No baby, but I have the blanket!

I took this off the loom last week.  It took forever, mostly since I have been too busy quilting to go to weaving class much, but it is done and I do like it.  I tend to do rag rugs and projects using chunky yarn on the loom, so this is one of my first real attempts in 30 years of weaving to really do a consistent pattern and the lacy boxes turned out beautiful and pretty much square!  The blanket is 36x42" and finished with bias binding. 

Blues is finished and on the bed

It is quilted with a medium sized meander that I just freehanded, it came off the long arm on the Tues, I bound it on Wednesday in the really dark blue, and washed and dried it this evening.  It did shrink up a bit, from 102x102 to 97x97, but is still plenty large enough for the king sized bed and H even said it looked nice.  I could get so much more done if I just didn't have the day job...   

Inspired by the Red and White Quilts

After seeing photos on-line of the fabulous red and white quilt exhibit in New York, I had to make my own.  I used lots of scrappy reds, everything from almost orange to almost purple, with a scrappy white to gold background, framed it in black and bordered it with more dark red.  The stars are 8" blocks, there are 11 across and 11 down, with a 1" black frame and a 8" red border.  I plan to bind it in red too.  It ended up being 98x98" but will shrink up some with quilting and washing.  I think I will quilt it with a simple grid pattern across the stars.  Next week...   

Blues

I have finally gotten the Blues quilt on the long arm.  I'm doing an all over swirly pattern and although it's a practice piece and for our bed, which means the dogs will be on it, I think it's going to look good.  I haven't done anything on the long arm since K's quilt in May, so I had to look up all the directions again.  But...in a couple weeks, H and I are attending the classes that came with the quilter and I needed to get in some practice.  The funnest (I know, I'm making up words) part of this was that I couldn't find the perfect backing fabric so I bought something and then dyed it the color that I wanted it.  I'll take a photo of the backing when I get it off the long arm...    

A Wacky Bird

I took a class with Suzanne Marshall in Ann Arbor last Friday on hand appliqueing.  I made a wacky bird using one of her patterns and then embroidered a swirly tail, head dress, and eye lashes to dress him up a bit.  I took it with a friend and it was alot of fun.  The background for this is one of my hand dyed pieces of fabric that I made a few weeks ago.  I'm pleased with him.  I think he will make a cool bag or pillow.   

Blues

I had such a good time with the blue piano key border on the Liberated Round Robin that I bought a couple more 1/2 yard cuts of blue batik and made a window pane style quilt top.  I saw the inspiration for this in one of this month's quilt magazines.  This one is bigger, 102 x 102", since it is for my king sized bed.  I needed something that the dog hair wouldn't show on too badly.  The sashing, which looks black in the photo, is really 4 shades of dark navy blue batiks and the panes are different shades of blue and blue-green batiks.  It is more modern looking than I intended, but since my room is painted a fairly deep yellow and I have woven denim rag rugs on the floor with cherry shaker style furniture, it looks good.  I started it Sunday afternoon and finished it last night.  It will sit on the quilt rack until next week when I have time to put it on the longarm and get it quilted.  I'm thinking that I will do a freehand all-over leaf pattern for quilting.  I intend to tightly quilt since the dogs will be sleeping on it at night.  I'm pleased with it right now.  We'll see how the quilting goes, I haven't had time since May to do anything with the long-arm and I am really looking forward to the long-arm classes in August.   

Lib Quilters Round Robin

My liberated quilters round robin is starting to take shape.  I deleted some of the triangles and added log cabins.  I needed a border and added some more color.  So far, everything is from scraps and the stash.  I cut way too many strips to start with and then made too many log cabins too.  I originally thought I would put cabins all the way around, but I really like this design better.  So in order to get this much quilt top...I have extra pink triangles (and the triangles that I made and didn't use), extra log cabins, extra pink strips, and extra blue piano keys.  Hmmm... enough for another quilt.  I always seem to do everything twice.