A flurry of finishes

Well I hadn't planned on not posting for a week, but somehow the days just got away from me. I did want to thank everyone for their kind comments about my new flock. It seems like they made a lot of you laugh just like they did with me.

Now there is nothing on my design wall this Monday except of bits of loose thread. All the sewing I've done in the past couple of days has been of the mending variety (not blog worthy) and of the quilting and binding variety - which is blog worthy I think.

So I said I was going to drag Spring into my house the beginning of March and I have.

First I finished up this piece - a simple table runner done with a pack of the 2 1/2" Candy Squares of the Mimi collection by Chez Moi and some Basic Grey Grunge background fabric.

The pattern was from a LQS and the runner measures 14" wide. I made my longer so it hangs over both edges of my table. I wanted to get this done first because my table looked so bare without a runner and I wanted to play with quilting this in a wavy line design.

I like how it turned out and it gave me an idea of how I wanted to quilt this quilt. The pattern is Layer Cake Lemonade from Fat Quarter Shop. It is free and you can find it here. The fabrics are Sphere from the Zen Chic collection which you can see here.

I traded out the yellow that was in the collection for some pops of orange as the recipient of this quilt prefers that combination. I did the wavy line quilting but I criss crossed the lines randomly and to me it looks like waves. I like that.

I used a turquoise variegated thread on the top and a turquoise Aurifil on the bottom. You can see the quilting a bit better here in this picture of the back. I love that back fabric too.

Now quilting and binding these two pieces gave me a new appreciation for long arm quilting. By the time I got done with these two projects (which were not that big) the muscles in my neck were in knots and I looked and felt like Quasimodo. I spent Sunday afternoon vegging with the heating pad wrapped around my shoulders - not fun.

Now this next quilt makes me so happy. It started life about 2 to 3 years ago as the Jelly & Jam pattern from Fig Tree Quilts which you can see here. Notice my block doesn't look like their block. It took me two years to notice that, and well, actually I didn't notice it, it was pointed out to my by my BFF Stephie. I think this block is properly called a double pinwheel. It certainly does give an allusion of motion. Oh, if you do this pattern check out this update I just found on Fig Tree's site here. I found this out for myself as the blocks didn't finish the size the pattern gave. I ended up having to square mine up to around 7" to make them come out the same. Wish I had seen this before - oh well.

The fabrics in this quilt are an old collection from Kate Spain called Verna. It had yellow and tulips and snowdrops and I couldn't resist. This quilt just lights up the room and I LOVE IT!

Terry Finnerty of The Walking Needle quilted this - her Facebook page is here. I picked a new panto she had which is a scroll-y vine-y design and she stitched it in a lovely yellow thread.

So that is my flurry of finishes for today. Sure beat snow flurries, although I heard that is a possibility on Wednesday. I'm not going to think about it. Right now it is sunny and 60 and I heard distinctly Spring-y sounds outside my house...birds were singing and I heard a leaf blower and the guy across the street just started his Harley. I like those sounds.

Happy stitching-
carol fun