Blog is quiet, studio is humming

I've been stitching every day and getting quite a bit accomplished, but you sure wouldn't know it by reading the blog. We're in a boatyard in Fort Lauderdale, "on the hard." That means the boat has been lifted out of the water and put on rickety looking stands so that the underwater part of the hull can be repainted.

It's a particularly messy procedure this time, since we were due to have 15 years of old paint sandblasted off down to the bare steel. Dust, sand, and bits of nasty old paint are everywhere outside, so I've been loathe to take my quilts outside for photos. Plus, the trip to the ground is down a steep ladder and I'm clumsy. So far, I've only dropped one bag of groceries 8 feet to the concrete. That bag had six glass jars of pureed pumpkin baby food in it, which exploded spectacularly, I must say. (We feed it to the elderly cat to keep her regular, works like prunes and she loves it!)



All this to say that I don't have many quilt photos to show for my effort. Here's a token sunset pic taken from our back deck, though. I made six pillowcases for the Thomas Fire Relief and forgot to take any pictures, dang it. I'm also working on two gift baby quilts that I can't show until they are received. Those two plus another gift need to be shipped out before we leave the country. I bound one yesterday and the second one is still being pieced.

I can share this finish, though. Most of these fabrics were donated to Covered in Love, so that's where the quilt will be sent to. The pattern is called "Five Yard Quilt" and is an oldie but goodie available for free here. My understanding is that it was given out free when you purchased five yards from a quilt shop that is now out of business. If anyone knows if there are copyright issues with it, please let me know.

The butterfly focal is so pretty up close. About five butterflies fit in each focal square and five fabric are used in the top. So I'm calling this one Cinco Mariposas. I did a simple big stipple in a bronzey thread to keep it soft and cuddly.

 

The backing fabric was also donated, this busy geometric in purple, light blue and brown. Super soft, lovely stuff. I'm quite proud of myself for how well I matched the seam. It hardly shows at all in this photo.

From a distance, the back doesn't look busy at all. I put this photo in mostly to show you the fresh, white primer coat on the bottom of the boat. Oooo! Ahhh! My poor quilt holder was anxious about not getting any dirt on the piece.

The Five Yard pattern was really fast and easy to put together, so I decided to use it again with some cute transportation themed fabric that was sent to me a while ago by Sue.  I cut and bagged the fabrics up into a kit, all ready to be pieced at some future date. I saw the idea of cutting your own kits from stash on Sandy's blog and had a real AHA! moment. What a great way to have fabric ready to go. Love it!

Another project I worked on this week was finishing up this flimsy. These are the left over fabrics from Cool Cats. I didn't use any of the black background designs in that quilt, so this piece has a distinctly different vibe. I've named it Night Cats.

I fussy cut the last few kitties from the panel and surrounded them with black, and put the rest of the black fabrics in the setting triangles. Except they aren't setting triangles! This was pieced in a straight setting, then cut into pieces along several diagonals and resewn into the on-point setting. Stitch on a border to contain the bias edges and ta da! The only tricky part was figuring out where to put the black squares so they ended up on the edges after all the magic switch-o change-o.

The latest block drive for Covered in Love is the annual String Fling in any color combo. I decided to try doing rainbow order this time. Wouldn't it be fun to do an entire quilt this way?

I enjoyed making the string blocks that I decided to join the Rainbow Scrap Challenge for 2018 using them. This month's color is light blue, which is my smallest scrap pile, so I only managed to squeak out three blocks and it used ALL my light blues. Yay!

And finally, I joined the Sunshine Online Quilt Guild. They sew for several great charities, and seem like a very kind, low key and supportive group. They have a block lotto each month if I just want to stitch blocks, and also donate flimsies and finished quilts in sizes that work well for my small studio. I'll still be sewing for Project Linus, too. And I'll be doing the Hands2Help Charity Challenge again this year. Oh, and I found a group that supports new parents of babies with Down Syndrome called Jack's Basket. They can use really small quilts, only 30"x36" which will stitch up super fast. I learned about this charity from Nancy at Grace and Peace Quilting. Check out the cute little pieces she made for Jack's already. It's nice to have a variety so that I can sew any quilt I want and always know there's a place to send it!