Wednesday's Works in Progress

I have been working on a slice & dice or stained glass quilt.

Here are a couple of the different blocks:

My blocks are 9x12. I tried to use some FQs that I was saving forever, because I just couldn't cut into them. This free style block design was just the thing to showcase these wonderful fabrics.


I'm also in a 12" block exchange with a group from a retreat I was on last year. I needed to make 12 blocks, and I started with this layout, using the taupe prints (there are 4 - 12" blocks in the picture). However, I somehow miscalculated how much fabric was needed to make 12 blocks, and only ended up with 7, so I chose some different fabrics for the remaining 5, more of a red on the dark diagonal blocks.

These are looking so good, I'm considering doing an entire quilt top with them.


Posted with Let's Bee Social:

English Paper Piecing - February Progress

As those of you who do hand work, you know that it is not to accomplish a "quilt in a day", but it may take many months or years to do everything by hand. But there is a feeling of accomplishment, as you use spare moments here and there, no matter where you are, to progress towards your goal.

Here are a couple of hexagon flowers I managed to put together in February.

The larger flower is made with 1 1/4" hexagons, while the other two are made with 1" hexagons.

The nice thing about making hexagons is you can fussy cut the fabrics to get a motif in the hexagon. Here are a couple of dragon flies on 1 1/4" hexagons:

I had some train travel that I managed to spend time making hexagons. These are the 1 1/4" hexagons I managed to make during February, close to 100.

But since I am using fabric scraps, I can't always get a particular size, so I also made 1 1/8" and 1" hexagons:

I managed to have a couple of strips of the blue/orange/yellow fabric that I thought would go great in the sky, and the ones on the right are from a daffodil fabric.

With all the scraps, I end up making smaller hexagons as well:

This is a range of 7/8", 3/4", 5/8", 1/2", 9/16", 7/16" and other sizes.

With my batik scraps, I can get much smaller pieces, as the weave of the fabric is finer, and it is much easier to make the smaller pieces:

The larger hexagon on the left is 1 1/4",  so you get a feeling of how small the 5/16", 3/8", and 7/16" sizes are.

These pieces will all make their way into flowers of various sizes over the coming months.

Check out with other people are making with their hexagons this month at the EPP Link Party:

First Completed Quilts of 2014! - Strip Lap Quilts For Hospice

As part of my goals for 2014, I have decided to put effort in reducing my increasing pile of UFOs (unfinished objects), and I am participating 2 groups where we compare notes as to our progress on our respective UFO lists. I made a spreadsheet, and stopped adding UFOs once the number was above 50! Gotta leave some quilting for 2015 to work on as well.

I set a goal to complete 30 strip quilts for Hospice in 2014. I started making some strip tops in 2013, and I have tons of strips and pieces of strips in my scrap containers. I'm hoping to make a dent in all this fabric and put it to good use.

So here are my first 6 completed strip quilts for hospice for 2014:

I started making strip quilts just using various width strips that I had cut for borders, but which never got used for borders.

this is a width of fabric by 55" lap quilt, envelope style, so as to  not have to add binding, just a top stitch around the outside.  The yellow and orange fabrics really brighten up the rainbox and solid fabrics.

This second quilt has more of the lime green component, with dots, playing off the pinks and florals, and the great wine grape black fabric.

This third quilt has many of the same fabrics, but I got daring and snuck some 2 1/2" strips in with the 4 1/2" and 6 1/2" strips.

But having so many boxes of 2", 2 1/2", 3", 3 1/2", 4" and 4 1/2" strips, I just needed to mixed them up in giant jelly roll race combinations and piece them back together.

Managed to work some blocks in with the strips to break things up a bit.

And another quilt with a lot of the skinny strips.

The quilt tops from my last strip posting have gone on to the quilter, and I have another stack of strips that are slowly working their way into quilt tops for March.