Wordless/WIP Wednesday

Things will be quiet …

At least, this week, they will be fairly quiet around here. My daughter is getting married on Friday, and while it’s not a big wedding there will still be a small reception at our house on Friday night. So, between the cooking and cleaning and generally getting ready … don’t expect a lot of activity here on the blog this week.

However, I can give you a brief update on Heather’s quilt. I dyed a backing and hated it. It came out lighter than I wanted it to, and it had a bunch of white spots throughout, so I decided to hang on to it and over-dye it for another project and start fresh on backing for this quilt. Right now, the backing is sitting downstairs in a storage box full of dye water, waiting for me to rinse it out and get it ready for use.

This one is a sunrise orange color, which I love so far, and I cannot wait to see the final product! I think it’s going to be simply gorgeous. 🙂 Since I’m using this color for the backing, I am seriously considering using something similar for the quilting thread on both front and back. I really cannot wait to get it done!

Also in progress is a Halloween quilt that I’m hoping to have done shortly. It should be really cute, and I have high hopes for it. 🙂

 

And finally, I’ve got another commission quilt to be started shortly, for my friend Pam. I just need to go pick out the fabrics to go with what I already have. I am excited about it because I am considering doing a double Irish chain, which is what Heather’s quilt was to be originally, but which I think will really be spectacular with this new quilt.

I’ll try to set up posts for WIP Wednesday, Throwback Thursday and Photo Friday in the next day or so, so there will be activity here, but I will otherwise be pretty silent. But I’ll be back next week!

 

WIP Wednesday

I debated quite a bit whether or not I should post this today, because normally I prefer to be silent on social media on 9/11. But then I began to think that I can still remember all of those who died on that terrible day, all the horrible things that happened, and still live my life. After all, life goes on for all of us who were touched by that day, and I’m pretty sure those who lost their lives in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, would not want us to stop living for them. So I took a moment this morning and said a prayer for all of them, remembered where I was and how it felt to see those heartbreaking images, and I decided to move on. Twelve years later, I still choke up thinking about what happened, but I can’t let it stop me from living, even on this day. I will always remember, but that said, it’s time for time to start up again this morning.

I am very pleased with Heather’s quilt at this point; the top is completely done, and now I’m working on washing all of the excess dye out of the backing. I went with a light amethyst color for the backing, just because I thought it would contrast nicely with the greens and blues of the focal fabric. I still have some of the focal fabric left over, so I’m toying with the idea of piecing some of it into the backing, but I haven’t decided on that yet.

This photo really does not do the quilt justice; I think it looks fabulous in person, but it doesn’t quite convey in this picture.

 

I went with the orange inner border to try to bring some of the yellows and oranges out in the quilt a little more and it does a great job of doing that, though you can’t really tell from this photo. But I’m happy that I’m heading into the home stretch here and can only hope that Heather likes it as much as I do!

WIP Wednesday

Last week, I didn’t do a WIP Wednesday post because … well … I hadn’t made any progress on anything for most of the week. I’d made a couple squares on the quilt I’m making for my friend Heather, but nothing really worthy of a blog post or photos. This week, however, I do have something to show you.

Labor Day weekend was much busier than I had anticipated, so I didn’t get much done on the quilt on Saturday or Sunday. But I set aside Monday to work on the quilt, and quilt I did. In fact, I got all of the squares made! This means that I need to dye a backing for the quilt, so I need to make a decision on that as well. Green seems the obvious choice, but I’m not really sure that’s the direction I want to go. I was thinking sky blue, maybe. I’ll decide today so I can get it going, because I’d really like to be in a position to sandwich this weekend and get started on the quilting part. But enough talking for today. Here are a couple of pictures to show you the progress of the quilt. 🙂

 

It looks a bit like a skeleton doesn’t it?

 

 

 

I do still need to go back and fix the prototype squares I made first, because they were put together out of order. But once that’s done, I can start sewing the quilt top together. Hopefully the entire top will be put together by this weekend.

 

The nine-patches will act as setting squares.

 

 

The correct way for the squares to be put together!

 

WIP Wednesday

Although I’m really loving the quilt I’m making right now for my friend Heather, I have to confess that I haven’t made much progress on it, and the reason for that is fairly simple. As you might recall, I posted over the weekend about my daughter moving up her wedding date. Fortunately, they have made another schedule change, pushing the date back to mid-October. Still, there was a flurry of activity for several days that left me exhausted both physically and emotionally, and little was done on Heather’s quilt. Still, I share with you the progress to date …

 

You’d be surprised how long it takes to sew together 25 2.5″ squares to make this one bigger square. Really, it isn’t the sewing so much as the ironing. But hopefully, with my long weekend coming up I’ll be able to make some decent progress on this one.  I’d really like to have the top finished by Labor Day, but we’ll see how it goes.

Till next time,

Me