Whatever Wednesday

Here's my Wednesday report on random projects:

This crumb quilt is nearly ready for quilting. It's a baby quilt for a friend. It needs a border, and the backing needs a patchwork insert to bring it up to size. I'm planning on black-and-white striped binding.

 

All 32 of my 25-patch blocks are ready, and all 31 of my neutral "made fabric" (a.k.a. "scrap vortex") blocks are ready. I'm starting to assemble them! It should make a twin-size quilt.

  

 

The Pumpkins quilt top is done -- I love the look of it with the borders on! Next up, I need to tweak the backing so it's the right size, and then ... quilting!

  

In knitting news, I realized I haven't yet posted a picture of the finished purple socks.

 And, since early May, I've been working on a new pair of socks.

And, in the "whatever" category, I've been trying to add some color to my flowerbeds, so these clearance items from Lowe's should help!

  

I'm linking this post to this week's Whatever Wednesday at Jo's Country Junction.

UFOs this week

What have I been working on in my list of UnFinished Objects?
Mostly ... I finished this baby quilt for my newest nephew!

Crumb quilt stripes!

Little cars and trucks!

Checkerboard quilt back!

I love crumb quilts lately! I guess it's sort of a full-circle thing. Seems like my first-ever blog post was about "made fabric" crumb quilting. Still love it!

I'm linking this post to this week's UFO Challenge at Jo's Country Junction.

UFO Report

I'm going to try to report weekly on my progress with UnFinished Objects (UFOs), and I'll be linking each post to the week's UFO Challenge at Jo's Country Junction.

Here's my update for this week:

The little crumb quilts are looking good ... Here's the front of one, and the back of another. More details in an earlier blog post.

 

Here's what my Vintage-Inspired EPP looks like right now:

It's hard to tell from this angle, but the two sides to the left of the picture each have two rows of diamonds; the two sides to the right of the picture each have only one row. 

So my first job is to add the 4 dozen diamonds to those edges on the right. 

Then, I'll be deciding what happens to the border from there ... solid fabric? colored diamonds? neutral diamonds? The quilt top is still small ... maybe 36" x 45"?, and I'd like it bigger, but not impossible to finish!

I basted a few neutral diamonds this week, to add to the ones I already had ...

 

And I decided that there should probably be another row of neutral diamonds, and there should definitely be another row of colorful diamonds in the border, so I cut some diamond papers ...

I also cut some fabric ...

And, I took inventory of the already-basted colorful ones I have ...

That's my progress for the week; I'm off to read Jo's blog post and link party to see who else is making progress on quilt-y UFOs this week!

Little Crumb Quilts

I have two little crumb quilts about halfway done ... Lots of fabric crumbs give these a fun look!

Last week, I mentioned some background work on these ...

Here's the front of one; the other front is in the works.

Since I didn't have yardage in the right colors for backing, I found some fun fabrics -- already cut -- in my fabric collection. So I'm putting together some pieced backings. 

These triangles were cut ages ago, and they've just been waiting for the right project. I love how the colors work together, and they're going to make a cute quilt back!

This patchwork quilt back will be almost as fun as the quilt front! These  4½" squares were cut quite a while ago. Some of the squares were cut from sheets -- the adorable cars and trucks were a Pottery Barn sheet! Other stripes, prints, and solids were cut from shirts. I love the organized variety!

As always, a lot happens in bits and pieces, sometimes in short spurts -- it's good to see progress!

Background work

Often, when I have a few minutes to sew, I can either stitch, or cut out fabric, but not both.

Thursday, I stitched ... Lots of "crumbs" foundation-pieced onto skinny paper tape (like these ones I made).

I also stitched some pink and white T-Shirt squares ... Made most of the "twosies" into four-patches.

Friday I cut backgrounds ... for the pumpkin quilt and for the crumb quilts.

Little Quilts on the Clothesline

I put binding on these little quilts last week.

One's my latest Crumb Quilt (See this post also.)

One's a simple two-fabric quilt that was perfect for practicing a new quilting design. Here are the first few rows of quilting. (It got better as I went along!)

As often happens, I accidentally picked a really windy day for taking pictures!

These quilts are both baby-sized quilts, and ready to be given away!

In other crumb quilt news ...

I've recently made some progress on the next crumb quilt: the pink one!

Not long ago, when I was prepping the green crumb quilt, I also mentioned wanting to make a pink one.

I love that baby quilts are smallish, do-able projects. Usually what I have is little bits of time here and there. The other day, I was pleased to be able to completely quilt the green crumb quilt in less than an hour!

One day a couple of weeks ago, I cut some pale pink fabric for this little quilt top. I don't usually have time to cut things out AND sew on the same day ... so I try to do the rotary cutting for a couple projects while I've got the cutting stuff out. And on another day, I'll do some of the sewing for a couple projects, while I've got the sewing stuff out.

With some weekend sewing time, I stitched the pieces together, and now I have a little quilt top.

I still need to press, and trim, and remove the papers from the back of the crumb quilt strips. Then I'll decide if I need a border, and what kind of backing & binding I'll use.

Finished Baby Crumb Quilt

This was a fun little quilt to work on. I mentioned it recently (see this post), and finished it up last week.

I like the color variety, and the cheery green in between the crumb rows.

The backing is made from a cute print that was once a twin-sized sheet (Pottery Barn, maybe?). I love the little cars and trucks, and the perfect assortment of colors to go with the quilt top.

I quilted it with green thread.

Briefly, I considered binding it in bright orange, because that would have been cute. But ultimately, I chose my recent favorite binding: stripes!

This little quilt is a gift for a sweet friend who has a new baby boy.

I'm looking forward to mailing it off this week.