Vintage-Inspired Edges

On my English Paper Piecing, I made one whole star this week. Yay. (Compared with a whole bunch of stars last week! Oh, well.)

On the bright side, though, I decided something important and got started on that: The edges. I decided what to do for the edges around the diamond-star-hexagons. More diamonds! (Big surprise, huh?) Diamonds in a bunch of different whites and creams.

I'm going for solids for the edges, no prints. I'm loving the subtle variations in texture and color. I think it works well with the vintage inspiration.

So, this week, I cut a ton of fabric diamonds in white and cream.

This is the perfect use for my stack of miscellaneous white and cream fabrics ... (In fact, a friend recently gave me some leftover bed sheets that nobody is using ... lots of white and cream. Wonderful! Just right for this project! And, I'm barely making a dent in the stack ... more projects in the works, as always!)

While I was at it, I cut some white and cream squares and rectangles for the continuation of my Leaders & Enders project ...

So, overall, I'm pleased with getting some progress made on the English Paper Piecing project. We'll just call it the "Vintage-Inspired" diamonds quilt, since the percentage of "actual" vintage in the project keeps changing ... but I'm totally OK with that, and I'm enjoying the look of this quilt already!

Quilty inspiration from other people's projects has made me a better quilter. I love to get ideas and inspiration from other people's work, and to share any tidbits I can. So ... when I can, I add links at the ends of some of my posts, to places where people are sharing their work. I'm linking this post to Little Quilt Monday and, when Tuesday comes, to Fabric Tuesday. (Links for this week are below.)

Elizabeth at PiecefulLife has a fun Little Quilt Monday link party every week. Check out this week's Little Quilt Monday for some other quilters' neat projects happening there. (You have got to see the little quilt Elizabeth blogged about this week - she made it from a Bobbin Lace Doily! Brilliant!)

Here's the link for this week's Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story!

Kaleidoscope Layouts ...

Recently, I mentioned Kaleidoscope Quilts ...

Here's the latest one I'm working on.
In my earlier post, these pictures showed up:

Here's what those pieces are up to right now ...

It's looking like a 5 x 5 layout of 25 kaleidoscopes that are about 12" each ...

The question is what to do with borders and the little square kaleidoscopes ... 

The squares look good on-point as shown at the bottom of this photo ...

But I also like the idea of the little squares laid out as shown below ...

And, for borders, I've got some more of the same white-on-cream background, and some of the fabric from the kaleidoscopes. More details coming up another day ...

Work In Progress Wednesday at Freshly Pieced is a fun spot to see stitching works in progress ... I'll be linking this post to this week's Work In Progress Wednesday. Check the link or button to see the latest!

Leaders and Enders ...

Progress is happening on my stack of Leaders & Enders (I mentioned them here)

After sewing blue (and purple) squares to white (and cream) squares, I stitched them into four-patches.
So, I'm getting quite the stack of blue-and-white four-patches.

To keep things interesting, I'm also working on some square-in-a-square pieces that will be about the same size ...

For an eventual layout that will look something like this ...

It's a work in progress ... more to come ...

Vintage English Paper Piecing ...

Progress is happening on the Vintage Diamonds ...

And, while I'm progressing with this step, I'm making layout plans for the next step ...

The center section, in color, is the exact amount of diamond stars I can make with the neat vintage fabric I've got right now. Naturally, I want it to be the centerpiece of a bigger quilt. So, it'll need borders.

I've got a couple of ideas going, so it will be interesting to see which direction I go with the border. (Will it be postage-stamp-nine-patches, or diamond-cubes? Or rows of end-to-end diamonds?) Aaand, it will be interesting to see whether I decide to go with coordinating solids for the border, or whether I talk myself into buying a little more vintage fabric for the border ...

Stay tuned ...

In other news, I've been doing a lot more of this:

Look for another denim-type blog post soon ...

Work In Progress Wednesday at Freshly Pieced is a fun spot to see stitching works in progress ... I'm linking this post there. Check the link or button to see the latest!

Finished Christmas Hexagons Quilt!

I'm really pleased to have FINISHED my Christmas Quilt!

It's a nice throw-size quilt for the living room. It measures about 58" x 58".  I was surprised when I was laying out the background that a square was what I needed. The hexagon design looked so much taller than it was wide. Not so. It needed an exact square. ( I know, the picture looks long, but it's square!)

A certain little person keeps showing up in the living room and saying "My toes are cold ...", which is a hint for "I need to test the new quilt again!" 

In the past couple of days, I've been doing a lot of this:

And the backing is an awesome beige floral. The backing was surprisingly cooperative with the quilting process. Even so, this is the only view of the back that you get to see, because, actually, a lot of the rest of the back is really quite un-perfect. But I'm totally OK with that, and soooo pleased to have this fun quilt useable. :-)

A little before and after:

This quilt is very densely quilted! And here I thought I was going big on the free-motion "doodles"! Actually, I used up more than an ENTIRE bobbin of NYLON thread. My nylon thread is so fine that a TON of thread fits on a bobbin ... and I've NEVER used up a whole bobbin in a day! But then, this is the biggest quilt I've ever quilted this way. (It's about 58" x 58".)

