Oh-Ma-Goodness; My March OMG Goal Was Attained... EARLY!

 Guess what?  If a quilter spends less time writing about quilting on her blog, she can get more actual quilting progress completed in her studio!  😲.  This has been a major epiphany for me!  Stop smirking!

Giverny Teleidoscope Layout, All 63 Block Centers Complete

Okay, so my One (and only) Monthly Goal for March was to complete the remaining 53 octagonal kaleidoscope block centers for my younger son's high school graduation quilt.  I only had nine of them finished at the beginning of the month and I got the remaining 54 pieced with a week to spare.  Whew!  Note that none of the corner triangles are sewn to the blocks yet.  I spent a few hours this afternoon cutting those HSTs (half square triangles) out and arranging the blocks on my design wall until nothing was jumping out at me in an unpleasant way.  I think I like what I've got right now, but I'm planning to look at it again with fresh eyes in the morning before I start actually sewing corners onto octagons.

For those who missed my earlier posts about this project, my block centers were cut out using the AccuQuilt GO! 5" x 6" Isosceles Triangle die and machine pieced for the most part, but I left a hole in the center of each block to close up with hand stitching in order to get my points to meet up in the center of each block as precisely as possible.  The hand stitching slowed me down, as you can imagine (I see you smirking again!).  If I ever make another kaleidoscope quilt someday, I will probably foundation paper piece the blocks instead, especially if they are smaller blocks.  Once I add the 3" (finished) HST corners to my octagonal centers, the finished block size is 11" in this quilt.  And I'm calling it Giverny Teleidoscope because it makes me think of looking at Claude Monet's Impressionist paintings of his Giverny gardens through a teleidoscope.   A teleidoscope is similar to a kaleidoscope, but a kaleidoscope's mirrors refract and rearrange images of beads and other tiny objects that are located within the scope, whereas a teleidoscope refracts and rearranges images of objects located in the world beyond the scope.

In addition to finishing those kaleidoscope block centers this month, I also FINALLY found the perfect design and finished quilting my languishing bear paw quilt.  I'd tentatively named that one Paint Me a Story at one point, but now that I've quilted it, I decided its name is Color Outside the Lines.  

Color Outside the Lines Bear Paw is Finally Quilted, Waiting for Label and Binding

It has taken every ounce of my willpower to work on kaleidoscope blocks for the past few weeks with this quilt so close to a finish.   It has helped that my cutting table was piled high with fabric possibilities for the kaleidoscope quilt, too -- there was no room to trim the bear paw quilt, anyway!

Oh, and I forgot to share this sweet floral 3-Yard Quilt that I had the pleasure of quilting for a client earlier in the month:

Daisies Galore E2E on My Client's Three-Yard Quilt

My client's granddaughter had accompanied her to the quilt shop and picked her fabrics out herself, so we chose the Daisies Galore edge-to-edge quilting design to play up her floral and polka dot fabrics, stitched in Cotton Candy Glide thread.

Client's 3-Yard Quilt, Daisies Galore E2E

Daisies Galore is the same quilting design I used for my butterfly clam shell baby quilt last year, by the way, except that on that quilt the design was hand guided, following a paper pantograph pattern, because it was before I got my IntelliQuilter computer robotics added to my APQS long arm quilting machine.  Using the computerized version of the design this time enabled me to reduce the scale of the pattern to better complement the size of the flowers printed on the fabric.

Daisies Galore E2E

By the way, since I'm all caught up and even ahead of schedule with my son's graduation quilt, I have opened up a few more spots on my calendar where I can fit in edge-to-edge quilting for clients in April and May, so if you or any of your friends happen to be sitting on a pile of unquilted flimsies, I might be able to help you out with that problem!  My turnaround time for E2E is 1-2 weeks.  However, to preserve my sanity and ensure my son's quilt gets done on time, I'm not scheduling any custom quilting or commissions until June.

Well, folks -- that's all you get for today.  I'm linking this post with the following linky parties, in addition to the Finish Party link up for One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts:

SATURDAY

UFO Busting at Tish in Wonderland

SUNDAY

Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

Slow Stitching Sunday at Kathy's Quilts

MONDAY

Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

BOMs Away at What a Hoot Quilts