Rose Quilt

I have several ideas for flowers on quilts but haven't had time or space to work on them yet. There are so many tops and blocks hanging around I pulled this one out and forced myself to work on the quilting. And it came out better than expected - which often seems to be the case after I've worried myself into a tizzy.

Chinese Coins with Roses quilt

While it started before this challenge, it is my first flowery finish.

More details on my blog.  Ann

A flowery finish

It took a while, but I have finished my flowery, butterfly top.

This is one of those tops that would never have been made except in response to a challenge, which is one of the reasons I like doing them.  Trip Around the World is not a pattern I'd ever thought of tackling, but it's where these fabrics led me and it's been a journey I've enjoyed a lot. 

More, as always, over on the blog.

Floral Challenge Art Quilt Progress, Focus Color Blue

The small floral is the focus fabric, blue the focus color.

The units have been arranged into 'Grey Star' art quilt.

Hello quilt friends from Rancho Palos Verdes!

I've been working on 'Grey Star' small art quilt for a couple of weeks now and figured it was time to report progress.

It started in response to the AHIQ Floral Challenge. I had some floral fabric I needed to do something with, it was calling to me. 

I used the small blue floral as the focus and chose other prints and solids around that. 

For more info and progress visit my blog crazyvictoriana.blogspot.com.

Have a great week, I'll be by to visit.

The Beginning of Something

This is the first part of my interpretation of a U&U quilt that caught my fancy. It's also my response to the 'flower' prompt given out earlier in the year. For some reason, this has been an especially difficult challenge to meet.

The first section completed

After thinking about it for awhile, I've come to the conclusion that the reason for that is very simple. I make a lot of flower quilts and so thinking up new flower ideas is something that happens around here on a regular basis! In my head, a challenge should take me out on a limb somewhere uncomfortable and definitely somewhere outside of my normal comfort zone! Regardless, I have kept after it and finally came up with the idea to try an interpretation of a old scrappy 'make-do' sort of quilt and incorporate a 'difficult' flower element into the quilt. 

Add caption

The flower will be the Lemoyne start shape in the far right bottom corner of the quilt. It's a pattern that might be easy for you to piece, but has always caused me no end of troubles. Plus, this time I shall be trying to re-imagine it as a flower! lol  

Yep, it's an idea that's been simmering for a couple months and not once have I soured on it. We shall see where it ends up, but for now, I'm very happy to have it started and now be fully 'committed' to moving on with the adventure. Points for starting out with a floral fabric. That has to count for something! You can read more about the making of this first section over at my blog if you'd like.

I have no idea

I have no idea where this is going. It was supposed to be a quick little quilt made with scraps just to give me something to do while I was between "real" projects. Sometimes I just can't get going. I resolve that problem with a new project. Every time. I resolve to work on finishing something. Anything. But the new project just happens.

I guess the Red as a Neutral just isn't out of my system, because when I went to the scrap cupboard, they somehow followed me to the worktable. Anyway, there were some large chunks of scrap fabric in both bins, so win! I tried mixing it up a little and put some pieces on the design board. No, that was not working.

So I cut some pieces, trying to tone it down a little with larger pieces of neutral (left), making these rectangles cut on the diagonal and pieced together. No, not really working. I tried to make them into windmills (right). Still not a plan. But now I have a mission. I just don't know what that might be.
I'll keep you posted, both here and on my blog.

Do quilts talk to you like they do to me?

This is the way the floral challenge quilt looked the last time I posted.

 This is what it looks like now.   I added another border.  I needed to make it a size I could put 6" blocks around it so it is 42" X 48" now.

 But, while I was doing that I first added a blue border (just on one side) using the fabric that is in the top right flower.  Boy, did that ever look wrong.

I decided the black fabric need to be repeated  but because I wanted it to be a certain size - that made the border wider than I planned (and it didn't help that I kept cutting it out the wrong width!)   I just kept unpicking and unpicking.

Now, with that border, the quilt is telling me that it's finished.   But I don't want to be done.

What a dilemma,
Robin

Two Good Finishes to Close Out the Summer

Here's the two latest finishes originally resulting from AHIQ prompts. One was deemed,  'Use Your Words' and the other was a later 'Coins' challenge. They were both started in the year 2017 and the quilt tops have been completed for quite some time now. 

Make Beautiful Things

As always, these prompts are open ended which is something that I appreciate very much. Having lots of room for creativity is something my brain seems to thrive on. Somehow I tend to merge most of the challenges with yet another one. The first quilt could also qualify for a response to the 'Two-Block' challenge or even 'Playing with Scale'.

Count Your Blessings

This Coins quilt has the 'Use Your Words' thing going on and also perhaps the 'Two-Block' challenge incorporated as well. Ann and Kaja are clever to take simple ideas and open up a whole new way of looking at them. Invariably, I end up with so many ideas that they predictably spill over into several other quilts! Of course I have written lots and lots more about these late summer finishes of mine if you're interested in reading anything extra....