The Quilt at the End of the Rainbow

It seems like lately my life has turned into nothing but little league- up to 5 days a week between games and practices. Henry and I are both wiped out to say the least… But this past Sunday was indeed a day of rest- and I spent it locked in my sewing room. I only came out to eat, and move loads of laundry around.

It paid off!

I have a completely done quilt top, and am hoping to get it basted and quilted this upcoming weekend. But, it’s the midseason little league tournament, and if the kids do well, I could be at the field Friday-Sunday. Yikes… send sunscreen and bug spray…

Again, choosing fabrics took as long if not longer than sewing the blocks. And most of the blocks have some cute surprises.

The light green block has 2 dogs, words about space and science, and a dinosaur. The dino is my only regret- I put it in because I love the fabric so very much, but it’s really too light and blue in tone. It pops out too much. Sigh.

I learned I really don’t have a lot of deep, dark greens in my stash. I had to struggle to find these. Some of them are very vintage, from back in my early quilting days. BTW, my newly organized scrap bins are wonderful for this kind of project. It was so easy to find what I needed! The only sneaky novelty in this block is the lizzy house mineral/gem fabric. Though I guess that black and green Kaffe is also funky…

Deep blue was fun- but I nearly exhausted my options with just this small block, which is why I put out my call for help with deep blues for a special project… I put the dinos in here again, and here, they work! Also gems, stars, flames, a lucky cat, and even outer space.

Pink! Almost completely from my scrap bin… some more very vintage pieces in here. The funky glasses kind of represent me. And there’s some very special Heather Ross in here as well.

Red! I always feel like red is lacking in modern fabric lines, and a LOT of the reds here are from my black and white and red quilt phase- more than 10 years ago! Yikes! But there is one very modern piece of Tula in there, too.

I finally grabbed a photo of the backing fabric, and I’m really happy with it- not the least because it’s very old stash fabric. It feels so good to use what you have- and be happy with the outcome!

I’m thinking white of some sort for the binding- I know it sounds weird, but I’m not sure what else might work- I’m very open to ideas!

Linking up with Sew Cute Tuesday, Scraptastic Tuesday, WIP Wednesday, and Let’s Bee Social…

I Don’t Have the Blues, But I’d Like Them…

Annie has been pestering me to start her Tardis quilt. We’re working from this as our inspiration. And this cross stitch chart will also be very helpful… Many moons ago, Annie went through my stash and pulled out blues that looked good to her, and purples for the background. (She wants purples to look space-like rather than the yellow of the original.) As you might guess, purple is NO problem. But we just don’t have enough of the deep blues. And I would prefer not to buy a ton.So I’m putting out a call: can YOU spare any scraps of blue? I think our squares will be 3.5″ inches, so nothing smaller than that. I will happily swap for things in my stash- need purple? No problem! And lighter blues and greens galore… And wow, do I have novelties…

For your reference:

Yes, I do realize they give different Pantone numbers, but each image is a good representation of the types of blues we need. Deep and bold, not flat. Slightly jewel-toned, but not over the top. Thank you!

After 3 weeks of rain, of course there’s a rainbow!

Stop the presses. Or whatever passes for presses these days. Because I spent Sunday…sewing!

I have some more baby quilts in my future. The most exciting is a quilt for our newest cousin, joining the family in July. He or she will be welcomed by an older brother and sister, both of whom already have their own original Sam quilts. In both cases, their parents chose not to find out sex, and this time is no different. So yet again I was stuck trying to come up with an amazing gender neutral quilt. Ugh.

And then inspiration struck. Or rather, appeared on Facebook. My cousin announced #3 to the world-at-large with this adorable drawing, done by #2, of the baby-to-be.

Clearly this baby needs a rainbow quilt. And I just happened to have this roll of 20 batik strips hanging out in my stash. Bought it what feels like a million years ago. What better use than this? (Also please note that my wee cousin appears to feel, as I do, that purple should be the dominant color in everything. Smart girl!)

But what to do with the strips? I went through my Pinterest boards for inspiration, and settled on this great tutorial by Flutterkat. The pattern called for a scrappier look than just my strips, but I started with them as inspiration. I decided to make 9 blocks- purple, red, pink, orange, yellow, light green, dark green, dark blue, and light blue. I cut my squares 3.5″ rather than 4 as I wanted this to be baby quilt sized…

I started with… can you guess? Purple!

The blocks come together super quickly, and yet again, it’s an instance of picking fabrics taking longer than cutting and sewing the blocks!

I noticed that my wonky star points weren’t so very wonky on the first block, so I tried harder to make them so on later blocks. I got through 4 blocks before I had to return to the real world and deal with the kids… not too shabby! 4 down, 5 to go… These are so much fun that I am jonesing to make more. But my time this week is spoken for- 5th grade continuation, little league game, little league practice, movie, family photo shoot, other little league game, sleep (at least, I hope sleep!) Yikes. So check these out and know I’ll be making more to show you just as soon as I can…

I managed to sneak in lots of my favorite fabrics- some Heather Ross dogs and gnomes, some vintage Kaffe, two pieces of one of my favorite Tulas, lots and lots of pearl bracelets in various iterations, and more. Do you see the adorable monsters in the corner of the blue block? I discovered several yards in my stash. The background is a fun blue, and the monsters are really friendly and cute, and are in all the colors of the rainbow. So they’re going to be the backing.

I’ll be linking up with Sew Cute Tuesday, WIP Wednesday, and Let’s Bee Social while I try to find more time to sew…wish me luck!