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.

Giveaway winners!

Last week's giveaway has ended and I'm happy to announce our two winners. There were 35 total comments, with five people asking not to be included in the drawing. Of the 30 remaining, 5 were non-US addresses. So I asked the random number generator to pick a number between 1 and 25, and another between 1 and 5.

The winning number for the books was 11, Heide. She blogs at Heide's Quilty Hugs. Hope you find some fun inspiration, Heide!

The winning number for a pattern from The Canuck Quilter was 3, Lisa J. She blogs at Sunlight In Winter Quilts and picked the Sparkling Trail pattern. Great choice, Lisa!

Thank you to everyone who left a comment. I truly appreciate the time you take to respond to my posts. Your comments are what makes blogging fun. And congratulations to Heide and Lisa!

UFOpalooza

In the last couple of weeks, I've been on a roll finishing UFOs. It started when Bernie at Needle and Foot put a call out for donations to Mercy Hospital in Sacramento, CA. She calls them Mercyful quilts, and they are for patients who are not expected to live. They receive a comforting quilt for their final days, and their families take the quilts home. This is similar to the work done by one of my regular charities, Covered in Love. 

Bernie suggested that we look through our UFOs to see if we had any that did not yet have a recipient, finish them up, and donate them. Since the program at Mercy Hospital is primarily for adults, the call was for adult sized and themed pieces. 

I immediately thought of two tops that were languishing on hangers in my closet. This one was made during the 12 Days of Christmas In July quilt along with Sarah of Confessions of a Fabric Addict. Instead of red and green yardage, I used red and aqua scraps. I'm calling it 12 Days of Scrappiness in July.

The piece originally ended up 51" square. I found some aqua yardage that matched nicely and added some 3" borders to make it 57" square. Another chunk of the aqua went on the back, along with this white with small violet flowers. Mostly white backings are not a good choice for most of my kid's charities, so I was happy to use it here. A scrappy red binding made from some Cinderberry fabrics (thanks, Rose!) was the perfect touch.

Sorry about the rather washed out photos, and the big sharp shadows across the quilts. We've been mostly sitting at anchor and it's been windy and cloudy and stormy for many days. So when a sunny, slightly less windy day appeared, I dashed out to take photos on the foredeck. The low sun angle really shows off the texture, but is lousy for much else. Oh well, it is what it is!

The second quilt I chose as a Mercyful donation is this one. It was made as part of My Carolina Home's Square Dance Mystery quilt along. I admit I really hated this top when the mystery was finished. Carole's own quilt was done in rich autumn colors and was so pretty. My blue, green and yellow one just looked like a big mishmash.  So I'm calling this one Homely Square Dance.

I decided that adding some dark blue borders might help, and would also bring it up to a better size. I like this celestial fabric, and figured even if the quilt was ugly, at least the borders were pretty! 

The backing is this green and cream plaid, with a stripe of leafy green to hide any mismatch in the plaid when I stitched together several pieces to make it big enough. Here's a tip for you: don't try to match plaids, just fool the eye with a contrasting stripe. 

Like 12 Days, Homely was quilted in a big loose stipple for softness and a fast finish.  The busy fabrics hide the quilting, so there's not much point in doing fancy schmancy FMQ.  I even used the same pale green thread, which turns out to be a decent neutral for quilting. Homely Square Dance has grown on me since I finished it. It's amazing how much a little quilting helps! It also helps to look at it in photos from a distance where the overall pattern is what dominates instead of the individual fabrics.

While the Juki was loaded with pale green thread, I decided to baste and quilt up this next piece, called Birds in the Window. The pattern is "Kitchen Window" by Elizabeth Hartman. It's in her book The Practical Guide to Patchwork. 

I used lots of different bird fabrics in the panes, a dark green fern print for the window frames, and a pale sky blue for the background.

For the backing, I pieced this mustard polka dot and a coordinating leafy stripe. This fabric is kinda ugly on its own, but it picks up the yellows and golds from the front and actually looks pretty nice. It just goes to show that even the weirdest fabrics have a home somewhere.

The quilting is another big, soft stipple and the batting is 100% polyester. Birds in the Window will be donated to Quilts Beyond Borders, and they prefer poly batting for quilts going to Syrian refugees. The poly dries faster after being handwashed. I bought a king size piece of Fairfield Poly-Fit to try and it quilted up nicely. It's so, so different from the cotton Warm and Natural that I usually use, though!

Here's a shot of our anchorage in Beaufort, NC. The land you see is Cape Lookout National Seashore, and there were often wild horses grazing on the banks. We also saw dolphins feeding in the water almost every day. Pretty neat!

 

And finally, here is Five Alarm Chili all quilted up and finished. This was made with Sandra's Playtime Plus pattern. I made the flimsy back in April in the Bahamas and it's been patiently waiting for me to get motivated to quilt it.

