Delighted

That's what I'm calling this quilt top, Delighted. I followed the daily instructions on Confessions of a Fabric Addict over the last 2 weeks or so to make it. Sarah's original design, called "Rejoice," was created using holiday fabrics for her 12 Days of Christmas in July blog hop. 

I wanted to make "Rejoice," but I have enough Christmas quilts, including two UFOs hanging in the closet. So I decided to try something different. All my red scraps were still sitting out from working on this month's Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

And I had plenty of light neutral fabrics to cut up using my Tri-Recs rulers.

By simply switching in turquoises, teals and aquas for the green in Sarah's pattern, the colors shifted away from Christmas and toward a fresh palette. Coincidentally, all those bluish greenish scraps were still sitting out from June's RSC blocks, so the need to clean up my studio might have influenced my color choices. Ahem. 

In this close up, you can see some of the scrappy fabrics that I used. The lighting is funky because it was hanging in front of a closed yet still brightly backlit set of blinds. I find going completely scrappy with a pattern to be a real exercise in trusting the process. Is this dark teal too dark? This red looks kinda orange. Breathe in, sew blocks, breath out. It's just fabric! Each individual block looked pretty mish-mashy, keep breathing...

In the end, Sarah's cool design and its secondary patterns all appeared like magic in the final layout. I may have actually squealed a little when I finished the final borders. Rejoice! I'm Delighted with the results! I'll share more photos once I get it quilted.

   

Meanwhile, back in the land of charity quilts, I whipped up this little number. The Sunshine online quilt guild has a monthly block lotto, and the colors for July are pink and green. I don't really care for pink, but I dutifully pieced up some blocks (Karen, I put pink and green postage stamp borders on those applique flowers you sent, worked great. Forgot to take photos, dang it!)

As I worked away with the lotto colors, I thought, "I have a lot of pink fabric for someone who doesn't like pink. Maybe I should sew it ALL up with some green and get rid of it." So I picked a dozen friendly fat quarters and whipped out some offset square-in-a-square blocks (Sunshine calls 'em Mendota blocks.) A few bigger chunks of pink quickly became a back and I found a piece of batting just the right size.

Inspired by this feathery print on the back, I quilted it with floppy feathers in pink thread. Hot pink in the bobbin, light pink on top. I tried the hot pink on top, but the thread broke many many times and I just gave up. Pink doesn't like me, either I guess!

When I brought it upstairs after quilting, I showed Sean the backing first. He said, "Huh. That's a weird one with all that pink and one green stripe." So now I think of this little quilt as "The Weird One With The Green Stripe." And even though it contains much pink, it hardly made a dent in my pink stash. However, the piece slowly grew on me and now I actually really like it. I might make more pink quilts, who knows! 

TWOWTGS will go to Wrap-A-Smile, where hopefully a small child won't think it's weird at all, just soft and warm and cuddly.