Mike's "Goldleaf" Quilt

I should have titled this post "Throwback Thursday"  because it's about a quilt I made last year and didn't blog about.  I'd found a box of HSTs I wanted to do something with, so I put them up on the design wall and had a play day.  You know I like those!

The first thing I did was rearrange them into a more random looking design.  Next I pulled out a length of fabric I had bought for something and then decided I didn't like it. 

 

Any fabric you don't like almost always looks better when you cut it up into smaller pieces.  (That's your tip for today!)  I cut out some squares and rectangles and worked them into my design then used the rest of it for borders.  

What a difference!

This was gifted to another family member, my brother-in-law Mike this time.  I'm making a list and checking things off.  Have you noticed?

Linking up with So Scrappy

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!

I'm linking up with Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Can I get a Whoop Whoop?
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Craving Color!

As much as I have been enjoying working on the Old Wedding Quilt I find myself hungry for color lately so I've set it aside to play a little bit.  I had just enough fabric left over from Eloise's baby quilt last year to cut out seven squares.  Some time ago I started playing with them, pulling coordinating fabrics, and making the squares into log cabin style blocks.  Then I got frustrated because I didn't have enough pink to add strips to all the blocks, and I put it away.  

In the meantime I cleaned up my sewing room and found a lot of this same pink in a bag I had never unpacked after getting home from a retreat.  Oops!  So the other day I started playing again.  I thought the block was looking pretty good.

When I laid them out on my design wall I wasn't exactly thrilled.  I don't like working with an odd number of blocks, it's hard to get a decent layout.

I found this beautiful batik in my stash and decided it would be the perfect alternate block.

But, as seems to be the norm lately when working from my stash, I didn't have quite enough.  Time to play some more.  Winging it not only pushes you to be creative, it ends up changing the whole look of the quilt.  Now my blocks look like this.

Since I don't have enough of that cool dotted batik to use AS an alternate block I decided to use it IN an alternate block.  I came up with this one.

Guess what, though?  I'm pretty sure that I don't have enough of the yellow either.   Aarrgghh!   This batik might make a nice alternate block.

Well, that was enough color therapy for this week.  (Actually, I just had other things in my life that had to be done, and that was all the TIME I had for color therapy this week!)   We'll see what happens when I get a little time to play some more.  This may turn into something yet.