It's been fun to take this quilt from these pictures below (taken in June, while I was figuring this out) to the finished product that's folded and sitting in my rocking chair. Merry Christmas!

   

In other finishing-things-up news, I blogged earlier this week about a couple of neat quilt tops I finished: 

 

The Mini-Kaleidoscopes Quilt Top was lots of fun, and I really love the big Color Splash Quilt Top. Busy week!

I'm linking this post to Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, and Sew and Tell Friday at AmyLouWho ... Both of these are great places to see what others have been working on! Lots of projects being finished up!

Flannel Squares ... and Leaders and Enders ...

Lately, I've been sewing flannel squares ... Making a cozy flannel rag quilt ...

A few weeks ago, I came across a neat concept at a blog called Jo's Country Junction ~ Her post about Leaders and Enders caught my eye ... and she linked her post to her inspiration at Quiltville ... fascinating stuff.

Both of the links above have great, lengthy explanations ... but the short version is, if you sew together a couple of tiny squares, in between each seam of what you're really working on, the tiny squares keep you from having all those long threads at each end of what you're really working on. You sew straight from one piece onto another, then afterward, you snip the tiny thread between ... So, what you're really working on gets sewn, and the little squares you're sewing together for something else also get done.

I have to remind myself often how much little bits do add up. Little bits really do add up! A while back, I mentioned the first denim quilt I made. I decided that since there was "no time" to make something that big, my only option was to worked on the denim quilt every Sunday afternoon, even if it was only for 15 minutes. Sometimes I only worked 15 minutes on it. But it got done!

So, I decided to try the Leaders and Enders idea ...
I cut some little squares ...

And started sewing them before ...

... and after ...

... and between ...

... the pieces of the project that I was really working on ...

So, afterward, I just snip that little thread between the pieces, and I don't have to give everything a "haircut" afterward from all those long threads ...

AND, I end up with not only my stack of these sewed ...

... but ALSO my stack of these:

So far, it sounds like a win-win!

While working on my "Made Fabric" circles the other day, I also stitched some of the Leaders and Enders ... Here's how the whole stack of blue-and-white is looking after being pressed ...

As for what the Leaders and Enders turn into, I'm not sure yet ... I'm thinking about trying for something like a {small} version of the blue-and-neutral quilt shown at Quiltville ... The power of suggestion is strong, and that quilt looks awesome ... so stay tuned for more on the Leaders and Enders project.

The flannel, though, is looking promising ... here's the layout I'm looking at for the rag quilt. It's probably going on eBay when it's done. We'll see.

Color Splash!

I'm pleased to have finished the "Color Splash" Quilt Top that I mentioned in this post, and this post, and this post.

I had a lot of fun with the crazy-quilty "made fabric", and I like the way the blocks all seem to "float" on the light background.

   

 

A lot of my inspiration came from these awesome quilt pictures at psiquilt.com, and the tutorials on posts like this at 15minutesplay.com

It was a lot of fun to go from my first few blocks, and my first few tries at layout ...

  

...to a lot of finished blocks, and a lot of blocks in a layout ...

... to a finished quilt top! (This thing is huge! 74" x 96"!)

I'm listing it on eBay as a quilt top, so that somebody can buy it and have fun quilting it! Take a look at it at this eBay listing, or check out my whole list of auctions.

The crazy-quilty-look isn't usually my favorite style, but I LOVE the way these crazy-quilt blocks turned out with the color-coordinated scraps turned into a block. I'm definitely planning to do more with this style ... Stay tuned ...

Christmas Hexagons Layout

I'm really pleased to have FINISHED the hexagons for the Christmas Quilt! If my calculations are correct, that's 364 hexagons (but who's counting?!)! I'm pleased with how this is turning out!

So, now, it's time for working on layout ...

I've decided to do the solid cream color for the rectangular "background" behind the hexagons. The Christmassy plaid with the metallic gold threads is going to be cut on the bias as a border. More cream for an outer border, I think. Near the top of the photo is the backing fabric, which is a white-on-tan floral, (but it's actually a much darker color than it looks in this picture). 

I'm excited about getting near the end of this project. I'll probably do the assembling and quilting by machine, just to make sure it gets done sooner, rather than later!

[UPDATE: To see the finished product, see this post. ]

I've mentioned this quilt in progress a time or two at Take Your Time Tuesday ~ which is a weekly group of links especially for sewn-by-hand projects. So I'm linking this post to this week's Take Your Time Tuesday at So Happy... 

And, when Wednesday rolls around, I plan to link this post to Work in Progress Wednesday at Freshly Pieced ... Click the button below to see some other great works in progress!