In keeping with the hot chili pepper theme of the fabrics, I quilted dancing flames in the large red central plus. I didn't have any red thread, but this bright orange turned out to be a great choice. This is the first time I've done flames, and I'm pretty chuffed about them. Of course, it's another totally washed out, over exposed photo, so you'll just have to trust me that my flame quilting is on fire!

In the white background, I quilted a horizontal flowing pattern that looks like ripples of water. That's supposed to represent the cool water (or milk, or beer) that you need to drink after eating the hot chilis!

In the small pluses, I stuck with a simple, tight stipple in medium green thread. It completely disappears on most of the busy fabrics, but you can see it clearly on this orange plus.

Lots of yummy texture in all that quilting!

This quilt is a gift for my husband's cousin Chris. Chris is a wonderful cook, and makes some killer salsas. I'm sure he'll get a kick out of the fabrics, but I didn't know if this quilt would match his decor at all. So I asked his sister-in-law about colors, and she told me that his favorite colors are orange and gray, and that he also really likes fish. So I pieced the backing out of gray and orange, with a stripe of blue and orange fishes. Why not? The same orange fabric has squiggly lines that made a fun stripey binding.

I'm still working my way through a pile of UFOs, so I'll have another installment of UFOpalooza soon. 

Giving and receiving

Hello, hello! It's been a while, hasn't it? I had a month-long quilting hiatus as I visited family in California and then caught one of those miserable colds after I returned. October was just kind of a lost month for me, stitching-wise.

But even though I didn't sew during that time, quilty things were still happening. Specifically: fabric. Lots and lots of fabric. And not just any fabric...FREE fabric! While Sean and the boat waited for me in Washington, DC, our snail mail finally caught up to us. And it was chock full of the generosity of other quilters.

I feel so lucky to receive all these goodies, that I'm having a "Thank you very much!" giveaway at the end of this post. (The giveaway is closed now.)

First up is this quilty orphan that I won from Erin of My Patchwork Life. She started a quilt long ago for her son Jason, using all the colors of the belts in karate. I really like the wonky stars! I'm not sure where the "JASON" will end up yet, possibly it will become the basis for an improv deconstruction project. Thanks, Erin! 

Next is this lovely batch of Benartex Free Motion Fantasy fat quarters that I won from Laura at Slice of Pi Quilts during a blog hop. Aren't they pretty? I just love all those bright colors, and the fabric is so soft to the touch. It's always fun to win! Thank you, Laura and Benartex.

This lovely pile of fabric was sent to me by my friend Anne. I helped her set up the new website for Wrap A Smile quilts, and she thanked me with a big, heavy box of goodies. This isn't the entire bunch, either. So many cute animals and bright colors! And plenty of big pieces to use as backings. Thank you so much, Anne!

A very, very heavy box arrived from my friend Rose of Something Rosemade. It contained so much yummy fabric! This pile is all from the Woodland line by Cinderberry Stitches and is very cute. Elves and flowers and tiny toadstools!

But wait, there's more! Rose also included an enormous batch of Blueberry Park, including a layer cake, fat quarters, half yards and a huge chunk of the gray yardage. I had never seen this line in person before, and was surprised to find out that each piece is actually a Kona solid with the pattern printed in white ink. Very interesting! I love the selection of colors, and you know this will end up in many, many kids' charity quilts. Thank you so much, Rose, for this generous gift!

And speaking of Blueberry Park, Kathleen McMusing gave away a batch of her scraps leftover from a fun project, and I was the lucky winner of that, too. Kathleen's scraps are from making the Playtime Plus pattern by Sandra of MMMQuilts, who had a hand in the giveaway below. Thank you, Kathleen! 

I'm so grateful to the generous bloggers who passed along all this fabric. (This giveaway is closed. Thank you to everyone who left a comment!) I'm going to thank them by playing is forward and having a little giveaway of my own. These four quilting books will be sent to one random commenter. They are used copies of:

Bright Quilts From Down Under 

Happy Quilts!

M'Liss Rae Hawley's Scrappy Quilts

Intuitive Color & Design by Jean Wells

Because books are heavy, I'll be sending them via Media Mail, which is slow and limited to addresses in the US. 

But be of good cheer, international friends! For you, I'm giving away one PDF pattern from Joanne's shop. She blogs as The Canuck Quilter and just released her newest pattern, called Fundy Skies. I was a pattern tester for her, and it's a super neat design! You can choose any one of her patterns if you win. Thank you to Sandra for reminding us to be internationally inclusive in our giveaways if we can. (See? I told you Sandra had a hand in all this.)

Please leave me a comment below and let me know if you have a US address to win the books, or a non-US address to win a pattern. (If you have a US address and want a pattern, I encourage you to purchase one!)  If you're a no-reply commenter, be sure to put your email address in your comment so I can reach you. The giveaway will be open until midnight Zulu (that's boating lingo for Greenwich Mean Time) on November 18, 2018. Good luck, and thanks for reading!

Linking up with Can I Get A Whoop Whoop!