And the Option is...

Thanks to everyone who weighed in--or simply lended support--I appreciate all your words!  Initially my favorite was Option 4, but after looking more closely at the quad of options all together, I went with Option 2:

Separating the two lighter colors seemed the most balanced approach.  I like the dark brown complementing the mustard, the red complementing the olive, and the two organics of grass and leaves sharing the center.  The rows have been picked up and are ready to be sewn.

Meanwhile Saturday's sewing focused on the Quilts for Kids quilt.  I had previously set aside with the kit a nice piece of batting which turned out to be plenty long--but not wide enough.  Grr.  So that led to a flurry of hunting through leftover pieces of batting to find the same type, then zig zagging them together, followed by pinning, quilting, making and applying binding late last night.  Today I finished up the binding and sewed on the label.

Purple is a hard color to photograph.   It is now washed and ready to send back.  Cleaning up the cutting table, I was distracted by rearranging the the design elements again on paper.  At times like this I wish I EQ'd!

Design Wall Monday--July 29, 2012

I've given up all pretense of working on this month's UFO--just isn't gonna happen, unfortunately.  So on my design surface is the Quilts For Kids project that I showed yesterday with my altered design layout.

I got the borders on last night and am pondering what to do about binding.  The shipping list with the kit from my local chapter listed a cut of fabric for binding, but there was none in the kit.  Of course, I didn't realize that until yesterday.  Perhaps I will give another go at bringing the backing to the front for the binding.  I've only done this one time before, badly, on one of my very first quilts, so I hope I can do a much better job now. 

Also on my design surface are two additional fabrics I picked up at JoAnn's for the Giant Shoo Fly Wedding Gift Quilt (needs a new title!).  I liked the Alexander Henry print that looked kind of bamboo-ish to go with my sort of Asian theme, though the label says "Everglades".  And I wanted an almost black print to complete the sextet of blocks so this scroll print worked pretty well.  Almost black is a hard color to find, isn't it?  See more Design Walls on Judy's Patchwork Times. 

QFK Twist

It seems sewing regularly is impossible these days--not a stitch happened from Wednesday to today.  Aware it was getting close to the requested six week return date for the Quilts for Kids kit I received in June, that project rose to the surface.  Last time I altered the basic quilt design of the kit by adding triangles to the corners of the focus fabric squares to make snowball blocks: shown here. This time I played with pencil and paper to completely change the layout, using only the provided pieces.

As you can see, I placed a focus fabric square in the middle and then lined the rest of the focus squares side by side, filling in with the four patches. 

Pretty purple beach themed focus fabric with coordinating print/solids and then a gingham backing.

After stitching together the provided strips to cut the sections from for the four patches, I saved two sections out and then sewed the top together in columns, placing the two extra sections above and below the center square.  The rest were sewn into four patches as the pattern instructs.  Since this photo I've got the rows all sewn together.  What do you think of my design? 

Focusing

Man, that is a hard task when there are new projects calling my name!  But I have had a Quilts for Kids kit for a shamefully long time and my sewing room workweek's goal was to get it in the mail TODAY.  And so I shall, along with a from-stash fraternal twin quilt.

The kit quilt.  I added precut 2" scrap bin black/white print corners to the airplane print blocks for a change-up to the basic squares.

Some simple diagonal grid quilting in a variegated blue thread finished it off.  Originally I was going to bring the back over to the front and make a self binding but my quilting plan didn't really allow for that as I went off the edges of the quilt but not the edges of the larger backing.  Savvy?  That left loose ends that would have unraveled the quilting since I neatly clipped off the tails as I went.

This black and white checkerboard from the leftovers pile worked a charm for binding.

Skulls, flames, and stripes make this from-stash quilt pretty lively. 

I even pieced the batting from leftovers so incurred no extra costs to fashion this donation quilt.  I hope someone's kid likes it as much as I do!

The railroad tracks quilting gave this a nice texture and I would definitely use it again.  It was really fun to stitch. The quilting design was from Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project blog (Day 354).  She is currently doing a beginners free motion quiltalong and has some great tutorials.  Okay, off to the post office I go.  Focus, focus!



