Dog Park Backing Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! We had a good week. Grace, my dog, turned 4 years old on Wednesday. To celebrate, we went to the dog park then got the winter tires put on the car. Okay, the tires weren't that exciting for Grace, but she did enjoy the dog park! I can't believe it's been so long. I still think of her as a puppy!

This week I got the backing finished for my Dog Park quilt designed by Elizabeth Hartman. It's another of my crazy and chaotic quilt backs, but it certainly used up a lot of the little scraps!

Dog Park - Backing

I also contacted the longarmer that a friend used and she is taking new clients and will quilt my quilt after the holidays. I'm very excited because this longarmer did incredible custom quilting on my friend's quilt! She is a member of our guild so I'll give the quilt to her at the next meeting that we both attend.

I got to attend a quilting retreat with one of my quilt guilds this week. It was a two-day daytime-only retreat at Twisted Stitches in Superior, CO. We had a wonderful time! I decided to go at the last minute since there were openings and I usually don't sign up for anything very far ahead of time this time of year in case it snows. I don't want to take a spot that someone else might want and then not show up! I didn't have a project ready that was a good retreat project, so I dug through my selection of kits to find something to work on. I like to work on simpler projects at retreats that don't take too much thought to make sure that I can socialize. I found a kit for Heartfelt designed by Krystal Jackelwicz. This was an old kit that I bought from Craftsy/Bluprint back when they sold kits and supplies and you could get incredible prices during a sale. This kit uses a beautiful Kaffe-like fabric line that was exclusive to Craftsy. Once I opened it up, I realized it was the same fabric line I had used in my first potato chip quilt. This quilt is comprised of log cabin blocks alternating with simple framed square quilt block. I was able to get about half of the cutting done and got a start on some of the log cabin blocks.

Heartfelt - Current Progress

The quilt is comprised of log cabin blocks alternating with simple framed squares in a diagonal set. The fabrics are arranged randomly, except for a single background fabric used for the centers of both the log cabin and the framed square blocks. I laid out a few of the blocks to get an idea of how it will look.

Heartfelt - Some Blocks Laid Out

This layout is a little different from the final quilt since I still have another round to add to the log cabins blocks I've started and I haven't added the frames to the simple blocks, but you get the idea. You can see that this will be a colorful, chaotic quilt -- much like my backings! I really love the fabrics in this fabric line and know I will love this quilt! I spent most of my time at the retreat cutting pieces because the log units finish at 3/4". The logs are cut from a couple of jelly rolls (a jelly roll is a collection of fabrics cut in approx. 1/2" strips). The jelly rolls in the kit have pinked edges and measure at about 2-5/8" wide. I had to cut the appropriate length from the jelly roll strip, then cut that into two pieces trimming to 1-1/4" wide. This gave me one piece with a pinked edge and the other with the pinked edge trimmed off. I was able to cut all of the needed pieces from one of the jelly rolls, and still have to cut everything I need from the other jelly roll. 

As usual, I also made some progress on my potato chip leader/ender project while working on my backing and on Heartfelt.

Potato Chip Leader/Ender Blocks

I decided to change the design of my quilt a little bit. Originally, I was going to make a simple quilt alternating the light and dark blocks.

Potato Chip Leader/Ender - Original Design

I kept looking at the bricks I had cut for this quilt and how many more dark bricks I have than light bricks and decided to use a new design.

Potato Chip Leader/Ender - New Design

This version uses blocks that use only dark bricks, allowing me to use up more of those fabrics. It also still uses all of the blocks that I have already made so I haven't made any blocks that can't be used in the quilt. And I think it'll be a more interesting quilt.

Finally, I also have some more progress to share on my second Scarfola designed by Laura Nelkin. 

Scarfola

I'm getting closer to the end! You can really see the lace border pattern taking shape.

Scarfola - Lace Pattern

I've started weighing my yarn to see how many more rows I can do and it looks like I will be able to do about 10 more rows before starting on the binding.

Nancy