Design Wall Monday

Yesterday Noel, her MIL and I went to the Quilt Festival held at RIT in Rochester, NY. There were over 600 quilts exhibited plus several travelling challenges and 40 vendors. You know I made a couple purchases, right?!
I'll try to show some of my photos later this week...

My first purchase of the day was this tumbler kit to make the flag quilt shown below. I was going to start it last night but I haven't decided where to hang it yet. I'll have to decide where to hang it before I can start sewing because I'll need to move the star field to the left if it will hang vertically..

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This cute pack of Fat 1/8 shirtings will go towards my Civil War Quilts. The same lady that was selling these was working on a honeycomb project. It was nice to see another project and her fabric selections were gorgeous. She bastes her pieces, one at a time, thru the papers and puts them into tiny, stackable plastic boxes before she puts the blocks together. She had quite a few basted already. Think I might have to get me some honeycomb pieces!!!

My last purchase of the day (only because it took so long to find any black fabric) was this black batik to use as the sashing between my hexie diamonds. For all the other quilts I have seen online using this layout, they all have a fairly neutral sashing. I am using every color available for the diamonds (they aren't all quite this bright) so Noel and I thought the black would set them off better. I do believe she is right! This is more of a blueish black but I do like it. I'll get some of this cut and start to put together some of my diamonds so I can reuse those hexie papers.

I also purchased a few other small items: two quilting stencils, hexagon charm to add to my scissor fob and smoke colored clear thread and black tulle for my housing project.

UFO Thursday

I have made no progress on this month's #1 UFO for Judy's Challenge but I did finish a different UFO.

I purchased this fabric and the Cherrywood dyed fabric pack about 3 years ago at the last quilt show I attended in Miami. I knew it would be a good project for the chilly north - can never have enough sweatshirts up here. The problem was deciding on a pattern. I've picked up several over the years but just never got to it. I had spent so much on the fabric, I wanted the perfect pattern. When I finally found the one it turns out I had already owned it. Who knew?

At last month's guild meeting our speaker brought patterns to sell. I was looking at a sweatshirt pattern and Noel was looking at it also. We decided to get together at my house and make them together. A little motivation never hurts anyone. The plan was to get them done in time for guild meeting and I did so with hours to spare. Ok, so the cuffs aren't done but it was good enuf for who it's for and maybe I will leave them as is. We shall see.

I think the hardest part, after picking a pattern, was taking the fool sweatshirt apart. All the seams have to come apart and all the threads have to be picked out. These are serged seams so there are about 3 levels of seams to take apart. Ick. I think it was Linda who said to trace the sweatshirt parts and buy the sweatshirt material at JoAnn's to save taking another one apart. Brilliant!!

I quilted the sweatshirt with fantasy feathers, thanks to a DVD from Patsy Thompson, using a blue-gray King Tut variegated thread. As I posted yesterday, despite being washed several times, the sweatshirt stained my machine. I haven't had a chance to try to clean it yet but I am open to any suggestions.

I think I would like to make another sweatshirt but maybe with less quilting so it's not quite so stiff.






Cali was the Quality Control Officer on duty: