Burning bobbins

I started quilting the Checkers quilt yesterday. I'm doing a square-ish loop pattern with a bit of a retro 50's feel. I've been meaning to do something like this since I saw Meagan's quilt last year. More recently, my friend Stacey at Peppermint Pinwheels rocked a right-angle meander on her split-log cabin.

This is probably the densest quilting I've done, and boy does it use up a lot of thread. I've lost count of how many bobbins I've emptied, and I'm only about one-third done with the twin-sized blanket.

And now, back to the machine for more quilting on this foggy Saturday morning.

Dialing up the FMQ

Finishing up a whole-cloth stencil quilt, I've decided to push myself on free-motion quilting.

The stencil is a ginkgo twig, very similar to the design on the back of my marquee quilt. The back fabric  is a Michael Miller green and yellow print.

If ginkgo leaves grew on vines (which they don't), they'd look exactly like this. I swear.

The top fabric is an Indian woodblock print. I'm binding the quilt now -- more photos when it comes out of the dryer. 

Concentric circles

I've made a good start quilting the Ripple quilt. Following the advice of Karen -- a woman who knows her way around a circle -- and Lucia, I'm quilting concentric circles centered on the drunkard's path formations.

Here's a view of the back. To get a sense of scale, the orange and white circle is 7" across, and the khaki strip is 11" wide. The front is such a mess of markings and loose thread ends that I'm not ready to show it yet! I'm using  four colors of thread -- dark gold, deep red, moss green and light blue -- with each set of circles using only one of the colors.

Checkers

This started out as a back for the ripples quilt (the drunkard's path/solids challenge), then I decided it needed to be it's own quilt. Now I have to come up with two backs.

Solids challenge quilt top

solids challenge quilt top a photo by Dan @ Piece and Press on Flickr.

Lo, these many months later, I have finished a quilt top for the Modern Quilt Guild solids challenge.

Kauffman gave us each a charm pack of solids (dusty palette for my East SF Bay group). I cut up a bunch of quarter circle units and arranged them in color groups.

Now I'm wondering how to quilt the thing. I've posted the photo in the flickr "How should I quilt this" group (great idea, Christina!).

The shapes remind me of drops hitting a pond, so my first thought is Katie's raindrop pattern.

Go! Baby Winner

Thanks to everyone who entered the Go!Baby giveaway. I read every post, and I loved seeing the huge variety of projects everyone is working on. We're a busy bunch. And it was great hearing from so many new people -- I hope I can keep you interested!

Now to the big news...

Random.org fed me winning number 119. And the lucky winner is Ellen, who wrote:

Right now, I'm working on a firework quilt for my daughter's first Fourth of July!! :) Thanks for the giveaway!!! :)

Congratulations Ellen! Have a great Fourth of July with your baby girl!

Drunken progress

Well, I'm not going to win any prizes for precision on this project, but I've finished sewing up my drunkard's path units from the the Kaufman Kona charm pack.

Upon measuring, I found some of the pieces to be short along the square (no seam) sides. This happened because the fabric slipped or stretched during cutting. Accuquilt recommends you alight the long grain of the fabric with the die because that is the least stretchy. I wasn't careful about figuring out the grain directions of the solid charm squares -- what a pain, right? --but it seems I should have. Anyway, there is going to be a fair amount of "easing" to line up the units.

I tried several layout options, and wasn't pleased with any symmetrical tile patterns. The colors don't have a lot of umph, and it just came off a bit sleepy. I ended up separating the units into colored  centers and neutral centers, then each of those into 8 piles by hue. Finally, I paired hues to make 8 block groups. For the neutral centers the groups are:

• blue and gold
• green and brown
• olive and tan
• red and purple

Then I arranged the units around a central circle, filling with additional Kona snow as necessary.

Some of the blocks don't have a solid circle in the middle.

And some are larger than 4x4. But now I've run out of snow, so this will have to wait for a few days.

If you haven't signed up yet, my Go!Baby giveaway is still open. Hurry for your chance to win a fabric cutter and 3 dies!