Little Paintings

 

A couple of weeks ago I watched a YouTube video from Nano Art about making a small painting each day that reflects your mood or what's on your mind.  She called it painting your feelings.  I decided to try it and I've enjoyed doing it.  I don't always do one everyday and sometimes I've worked on one painting over two days, when it required multiple layers that needed to dry in between.  Sometimes the painting is abstract and simple and other times it's more detailed and realistic.  Obviously, it just depends on my mood, as it should.  I thought I'd share my progress.

Cascades of Glory top

 

I designed this quilt years ago but just recently bought fabric to make it.  It is a variation on the "Cascades" quilt that I made years ago, using a jelly roll and a charm pack.  This quilt is smaller and uses yardage instead of precuts.  This is the second quilt that I'm making for my quilt guild's Quilts of Honor project.  The top measures 56-1/2 x 72-1/2 inches.

Quilt of Honor finished

 

My first Quilt of Honor is finished, all but the label, and I'm not responsible for that part.  I took the quilt top to the guild member that quilts them, and she had it finished and back to me the next day.  It has the 250th Anniversary design for the quilting and I think that the thread is white on top and gray on the back.

I decided to attach the binding by machine.  I sewed it to the back of the quilt and turned it to the front.  I sewed it down with a simple straight stitch.  I think it looks nice that way, and I'm able to finish it much faster than hand turning the binding. 

Quilt of Honor #1

 

This quilt top is made from a version of a block that I got from a  Missouri Star tutorial.  The tutorial is for the 3 Dudes jelly roll block.   The block in the tutorial uses a different number of 2-1/2 inch strips per block than mine, but it uses the same technique. 

I made the first block for this quilt back in 2014 from scraps that I had in my stash.  I bought some more fabric at the quilt shop (the receipt was still in the box with the fabric, that's why I know when it was.) to make a quilt out of it, but I never got around to making it.  I guess that I wasn't planning to put a border on it originally, because I didn't buy fabric for that at the time, so I had to buy some at the quilt shop this week.  The blue of the border fabric is a little darker than most of the blues, in the quilt, but since it is a scrappy quilt, I think it works fine.

I hadn't originally planned to put the white sashing strips between the blocks, either.  But when I laid the blocks together side-by-side, I thought that it looked too dark.  I like how the extra white brightens it up. 

I won't be quilting this one myself.  My quilt guild honors local veterans with Quilts of Honor every November, and I made this top for that purpose.  One of our members has a computerized long arm machine, and she bought a special 250th Anniversary (America turns 250 years old this year) quilting design pattern to use on all the Quilts of Honor this year.  I'm happy to let her quilt it, honestly. 

The top measures 51 inches by 65 inches. 

Pink and Purple Scrap Buster Block

 

I decided to keep the block that I originally made for the guild raffle, and make a different block to enter.  I don't feel any great desire to keep this one.  One of the other members made a block that was largely purple fabrics, and I thought that a pink and purple block could work well with that one.  It's hard to imagine that all the blocks together would make a cohesive looking quilt.  I'm not sure what I'd do with them if I won them.

Frogs and Bugs Charity Quilt

 

I finished my Frogs and Bugs charity quilt today.  The name is really unofficial because I don't generally name charity quilts.  Often times I don't even label them at all.  This one will have a label, but the charity has very specific things that they want on the label, and a name for the quilt isn't one of them.  The point person at my guild has labels printed, so I don't need to make the label either. But since it is made from fabric with frogs and fabric with bugs, I'm calling it my Frogs and Bugs quilt.

I quilted it on my longarm with a hand-guided all-over still water design. The thread is Isacord Spring Frost, and the batting is 100% polyester Soft Light-Loft from Mountain Mist (the charity requests polyester batting, but I don't like it).  The binding is attached by machine to the back of the quilt, turned to the front, and machine stitched with a straight stitch on the front. The charity also requests that the binding (and label) be attached by machine.  Apparently a lot of the quilts go to orphanages and they say having everything attached by machine holds up better to the orphanage's laundry practices.

Scrap buster raffle block

 

 

Another new thing with my quilt guild, now that I've started back going, is that they do a quilt block raffle every other month.  My understanding is that every block you make counts as a chance for winning all the blocks (sometimes half the blocks if there are a lot?).  Everyone uses that same pattern, but the fabrics are all individual and therefore different.  

I made this block for next month's raffle.  It is made from left over Kansas Troubles fabrics that I had in my stash.  I tried to focus mostly on red fabrics for the darker patches, and yellowed creams for the lighter patches to make a cohesive looking block.  The block measures 16-1/2 inches square.

The problem is that I really like the block, so I'm not sure I want to enter it in the raffle.  Maybe I want to keep it and make more blocks to go with it.  I could make a really pretty quilt for the back of my loveseat.  Maybe I want to make a block with totally different fabrics, that I don't like as well, to enter in the raffle.  I guess I need to decide.