Playing Catch-Up - Two Finishes

Recently, I was updating my spreadsheet where I document all the quilts I make (yes, I am that nerdy) and realized I've had a few finishes I had forgotten to share with you.

The first finish was in July.  I had blogged in 2013 about the disaster of working with a badly cut kit.  You can read about it here.   The whole thing was so frustrating I put it away for a while.  A long while, actually. I picked it up again in 2017 and got a handle on how I could make it into something acceptable.  You can read about that here.  

A few months ago I added a few of the leftover pieces when I put together a backing, quilted it, and called it a keeper.  I like this one so much I don't think I could give it away.

The second finish is a baby quilt to put back for the great-grands, one of my current projects.  I started it and shared about it in this post.  This quilt didn't sit around very long. It was done in about 6 weeks. I just forgot to share my finish with you!  

This one is hand quilted.

Finished, washed, and ready to use.  One day.

I guess I have been very busy this summer, but that doesn't mean I'm not getting things done.  I just need to sit down once in a while and tell you about it!

Disaster Averted

You may remember (but probably not because it's been so long ago) the infamous "Rainbow Disaster" quilt I talked about in this post.  Fairly quickly after starting I had to give up on it. Everything was turning out wonky, and I was getting completely frustrated.  I finally figured out it was because the pre-cut jelly roll strips were cut out sooooooo badly.  See?

I had never bought a kit before.  I got as far as having some of the blocks partially made then decided to replace the planned inserts with eggplant colored strips.   The eggplant was included with the kit and was intended for the binding.   

This is the mess I ended up with.  

Into the UFO pile it all went.  And there it stayed.  Until now. Since one of my goals for this year was to complete some of my UFO's (Hmmmm, I think that's a goal every year!)  I pulled it out and decided to just get it done.  In my own way, of course.  

First, I played with the blocks I'd already made to see what I could come up with.  I tried several variations .....

..... then thought about using that eggplant in the blocks instead of just saving it for the binding.  I'll worry about binding later.  You can't think that far ahead when you decide to just play.  

I decided that half-square-triangle blocks didn't actually look too horrible .....

.....but then again, they didn't look so great laid out together on the design wall. 

What to do, what to do.  Play some more, right?  Grab all those rejected insert pieces .....

..... cut up all those strip sets .....

..... and start really playing.  Now this is fun!

After a few days of moving things around, stepping back to look, thinking and re-thinking, I ended up with a flimsy I'm really happy with.  It has gone a long way from this .....

..... to this!

I had a lot of pieces left which I could have used somehow to make it a little bigger, but honestly I was kind of sick of looking at it.  So I offered all of it to whoever wanted them in my online quilting group, and Alice spoke up first, so they are outta here!

The quilt will be a decent size for a throw, about 55" x 55" so that's not too bad.  Plus, as soon as I decide how to quilt it there will be one less thing on the dreaded UFO list.  I can live with that!

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