Bound and Done

Two days ago I finished up the Asterisk Quilt, but the lighting was terrible for doing photos, so I waited until today. What's great is next to my apartment there's a trail that has a wooden rail fence as one of the borders. This quilt will be going to hang in a local quilt shop in Northern Virginia, where I'll be teaching paper piecing. The quilting was FMQ boxes in the white text areas. The backing is the same as the corner pieces (which was a stash buy last summer), and the binding is a black and white varied width stripe.

Putting Together Bee Blocks

I may not have posted recently, but I have been plugging away. And I've got the countdown on until I'm back to day shift - 6 work nights left! Part of why I haven't been posting is the light is pretty crappy a night. And I will say these pictures are meh, but better than nothing.

Here is the Scrappy Plus Along - 35/42 blocks completed. The only color set left is the gray.

 This one was actually taken during the light of day - it's a bee block that I fully assembled after getting home from work one morning. I had pieced the sections the night before. 

 This is all the bee blocks I received when it was my month for Bee(ful) of Paper. I sashed and added corner stones. The back is the same as the corner pieces with one strip of the black text print running through it to make it wide enough. I'm planning to do double layer batting to make the quilting really stand out on this. I'll be doing FMQ of a yet to be determined design over the white text areas. 

Scrappy Plus Along

I took a little break from bee blocks (they're not due to be sent until Nov 15 anyway) to start a new quilt. This one came from Instagram inspiration. It's the Scrappy Plus Along from Blotch and Thrum. I've had charm packs from Simply Color sitting around since the line came out, yeah, I didn't have that burst of inspiration that gets me excited to make a quilt. But this quilt just yearned to be made from one of the charm packs. A single charm pack plus the sashing that is all from my stash will yield a 60"x70" quilt top. And this design allows for almost all chain piecing.

The one really unfortunate this is this morning as I was working on one set of the blocks, my sewing machine decided to suck the block down. I stopped immediately so as not to damage the fabric or the machine, but now something is not right at all and the thread keeps knotting and the machine keeps pulling the fabric down into the bobbin area after 3-4 stitches. I got out all the lint, and all the everything that might have been causing it to catch, but it continued so I will be taking my machine to the repair shop as soon as it opens. Conveniently there's one less than half a mile from my apartment.

1st block

 All the pinks (this charm pack only had 3 from that color way). And a couple purples.

 It's growing. 

 And now half the greens are done. 

 All the greens and oranges minus one since it's still sitting uncompleted due to the machine troubles. This will end up taking over my design wall. 

Half way there

I've made 3 of the 6 blocks I need to do for the fall paper pieced bee. So far, I think my favorite is the middle green and gray one, although I did have fun with the rainbow block and that print from Riley Blake gives the block motion.

Orange, Aqua, and Gray with Gray background

 Gray and Green (with Navy) on White background.

 Rainbow on black background.

Sun Star for Fall 3x6

I joined the 3x6 Flickr Bee again and chose the Sun Star block from www.compuquilt.com for this round. It definitely will lend itself to playing with color with three focal points per diamond, I've already done some mental planning for the other blocks - the rainbow ones in particular will be fun. 

These colors are brighter in real life but since this picture was taken after midnight there was no natural light. I've already started on the first that will be sent out. Pictures will be forthcoming as I make this in 6 more color schemes.

Some design wall time and big quilt quilting

I finally put my design wall up - I've had it for awhile sitting folded on the futon that's in my sewing (guest?) room. I put up the bee blocks I received from the Bee(ful) of paper. I'll be making one more myself. And now I'm deciding if I want to do sashing, solids, other text prints, or what. If you have any suggestions, leave them in the comments.

 The other thing I'm working on now is quilting the roller rink quilt. I'm doing straight line quilting along the big seams, and stippling in the centers of the blocks. I haven't decided if I'm going to do anything in the gray/white areas. Perhaps, but for right now I'm thinking I'll leave those areas unquilted. This is a queen size quilt that I'm doing on my home machine - lots of squishing around under the throat.

100 Quilts for Kids Charity Quilts

Katie over at SwimBikeQuilt runs a charity donation called 100 Quilts for Kids. I've had these two quilt tops with me since 2010. I made them both that summer, but never got around to finishing them. That changed on Saturday when I just felt like quilting rather than piecing. I also purchased the Elmer's Glue spray adhesive since it's water soluble and will thus wash out. I'm pretty pleased with it. The needle didn't get gummed up and the thread never broke. It's also cheaper than 505. 

Before I actually used the Elmer's Spray on an actual quilt, I did a test piece, and I wanted to really see how it would do with dense quilting and the needle passing through quite a bit. That means I practiced feathers. I think I'm getting decent with my travel stitching along the same path and that this feather turned out pretty well.