow and greens.

I forgot to mention in my dyeing posts that my yellow accent fabric and my green outer border fabric is a white-on-white dot pattern. I like to overdye white-on-white fabrics because you get interesting results. The front is usually very high contrast and the back is very subtle.

Here is a sample of the green fabric on the front and back.

Once I decided on which greens I wanted to use I layed out the yellow accent fabric and the green border fabric. Once with the bold side up and once with the subtle side up. I decided that since my gradations were so subtle, my accents should be more subtle also. What would you have picked?

I was pretty happy with yesterday’s dye run. A couple of the shades were a little close together so I wanted to dye a couple of extra colors. I decided to dye 2 shades lighter green and 3 shades of darker green. I also decided to dye a couple of pieces of fabric the same as my current lightest green but more pale. Looking at my gradation of colors I also decided on the color for my starting triangles and outer border so I dyed that as well.

Here is today’s fabric out on the line.

Mom is coming to visit so I signed us both up for a quilting class to have a little fun. I should have looked more closely at the sample before signing up. It is almost a queen size quilt. A little bigger project than what I wanted. Oh well, I hear it is supposed to be a fast and easy quilt.

The quilt calls for half yards each of 12 colors in gradation. I decided since it was such a large quilt already, I would expand it a little and make it a queen size quilt for my guest bedroom. That room is currently being decorated in bright yellow and green, so I decided to go with a 12 step green gradation with accents of yellow.

For Day one of dyeing I dyed 12 shades of green, a gray to use as a narrow border and the yellow for the accent square.

Here is all of the fabric hanging on the line to dry.

I had a couple of friends that wanted to learn to make the Professional Tote. We set a date to meet to make the totes. We prepared for our meeting by cutting out our fabrics and fusing the interfacing before our get together.

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I have made yet another Professional Tote. This tote was made for a good friend. I used one of my hand dyed fabrics for the main body and I used a commercial black and white cat fabric that I dyed to coordinate for the accent fabric. I left the center pocket out of this bag so that she could use it as a carry-on for her summer trip. I really love this pattern. This is the third one I have made. It is not a fast bag, but it is so functional when completed.

Our Bernina group got together to make a quilt for a fire victim. One group member found the doggie paper pieced pattern. She also put together kits for everyone with all of the fabric pieces rough cut to the correct size. This was a fun day of conversation and sewing. I think all the puppies came out very fun looking.

One of the local hospitals is in need of preemie quilts. They are looking for flannel quilts 3-4 feet in size with no batting. Our Bernina club decided to get together one evening last month and see how many quilts we could put together.

I had some small pieces of left over flannel from the quilts I made for the fire victims a while back. I ironed all the pieces flat and packed them up for our sewing evening. With the help of several other sewers we were able to sew together enough scraps in one evening to make 4 quilts for the hospital.

Overall the group produced over 20 quilts that evening and by our monthly meeting, we had about 50 quilts to deliver to the hospital.

We have spent the last several years trying to improve our landscaping. Back in January we decided to give ourselves a deadline to help keep us motivated. This project has taken a lot of time from our evenings and weekends over the last 4 years, but it has been very satisfying.

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I spent the last week working on a painting project. Several years ago I painted a team logo on a couple of flyball boxes. The dogs have worn out the last boxes and a couple of new ones were needed.

I always find painting relaxing. Of course if they keep asking me to paint these boxes I am going to have to create a screen so that I can screen them and get them done more quickly.