Bonus pinwheel star

It's been a busy quilting week!  Wednesday a good friend came over and we pin basted Chinese Coins and Lanterns.  It's all ready to start quilting when I get into the mood to do some quilting!  Probably after we get some snow, which always seems to get me into the spirit of having a warm quilt on my lap as I work.

But first, I started cutting and piecing a second wedding quilt which will be for my niece.  Two blocks finished!  Don't think I'll share them with you just yet.  I don't think she looks at this blog, but you never know.

Piecing the blocks results in an abundance of Bonus Squares from trimmed corners.  Each block can give me 8 red/grey HST's, and 4 HST's each of light blue/grey and print/dk blue.  Can't waste those!  So I played around and put them together into a variation of Pinwheel Star.

I might be short on the print fabric for the quilt and there isn't any more at the store.  I was thinking I'd need to make the print border narrower, but if I can use the star blocks in the border it might just all work out.  

What, you thought I'd actually follow a pattern exactly?  Probably has never happened!

Chinese Coins and Lanterns

Since June I've been working on an original design for a wedding quilt and tonight I finished the top!  The Bride is the daughter of close friends who were former neighbors.  The Groom was born in China, and the couple met in graduate school.

First I started saving tiny pieces 1.25 inches x 3.5 inches to make Chinese Coins.  It wasn't long before I had a gallon size bag full.  Using a technique recommended by Bonnie Hunter, I joined the pieces using old telephone book paper as a backing.  It really helped keep them from stretching all out of shape, and kept them squared up so nicely!

The five rows of Chinese Coins make the center medallion for the wedding quilt.  The coins signify prosperity of course, and the red sashing is because in China red is the color of celebration.

Then the quilt just sat in my work pile for a few months.  I was puzzled on what to do next.  There are a couple different blocks called Chinese Lantern so I picked one that finished at 12 inches.  I made up 8 blocks which used up all the big floral print samples that I had.  They had been part of a group of fabric samples gifted to me in, oh, about 1995.  Time to use those up!

Serendipity came along when I spotted a string of fabric flags at the Thrift Store.  There were six different colors and Chinese words:  Love, Peace, Happiness, Tranquility, Courage and Wisdom.  I knew they just had to become part of the design.  Trimming the edges made them 8x10 inches, a very usable size.

I was finding a fair amount of fabrics with Japanese prints, but none that really looked Chinese.  I was worried about just picking something 'Asian' and have it be all wrong.  Something like putting Shamrocks on an Italian quilt and saying, well, they're European and it's close.  I didn't want to get caught making that type of mistake!  Finally I found a nice floral print last week that would work. Hurray!  Sashing for the flags and lanterns!

Here's the final result:  Chinese Coins in the center.   Flags along the sides.  Lanterns top and bottom, staggered to add a little motion.  More coins in the border were cut 1.5 x 5 to echo the smaller coins in the center, and finally a red outer border. Final size is 87 x 92 and will fit a queen bed.

Ready for batting and backing.  Then the hard part...quilting a queen quilt on my sewing machine at my dining room table.  I'm usually in the mood to do that during the winter months, so this might take another rest until after the Holidays.  I'm just so happy to have the top finished!



Friday:  Linking up with Sarah  - Whoop Whoop!
and Amanda Jean for a Friday Finish.

A busy week

It was a busy week in the sewing room this week.  I finished up a couple of  projects that I'd love to share with you.

First I finished quilting and binding the autumn Monday Mystery #6 by Sherri Falls at Little Bits of This & That.

Next I put binding and quilted the final border on Wonky Stars.  I think I will donate this quilt to a silent auction benefit for a little boy who is in cancer treatment if I can make the right connections.  The event is coming up in a few weeks.

Finally, I learned that my absolutely favorite fabric store, Mill End Fabrics, is going out of business after 45 years.  Disaster!  So I headed off early in the week to make sure I could get fabric that I need for two queen wedding quilts that need to be done by spring, and of course the fabric for Bonnie Hunter's new mystery Celtic Solstice which begins the day after Thanksgiving.  I made it to three of their four Twin Cities Stores.

