Palm Court quilt

I finished this quilt top today.  It is made with a Palm Court layer cake.  It is made using a modified version of MSQC's lattice pattern.  It is available through their online tutorials and in an issue of their Block magazine.  The original pattern calls for a layer cake, but had you cut it into 5-inch squares before cutting the blocks in half and adding the lattice strips.  I modified it by simply halving the 10-inch block and adding the lattice strip.  It is the same effect but with bigger pieces.  The finished size of the quilt top is 65 inches x 74-1/2 inches.

I had really wanted to use a solid aqua or turquoise for the lattice strips.  I looked at my local quilt shop, but couldn't find a solid to match the fabric.  I knew it would be really difficult to match fabric ordering on line, so I just went with the cream.  I think the finished product looks really nice, but I think the colored strips might would have been a bit more striking.  But, then again, who knows.  It might not have worked at all.

Ocean Waves quilt top

I finished another quilt top today.  This one is made with a "Hearty Good Wishes" layer cake.  It actually doesn't use all of the layer cake squares, even though it uses well more than 42 10-inch squares.  For one, the layer cake was not equally divided between blue fabrics and off-white fabrics, so I added 3 extra 10-inch squares in off-whites.  Next, the main body of the quilt only needed 40 10-inch squares, so I took out some of the extra blue 10-inch squares.  The setting triangles are also 10-inch squares, cut in half diagonally, but I wanted them to all be the same fabric.  So in the end, I left out some of the duplicate blue fabrics, but all the fabrics in the line are represented.

The quilt top ended up being 68-1/2 inches square.  The hardest part (aside from deciding what pattern to use in the first place) was knowing what size to cut the borders.  I think it ended up okay, but having the setting triangles with the bias to the outside is not the best idea.  I measures several places across the quilt and came up with an average, but there was a good bit of easing to do to rein in those bias edges.  They looked pretty wavy before I added the border.  Hopefully it will quilt out pretty flat.  Tomorrow it is headed to the quilt shoppe to get quilted.

My Newest Quilt Top

This is my newest quilt top.  I finished it on Tuesday, but I'm just now getting around to posting a picture of it.  It is made with a Color Me Happy layer cake.  It only uses 36 of the 10-inch squares though.  It should finish 64 inches square.  On Wednesday, I took it down to the quilt shop to be quilted.