UFOpalooza Part Two

 

The end of the year seems like a good time to get some more UFOs finished up. Here's my next batch of finishes from the last several weeks.



This is one of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects. I made two of these spiral blocks each month, for a total of 20. Each pair of spirals includes one that has the featured color on the outside, and one with neutrals on the outside. The combination of these dark and light blocks makes a sort of maze effect.



These blocks were a bit of a pain to make, but in the end I loved how scrappy and fun they turned out. Twenty 10" blocks makes the perfect size little quilt for Wrap A Smile, 40"x50", and it's called Rainbow Spirals.



The backing is a single piece of this fun tan with tiny dogs wearing berets and bandanas. So cute! The binding is scrappy reds to pick up the red in the backing. Any color binding would coordinate with the front!



The quilting is simple wiggly lines that follow the shape of the spirals. Friends, this was the fastest, easiest and most satisfying quilting I've ever done! The piecing completely guided my stitching, so it was practically mindless. The wiggliness of the lines was super forgiving, and look at that texture! I'll be watching for other piecing designs that lend themselves to this technique because it was fun fun fun!



Color Wheels is also destined for Wrap A Smile. In spite of its rainbow colors, it was not made as part of RSC. It was a squirrelly diversion at some point months ago, when my kaleidoscope ruler happened to be sitting on top of some colorful scraps. At first I thought to make beach balls, but once the ROYGBIV was in motion, I couldn't stop the rainbow train. The background is white with tiny blue and green stars, a lovely fabric that was given to me by my husband's aunt.



The flimsy sat around on a hanger until this wonderful backing fabric fell into my lap. Happy little forest critters on bright yellow! It came in my big box of fabrics from Ann last month, and I knew I wanted to use it immediately.

A big, loose stipple quilting motif makes Color Wheels soft and cuddly, and the dark green binding frames it up nicely. Again, because any color would match the front, I chose the binding to coordinate with the backing.



Next up are three really little quilts. Doll-sized little. In fact, they are doll quilts, and will be donated to A Doll Like Me. The first one, Minnows, is made with scraps from a baby quilt I made for my cousin. I saved all the little flippy corner triangles in a fit of frugality. Then I had 160 tiny HSTs that needed to be trimmed to 1 7/8", finishing at 1 3/8". That sound you hear is my head hitting the cutting mat as I pass out from pondering too many tiny HSTs.



I know other quilters love to work with tiny pieces, and I admit the HSTs were darned cute, but it was many hours of labor to produce 12 small "ocean wave" blocks. I was happy to find a few scraps of the original fish themed fabrics to make the central blocks and fatten the whole thing up to about 24" square. Doll quilts are fun to make, but I don't need to spend that many hours of my life on flippy cut offs again.



Jason's Stars, on the other hand, took zero hours of my time to make the blocks. That's because they were made by Erin and I inherited them as a quilty orphan. They were originally intended for her son Jason. As I was scrounging for small pieces of batting to make Minnows, I found just enough of two different materials. Minnows' batting is polyester, and Jason's Stars uses scraps of wool.



Erin did a wonderful job making the stars, pressing the seams so they nested perfectly when I stitched the nine of them together. Her blocks were exactly the same size as each other, too. The nine wonky stars are significant: the colors represent the different karate belt colors on the way to black belt. That's why there's a white star, even though the contrast is low on that one.



This chunk of alphabet fabric, fattened up with some other scraps from Erin, makes a fun backing. The quilting is just walking foot cross hatching through the diagonals of the piecing. A zippy black and white striped binding finished it up.

Last but not least, this little owl quilt is finished. Actually, I finished it months ago and forgot to blog about it. So it's not really a UFO, but I'm guessing you are OK with me throwing it into this post. Owl Be Seeing You was made with all the owl fabrics that were part of the I-Spy square swap I participated in this summer.

I decided not to use owls in my quilts for Wrap A Smile or Quilts Beyond Borders. Some cultures associate owls with death, and since most of the quilts for those organizations go to other countries, I thought I'd save the owls for a US-based donation. 

And now I have three little quilts to share an envelope heading to their forever homes. A Doll Like Me creates soft, personalized dolls that look like the children who receive them. They are specially created for children who might have limb differences, or chemotherapy IV ports, or cochlear implants, or a number of other characteristics not found on typical dolls. It's wonderful for a child to love a doll that looks like him/herself! And very special dolls deserve their own quilt.