Monday, January 23, 2012

Big Finish Weekend Results

Four quilts to quilt and bind, one bag to make. Of my five projects, four got finished. Not too shabby!

In the spirit of "eat the frog", I tackled my black/white/bright quilt first. I didn't realize it was as big as it is. It measures about 60x72. This is about at the upper limits of what I want to quilt on my home machine. All the blocks came from quilting bees, so (almost) all the blocks were made by other people. That made the construction a little challenging. Because it's a sampler, I decided free motion quilting would be the way to go.


It's certainly scrap-tacular! Katie gave it the highest praise, and asked if she could have it in her room.

Next up, the Cosmo bag by Amy Butler. I did not go into this project blindly. I read the reviews. I read that her directions are terrible. But I've been sewing for a loooong time and this was pegged as an easy project. 10 hours later.....(honestly, I would have thought twice, had I known)


It's a great bag, and I really think I'm going to love it. But it was a ton of work. And now I'm a little soured on the rest of the projects in the book. I'll shelve it for now.

Next, I needed a little mindless sewing. I really didn't know what to do with this piece. Cut it up? Add some borders. In the end, I decided to quilt it, bind it and be done with it. A few weeks ago at our Baltimore Modern Quilt Guild meeting, Lainey did a little tutorial on using a hera marker to mark quilt tops. I had never heard of it. So cool. Well, since then, I've been looking for one (in lqs and the J) but not finding any. Yesterday, I thought well dang, that would be the perfect thing to mark up this quilt. Then I thought, wait a minute, what about my bone folder. Guess what. Worked like a charm. Made marking this cross hatching a breeze.




I think I'll give this to my MIL when we visit her this weekend. Perfect for her house.

Last one. It was getting late, and I really wanted another finish. This cute little tumbler was left in the pile. A small amount of straight line quilting (just following the lines of the tumblers) and it was finished in a couple of hours (while watching the Giants game! Can you say Super Bowl??!!) BTW, the pink tumbler blocks were cut at Capital Quilts on their huge accu quilt machine. I had the strips already made, and Nina cut them out for me. She also cut out a plain paper template for me, which I used to cut the blue polka dot fabric. This came together so quickly. Definitely will make more of these. Just need to stitch down the binding (which I'll do during Katie's field hockey game tonight.)


Four out of five projects finished! Yeah me!
Sadly, this only puts a small dent in my WIPs. I have at least 3 more bee quilts, 2 dresses and oodles of little things that need attention. No worries. It's all good. Have a great quilty week!

6 comments:

Barb said...

You have alot of fun things going on over there, that bag is awesome (ten hours.....that is a long time but looks fantastic)

Mrs.Pickles said...

Wow your sure got a lot done. everything looks great

Linda said...

Doesn't it feel great to finish up unfinished projects? The bag turned out to be beautiful.

Skooks said...

Nice work! Next on my agenda is finishing up some WIPs this weekend. I've got 3 quilts in process that I NEED to finish before I start another one. Which I really want to do NOW. LOL. Hopefully I can get as much done this weekend as you did here. :)

Patty said...

A very productive weekend, I'd say. :^)

Unknown said...

wow! I love, love, love the black white and bright quilt and you got an amazing amount of things done!!!! I saw you vintage sheet quilt on another blog and I just adore it too....I hope to be able to order one of your kits too in the near future.....