Improv Blocks and Given Away

After I finished the Jamaica quilts and the baby quilt for the church giveaway closet I thought I would get right to my own quilting.  Other things kept coming up to keep me away from my sewing machine.  I finally got some time to make some yellow scrap blocks.

I worked only on the yellow pile of scraps and I am happy that I didn't dump out all the other colors; just the  yellow made a big enough mess. The 3 blocks in the top row on the left are from my previous improv sewing day and the other six are from yesterday and the day before. That is not a lot to show for the time spent. I am not liking these blocks so much either, so..... I am rethinking what to do with all the scraps that I sorted a month or so ago.  For one thing I think I would be happier with them if I made them an inch or two smaller.  I am also thinking of cutting 4 1/2 inch squares from anything large enough. Maybe I just need to put it all away for awhile and work on something more intentional.

I have started divesting myself of the quilts living in closets and chests that never see the light of day. I change out some of my quilts with the seasons but there are some that only come out to be shown to someone or to be refolded.

My grandson and his wife took 2 quilts on Wednesday.
This is from the Quilters Playtime series when the The Basement group was working through Diane Hires book.

 This is Musical Chairs.






























This is "Reticent Stars" another from the Basement challenge to use something we bought but never used. I had a 60 degree triangle ruler and Sarah Nephews book "Quilts from a Different Angle. I am not sure anymore if  "black and white and another color" was one of the challenge rules for this challenge or if it was from a different challenge and I combined the two in order to kill 2 birds with one stone.




They plan to hang it over their bed where they have a  black and with and red Disappearing 9 Patch that I made for John some years ago.

My other Grand daughter in law took 2 quilts last Sunday and my daughter took a stack for her self and her children. I have to find the photos for those quilts and will show them another time. I told her to take photos of the quilts with the people who take them.

And that is another thing I have to do. I have to get all of the quilt  photos together in one place. I have them all over the place on CD's and USB disks. When I started looking for photos I realized how many I have forgotten.

Two Finishes and a Purchase

Yesterday, I finished 2 more quilts for the church youth group to take to Jamaica.  The blocks for this one on the right were made by someone else and I put the top together with the sashing and border and quilted it. all of the fabrics, including the backing came from our donated fabric in our
quilting closet at church.

The red, white and blue quilt is one I made completely from donated fabrics as well.
 

 Here is a close-up of the folded quilt with the corner turned back to show the back; you can see the orange binding.

Close-up of the folded quilt with the corner turned back to show one of the backing fabrics.















This shows the center panel fabric on the back; it is the same as the sashing and border fabric.
I had to use two fabrics for the backing on this one.

This is my latest purchase. An adhesive strip of LED lights fort he arm of my sewing machine.
I love it! I had a very nice LED light on my machine but it was damaged when we moved 3 years ago. The movers put the machine on a dolly and bounced it down the stairs and  I discovered the light shattered too late to claim it as damaged. I didn't replace the light at the time but struggled along with other lighting. I got this from Amazon and I think it is even better that my original light and it cost $22 instead of $100 plus from Bernina.

I can even see black on black with my old eyes.

Baby Quilt

I finished  this 36 inch square baby quilt flimsy  today.  It is a " Caring Quilt" to add to the stack in the closet at church. We were pretty low on baby quilts so I pulled the cat print fabric from our stash of donated fabric. I added the colorful monochromatic prints and Kona bone background from my own fabric.
The color in this photo is not true but the other photos are good.

I am having a terrible time with Picasa and Google in general. After an big update from Microsoft I am having problems with other things as well.

This  closeup of the center blocks shows the orientation of the directional print. I cut the squares  without thinking that they were going to end up "on point" after I added the background triangles. I think if works OK.

This is a secondary pattern that develops, it would be oriented on point, but I am no sure it will show up,  My fabric choices definitely makes a difference in what draws attention.

This is another secondary pattern that I see some of the time. I suppose If I wanted to emphasize a secondary design I could do that with the way I quilt it.  However, I am not going to do anything

fancy. I think something simple will work just fine.

What I see first every time I look at it, is the cat print and diagonal chains of pinwheels.

I am not so sure a print that says "I 💗 cats" will appeal to everyone. Not everyone loves cats (though I find that hard to understand). I guess the person who gives the closet quilts away will just have to figure out who gets this quilt.

I am going to make another baby quilt like this. I will use the same fabrics for the background and pinwheels and a different focus print in the squares, I think a larger scale print with no black.