Hi all -
I hope everyone is doing well! Life here is good. The horses are out of the pasture across the street so I've been taking Grace over there to swim in the pond and chase tennis balls and frisbees. Life doesn't get any better than that!
This week I was able to finish the month 5 part of my Jungle Magnolia Block-of-the-Month designed by Judy Niemeyer. I had made the first couple of units last week, so this week I made the final unit -- a Lone Star variation.
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| Jungle Magnolia - Lone Star Units |
These Lone Star units were easier to make than the ones in my Amazon Star quilt because this pattern used the strip piecing method for creating the units. Once the Lone Star units were done, I put all of the units together into this month's blocks.
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| Jungle Magnolia - B Blocks |
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| Jungle Magnolia - Single B Block |
Finally, I was able to remove all of the papers and attach the B units to the rest of the finished units. I don't have room to lay out the entire quilt, so here's one corner so far.
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| Jungle Magnolia - Progress So Far |
In the process of attaching this month's blocks, we also sewed together some of the large "pie pieces" that make up the quilt. At the end of last month, the quilt was divided into 16 pie pieces. We are now down to 8 pie pieces. It was so exciting to sew some of the big pieces together! Only one more month and I'll have a completed quilt top!
With the Jungle Magnolia portion finished, I was able to go back to the Amazon Star quilt and prepare the binding. When deciding on the color for the binding, I realized that I almost always choose a darker binding to create a frame around my quilt. But looking at this quilt, I decided that the binding should be yellow so that it blends into the rest of the quilt.
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| Amazon Star - Binding |
I went with a scrappy binding since the rest of the quilt is scrappy. And I put some of the light green in the binding because it fit in so well with the yellows and will provide a little sparkle. I put the top and the binding in a bag and put it with the rest of my top that need quilting. I really want to start quilting some of these tops, but I have several higher priority projects to work on first.
I was also able to spend some time this week working on some of my non-quilting projects. I made some good progress on my Flying Beauties cross-stitch project.
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| Flying Beauties |
I'm working on getting all of the cross stitch that touches the first butterfly (on the right) so I can add the straight stitching on top that really defines the object. Cross stitch instructions always have you do all of the cross stitches and then do the detail stitching. I find the detail stitching tedious, especially when there's a bunch of it when I feel like I'm almost done with my project. So, I always do the detail stitching in the middle of doing the cross stitching to keep things more interesting for me. As I was working on the light green fern behind the butterflies, I realized that I screwed up and stitched the bottom right section one column too far to the right. This isn't a big deal since the fern leaves have space around them, so I stopped working on that part and will fill it in after I stitch the dragonfly that will be in the bottom right of the picture. Then I can figure out the best way to move anything else that might need to be adjusted. It bothers my perfectionist nature, but not enough to go to the trouble of pulling out the existing stitches and restitching them in the right place!
I also made some progress on my Kalme Throw designed by DeBrosse.
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| Kalme Throw |
It's not much, but it is progress. The lilac stitch marker shows where I had stopped last time I included this project in my blog. This blanket takes a lot of time because the stitches are small and there are 214 stitches in each row.
Finally, I signed up for the August workshop from one of my guilds. I don't need another project, but it's fun to get together with the ladies in the guild. This month's speaker is Linda Hahn and she is teaching a project-centric workshop. She is teaching her Guyon Grey quilt. It is a New York Beauty quilt with a subtle Rail Fence background and the pattern is only available in her workshops.
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| Guyon Grey - Fabric Prepared For Class |
I love the colors she uses in her pattern, but I wanted to do something different. So I decided to use yellows and oranges for the New York Beauty center, dark blues for the spikes and light blues for the background. As usual with scrap quilts, I'll make some blocks and then lay them out when deciding what other fabrics to add to the quilt. I love to work that way!
Nancy
