It's been a great week here. I've had lots of sewing time and I won two contests this week! That was a surprise. Kathy of Pink Chalk Studio gave away a ton of goodies she got at Quilt Market and I won a really cute bag pattern, the Abigail Bag by Serendipity Studios. Also, Norma at Now Norma Knits did a suprise drawing for the Red Scarf Fund and I won a gift certificate to Knitspot! On top of that I got a swap package sent out. It will have to remain a secret for now, but I'll post about it soon.
Meanwhile, I've made great progress on several quilts. I finally got the binding finished on this quilt. This is the last of the free pieced stars I made during the Bushfire Quilt project. I had said a while ago that we would keep this one because Mark liked it. But I just can't do it. From a distance it looks pretty good. Up close, I don't like the wool batting and I don't think the quilting looks that great. I think it will make a fine community quilt though, so I'll bring it to the guild next month.
I also got the last of the Project Improv blocks put together and ready for machine quilting.
I started a new quilt with this sweet Matryoshka fabric which was in the discount bin. I can't believe it wasn't selling. The hand of the fabric is really luscious! The squares are framed in various solids and then sashed with linen. It's pretty, but not for me. I plan to offer this one for sale locally. I'm still working on the quilting because my machine needs to be serviced. I haven't tried it yet on my old machine, but I'm hoping the quilting proceeds without a problem.
Last Saturday was month 2 of the Collaborative Chicks classes at the Stitchin' Post. We did the quilt "1937 Revisted" from the second Collaborative Quilts book. It was fun, but it turned out that the scraps that I was using weren't quite long enough to get more than one 12' block out of and there was a lot of leftover "strata" sections. I ended up trimming all the leftovers into smaller squares or spiderweb sections to use later. Some of the 6" squares did end up in this quilt because I had 13 blocks and just couldn't justify cutting a bunch more strips when I had the small squares to work with.
In the photo below you can see how I used the small squares with the larger ones. I like it, but I'm not sure these colors are me. Most of this fabric was in my stash. I did buy some of the black and white just for the quilt and went out today to get backing fabric.
The Lone Star quilt that was month 1 is still in the same spot it was before. I hope to get to it soon. It feels good to clear up some of the wips around here. Tonight I was working on another oldie. I'll show you that soon. Have a great weekend!