When I told DH about the stores closing he laughed and said, "They aren't totally going out of business.  Their inventory is just being transferred to our house."  lol  What a sweetie.  He never even asked how much I bought.  Let's just say it was a lot, and leave it at that.  But when it's your last chance to average $3 per yard....need I say more?  They will start their discounts next week, but I wanted to be sure I could get enough of what I needed for those wedding quilts before the mad rush began.

Thanks for stopping by.  Hope you get a chance to Quilt Awhile this weekend.

Check out the links at: Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Halloween finish

Just in time for Halloween the little pumpkin door hanger is quilted up.  I tried free motion writing for the first time in the borders.  DH asked if that was just in case someone mistook this for a Christmas quilt.  Very funny dear!  

I really enjoy Halloween. The smiling pumpkin faces, adorable and creative costumes on excited children as they bustle through the neighborhood after dark ringing door bells seeking treats. It's fun to count how many witches, princesses and hobos that arrive at the door. Not to mention all the sweets I 'sample' before the children arrive.

But no tricks for me. I'm definitely NOT a Haunted Graveyard type Halloween  person. The frightening, evil and violent aspects that some people attach to the holiday - I can do without.

Linking up just for fun:
  confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com
crazymomquilts.blogspot.com

Pumpkin patch

Don't you just love all the wonderful ideas that are out there on quilting blogs?  Such fun to get inspired by things you see and give your own version a try.  This week I needed to burn off some creative energy and put two ideas together.  Lori at Humble Quilts posted a block that begins by using an already made orphan block.  Sheri at Little Bits of This and That had a Monday Mystery quilt which included a cute pumpkin block.  So I put the two ideas together.

The center patch is larger than Lori's directions, but I just adjusted as needed.  The candy corn HST's were leftover from a quilt I made my cousin's daughter last year.  This was actually my second attempt.  The first time I used a darker green border, and the candy corn triangles just looked wrong.  Not wanting to make more HST's I dug into the 1.5 inch bag and found enough golds, greens, rusts and browns to make a checkerboard border instead.

DH says they'll make nice door-hanger decorations for out kids apartments.  Great idea honey!

Early morning stress relief

What in the world can cause a woman to turn on the sewing machine at 6am and quilt for an hour or so?  Well, things have been a little crazy here the past two weeks.  My father has not been well, and while DH went up to the Lake to pull out the last boat and dock, I stayed behind at the last minute.  This morning I woke up in the dark at 5am and just couldn't get back to sleep thinking of all the bad things that could possibly happen - worst case scenarios and all that.  Sheesh!  Had to do something to break that cycle!  Good thing no one else was home to be bothered by the noise.   Do you use quilting as a stress reliever sometimes too?  I have to say it worked pretty well!

The original idea came from Temecula Quilt Co.  Her lovely version is called Savannah Steps.  I added a big button in the center and tried out a new border template with autumn leaves.  The Courthouse Steps pattern led me to title this little quilt "One Step at a Time."  Good advice when dealing with difficulties, don't you think?

Quilting in the rain

Last Saturday at the Lake it rained almost all day.  What a great day to dig into some UFO's and WIP's that were in my quilting tub!

First, I finished quilting a table runner made from leftover block pieces.  I tried something new by attempting to quilt 'pebbles' in the white spaces.  Not too excited about how they turned out.  Well, practice would help, but I think my stippling looks better and is way easier.  But it was worth a try!

My next project was to put borders on Bricks and Stepping Stones.  It's a free Bonnie Hunter pattern that I started piecing over a year ago, and then it languished.  I had run out of 3.5 inch blocks.  But now my scrap basket has caught up and I finished up the final 20 or so blocks last week.

The inner black border was an easy call, but what to do for the outer border?  Most of the fabrics I auditioned looked too busy.  Then I pulled out a skirt that I bought for $3 at the Thrift Store a few weeks ago.  It was hand died batik made in India and looked like it had never been worn.  I couldn't decide whether to keep the skirt and wear it, or use the fabric for a quilt.  In the end, the quilt won.  I really like how the circles play against the squares and rectangles of the quilt.  What do you think?

 I wish I had taken a photo of the skirt for you before I cut into it.  You'll just have to use your imagination I guess.    In the end I decided the print was a little too bold for me and I probably wouldn't wear it much.  Have you ever bought a garment and then cut it up for a quilt?  It took a while to get up the nerve to cut into it!