In progress

Right now, I have a TON of quilts in progress.

My paintbox quilt top is finished. I need to piece a back for it and get it quilted, but I haven't felt like doing the quilting part yet. This is mostly because I'm not sure HOW I'm going to quilt it. I want to do something more interesting than just an overall stipple. I'd really like to do something in each of the squares, but I'm not sure how that would look.

I have fabric all picked out for a very springy quilt from Moda's "Eden" fabric line. I keep changing my mind about the design. I have a jelly roll of Eden and jelly roll strips from a pastel solid roll. I keep almost starting it, then changing my mind... but if I don't get it going soon, it won't be spring anymore!

I just bought fabric (sshhhhh, don't tell my boyfriend) from "Cherish Nature" for an entirely different quilt. It's going to be awesome, but it is one more project to get working on.

Instead of working on any of these projects that I've actually purchased fabric for, I'm once again sewing tiny scrap pieces together to make blocks. I just find this type of quilting to be very relaxing because I don't have to worry about perfect 1/4" seams or cutting blocks out straight on the grain or making sure things don't get out of order. It also appeals to my sense of economy and using up all the tiny little pieces.

The first one I started is a maverick star quilt based on the tutorial on Quiltville.com. I think they're very cool looking, but I'm not sure what I'll do with them to put them together into a finished quilt. Sashing? No sashing?

But, I couldn't even get that one done because as I was digging through my bag of scraps, there were a ton of long ones. I thought I could sew these together into blocks, then cut them into triangles and sew them back together again to make interesting patterns. Here's what I came up with (although all the blocks aren't pictured - I have 13 of them):

I love doing quilts like this, but they do end up a little... busy. This one is also going to have blocks that are a similar scrappy concept but are formatted as smaller squares separated into a 2x2 grid by a thin sashing. Sashing on this guy is going to be black so as to use up the strips I already had cut to use as sashing for the paintbox quilt (which ended up not having sashing in it).

Paintbox Quilt-A-Long - Blocks finished!!

The real Paintbox Quilt-A-Long has us making 80 squares. But since I got behind and then ran out of different batik fabrics to use, I decided to stop where I was. That ended up being 64 squares.

In the original version, the blocks all are separated by sashing, but because of my catastrophic cutting error, some of the blocks have black borders on two sides. Some of the blocks don't. I was going to use black sashing, but that wouldn't work with black borders on some of the blocks. I tried it just above and below the blocks, separating each row, and really didn't like it. I liked what it looked like without sashing much better.

I have the blocks all sewn together in rows and my goal for tonight is to get this part of the top completed. Next, I decide whether I'm going to put a border (or two) on it, or leave it as is.

Projects in Process

Here's my second set of blocks for the paintbox quilt-a-long. The colors look slightly off in the picture because there's no sun today, so I took the picture using my camera flash. It seems to have bleached some parts out and made other parts look odd.

For instance, the solid color in the first two blocks in the second row is actually brown, not red. Admittedly, it's a reddish brown, but it's not nearly as red as it looks in the picture. The green in the bottom row is also much brighter - almost a neon color. It reminds me of the 80's.

I finished my first knitting project! It was with Vanna's Choice yarn in a sort of mottled purple color. I bought it because it looked easy to use. I can't find the label anymore.

It's knit on size 9 needles with a k2p2 pattern. I didn't realize that this was going to be quite so firm when I made it. The scarf is slightly stiff because I think I should have used larger needles. It's like a scarf made out of the ribbing of an extremely thick sweater.

I went to Twisted and bought yarn the other day. I hadn't been in the store before and I had a little extra time before my Thai cooking class. There were TONS of different sock yarns, which is very exciting.

I bought this lovely rainbow yarn and am knitting my second scarf ever. It's slightly odd looking because I was trying a sort of checkerboard pattern (k4p4 for 10 rows, then reverse). TD says it looks like the edges have points. I'll have to see how I feel about it once it's done.

I believe I ordered this yarn from Joann online at the same time I ordered something else. Maybe it was on sale.

The colors are really nice, but the yarn seems slightly itchy. I'm not sure I'm going to like the socks when they're done. I'll have to try this toe on without anything under it and see if it's tolerable.

Paintbox Quilt-A-Long

I'm participating in Oh, Fransson's Paintbox Quilt-A-Long. I ordered Kona roll-ups (which look like these, but were different colors) in several different colors from Fabric Depot when they were on mega-sale, but by the time I placed my order, they were temporarily out of stock. Lucky for me, they came back into stock, but I started out a bit behind.

The paintbox quilt blocks are supposed to be monochromatic with a solid and a print fabric in each block. I don't have enough print fabrics in my stash to make this work, which is the second reason I was behind. I didn't want to go out and buy new fabrics for this quilt because TD already thinks I have a fabric addiction.

And then, in steps my fabulous quilting friend CJ! She had ordered a bunch of fat quarters of various batik fabrics for me for Christmas. Apparently they took a while to get here, then I didn't see her for a bit, but we finally got together for a happy hour recently. I decided that they would be perfect for the paintbox quilt.

Here's the fabrics I'm working with, matched with solids from my Kona roll.

It's an interesting selection of colors, really. I'm not 100% sure how I like all the pairings, but some of them make me very happy.

The paintbox quilt instructions call for 40 different prints and 40 different solids. I don't have 40 different batiks, so I decided to use each batik twice paired with two different solid colors. I tried to use as wide a variety of solid colors as possible to get the "paintbox" look, which is supposed to be fairly rainbow-y.

Here's what my completed blocks look like right now. The goal is to complete 8 blocks per week. The week prior to January 11 was week 1. That means that by February 1 (this coming Monday - 4 sewing days from now), I should have completed 32 blocks. Right now, I have 16 blocks, so I'm halfway there.

So why do some of the blocks have black in them?

Well, sadly, this is due to a quilt fail on my part. The instructions said to cut the solid fabrics into strips 1.25" wide. I read that as 1.75" wide. This isn't a problem until the very last set of strips. They're just not quite long enough, and I don't have enough of the solid colors left to cut new strips.

I do have extra batik fabric, which meant that those blocks turned out as planned. I just couldn't bring myself to recut all the strips I'd already cut, so I had to come up with a something else. I was planning on sashing the blocks with black anyhow (I love the way bright colors look with a black background), so I decided that I'd just replace the too-short solid strips with black and not do a sashing. Or maybe I'll just do a sashing across the quilt and turn all those blocks with black edges so that they're upright so it will look like a complete sashing. Regardless, it's going to be substantially different than everyone else's paintbox quilt. Well, I wouldn't want to be too ordinary.