Color and Pattern Play

Playing with color and pattern is so relaxing and fun for me--it doesn't always lead to a finish, but pieces and parts get saved to play with on another day. I wanted to make a little something for my manicurist friend, Stacy, for her birthday month. I pulled out a little top I made in September from  leftovers from pre-cutting my sister-in-law's mauve solid for her Sewtopia project. 

The scrappy rectangles each have in common light centers and four green rectangles. These were 2.5x2" scraps.  A fat quarter from the stash dresser was brought up to size with some more mauve strips from SIL Laura's scraps. I layered the batting, the backing right side up and the top right side down. I used 1/4" seam and left an opening to stitch and turn.  This is the faux binding method from Crafty Staci again, but  I cut my strips 1.5" wide for this bigger quilted mat (Crafty Staci used this method for her coaster tutorial with 1" cut strips and added a layer of Insulbrite as well).

Stitch in the ditch quilting including around all the mauve strips, and the light center rectangles. 

My ladder stitching was better this time but my corners are kinda pointy!  Oh well. 

It is two sided, in case the front is too loud sometimes, haha!  

The two mini quilts got their binding finished this week, too. It was rainy and cloudy and windy this week, we are over-saturated and have had a lot of damage from high surf along our coast. Today, though, was very sunshiny. 

Some palm trees of the neighbor's were getting trimmed today.  That's probably 40-50 feet off the ground kind of work!  We really wish that a closer back-fence neighbor would trim their huge Pepper Trees that block our view of the mountains...Oh well!