Design Wall Monday--Nov 21, 2011

On my design surface is another new project, which jumped to the front of the line while I was avoiding contemplating quilting on the wedding quilt.  This is a comfort quilt destined for Quilts for Kids.  I showed the skull, flame and stripe fabrics last week and my plan for a strippie quilt.  Finally some sewing happened over the weekend.

I had just enough of the skull fabric to cut three 6.5" strips, but had to piece the flame fabric for enough width for two of the strips.  Luckily it is a busy fabric so difficult to see the seams. I cut all the pieces and stitched the top together in just a couple of hours.  It will finish in the 40 x 45" range.

Even got a backing made...

..and the binding cut and sewn.  All of the fabrics came from stash and scraps and I am very happy to move them on.  This orange piece was in a bag of "scraps by the pound" I bought at my LQS a year or two ago.  It was fun to get a wide variety with fabrics I would not normally choose.  Just now I am short on reds so it's time to get another bag.

I like to chain sew my binding, just flipping the right side up on the loose end of the strip and adding the next strip.  Eyeballing that seam does not work for me so a mechanical pencil and small 1" x 6" ruler are always within reach for marking.  Not shown here are the cut borders and finished backing and binding all ready for the Flowers for Nana Girl quilt.  I will have three more quilts to sandwich once I get all of my basting pins out of the wedding quilt!  I got brave and started the quilting on it Sunday night but didn't get far enough to share pics yet. See more design walls on Judy's Patchwork Times.

Remembering 9/11

As I stitched airplane fabric into a charity quilt, I could not help but recall the events of that awful day 10 years ago involving hijacked jetliners.  It was not our habit to watch television in the mornings so it was a neighbor who called to tell us what was happening.  We watched as the north tower burned and newscasters relayed what little information was available.  The kids left for school and Grant for work.  I happened to be off work that day on vacation and spent it watching in horror and disbelief, as did the rest of the country and world, as the second tower was hit and then both fell, the Pentagon was struck and burning, and the obliterated wreckage of Flight 93 was shown, followed by the sickening images of extremists in Iraq celebrating.  The safety of our country as we knew it changed forever that day.  But not the American spirit.  People lined up to give blood, money, comfort, any aid they could.  Rescue crews from all over the nation immediately headed to help.  The stories of those lost began to be told, the heroes honored, and survivors cherished.  America received the support from its many friends around the world, and was grateful.  Many non-Americans were killed in these attacks, but we felt they were "us" and not "them" and treated them as our own.  September 11, 2001 will forever be remembered and marked as a dark day for all nations.  People everywhere should fight extremists of every kind, foreign or domestic, for they are the true evil in the world.  We are one race, the human race, and live only on one world, Earth.  Let us never forget that.

X, Y & Z

So many days I head to work expecting I am going to do "X", and then when I get there Y & Z have happened and X goes out the window.  That's true about quilting too.  Last night I intended to get the UFO box of witches out of the Hoosier cabinet,  but when I was moving stuff around in my sewing area to get to it (a la archaeological dig), I unburied a plastic baggie from Quilts For Kids.  I knew a kit I'd ordered had come in a while back, but felt really terrible to see that June 17th was on the packing slip, far beyond the 4-6 week return request.  So a couple of hours of Y & Z later, I had this:

As usual, the kit contained 6.5" print squares, 3.5" strips to construct 4-patches with, plus border fabrics.  I decided to add some scraps of my own to change up the basic kit.

I dug around in my 2.5" scrap bin for black prints and cut squares.  Since the airplane print is directional with a lot of repeats, I thought the addition of the corner triangles would add a nice framing effect.  Want to help bring cheer to cancer patients?  Order a kit from Quilts for Kids!  They come with precut pieces for the top along with  backing and a label.  Just add batting and binding.   They are small with easy patterns.  I enjoyed  putting together one last year and ordered another free kit.  Now to get it finished and sent off!