April OMG Success: Anders' Grad Quilt is a Flimsy!

It's the last day of April, and I'm crossing my big One Monthly Goal off my list in the nick of time.  I feel like that player in Sports Ball who slides into Home Plate right before whatever happens that makes him Struck Out instead of Safe.  That other dude who is dressed like a cross between a skunk and a raccoon yells SAFE -- and the crowd goes wild!!  🙌  See?  I do sort of somewhat pay attention to the Sports Ball games.  But mostly, I'm just shopping for fabric on my iPad...  

Giverny Teleidoscope is a Completed Flimsy

77 x 99 Giverny Teleidoscope is a Completed Flimsy

My Major Goal for April was to get my younger son's high school graduation quilt top, Giverny Teleidoscope, completely assembled, and I just finished that up about an hour ago.  (Those are my husband's naked toes sticking out on the right side of the photo, and my soon-to-be-graduate son Anders' gray sock clad toes sticking out on the other side).   I pressed it flat as a pancake with Mary Ellen's Best Press, and even remembered to stay stitch 1/8" from the raw edges all the way around the quilt top so it's ready to load and quilt.  

Design Wall Monday + Tuesday's To-Do List: Giverney Teleidoscope is Nearly a Flimsy

As of Sunday night, here's what Anders' high school graduation quilt looks like on my design wall:

All Nine Rows Completed!

All of my 11" kaleidoscope blocks now have their corners attached, and they are all sewn together into nine horizontal rows with their points matching up neatly at the seam lines.  Now all I need to do is to sew those rows together into a finished quilt top (or "flimsy") before I can load it onto my long arm frame for quilting.  My One (Two!) Monthly Goal(s) for April was(were) to finish piecing this kaleidoscope quilt top and to completely finish the bear paw quilt I shared a few days ago, so I think I'm going to end the month at two for two.  

Even though I had a pretty good idea what this quilt would look like with all of the pieces laid out and stuck to my design wall throughout construction, I love seeing the fuzzy design come into sharp focus as the piecing seams tidy everything up.  I am enjoying staring at this one, seeing the different shapes emerge in some areas and recede in others: triangles, Maltese crosses, curved diamonds, octagons and squares, as well as the curved orange peel design illusion that happens where the blocks come together at the corners.  I'm pleased with how this one is coming along.

Friday Quilt Finish: Color Outside the Lines is Ta-Done at Last!

 

63 x 63 Color Outside the Lines, Bear Paw + Sawtooth Star Blocks

Happy Friday, y'all!  I have a quilt finish to share with you today!  I finally put the last hand stitches into the binding of my Color Outside the Lines quilt last night, wrapping up a languishing WIP (Work In Progress) that I started way back in 2014.  Woo-hoo!

I Hope You Appreciate the Azaleas...

I goaded my grouchy and reluctant husband into driving around with me to find a photo location with azaleas in the exact shade of pink as the hand dyed fabric patches in the center of my bear paw blocks.  I was like the Knights Who Say Nih from Monty Python -- "YOU MUST BRING ME A SHRUBBERY!!!!!"  Also, I told him that none of the OTHER quilters' husbands complain that their arms are sore from holding the quilt up for so long.  😏. 

Remember what this quilt top looked like before I quilted it?  Here's that Before picture again:

Giverny Teleidoscope Quilt Progress + Custom Sewing Cabinet Modifications

I'm still chugging along with my son's high school graduation quilt, in fits and snatches!  The real challenge is coming up with new pictures for each post about it, because it looks pretty much the same up on the design wall regardless of whether seams have been sewn together yet!  

Giverny Teleidoscope In Progress

You can't see the whole thing in the photo above, but the top six rows have corners attached and blocks sewn together into rows.  I have three more rows to go with attaching corners and joining blocks into rows.  There are no borders planned for this quilt, so once the top has been sewn together, it will be ready for quilting.

Sesame Street Quilting With a Playful Floral Swirl E2E Design

Hello, hello, and happy Thursday!  Is it a "sunny day, sweeping the clouds away" where you live today?  If not, don't despair -- "I can tell you how to get, how to get to Sesame Street..."  

Seriously; by the time I finished quilting this one, I could NOT get the Sesame Street songs out of my head.  "C is for cookie, it's good enough for me. Cookie cookie cookie starts with C!"

4 inch Tumbler Quilt with Floral Swirl E2E Quilting Design

This is the second of two donation quilt tops that my mom pieced for me to quilt and donate to a local hospital pediatric patient, using the leftover Hibiscus Kona Solid background fabric from Lars's Mission Impossible graduation quilt (finished in 2019 and juried into QuiltCon Together 2021).  There was a ton of that Hibiscus purple fabric left over, and my mom kept me company in the studio while I was custom quilting Mission Impossible and she was using my AccuQuilt GO! cutter with the 4" tumbler die to cut up all of the leftover purple fabric into tumblers.  The print fabrics were pulled from my scrap bin and my stash, except for those fabulous Sesame Street prints -- I spotted those at a local quilt shop and they were a complete impulse buy.  I knew it would be great for The Charlotte Quilters Guild's Pediatric Outreach efforts.  

Of Piecing, Binding, Eastering, and College Visiting

It's been a busy week, but I still (barely) managed to squeeze in enough personal sewing time to stay on top of my goals -- in addition to my "extra duties" as Family Event Planner, Easter Chef, and Travel Agent/Tour Guide to Out-of-State College Towns.  My label is appliquéd to my bear paw quilt and I sewed the binding to the front of my quilt today.

Bear Paw Binding Began Today

Another Month, Another Goal... Or Two: Of Bear Paws and Kaleidoscopes

 I was long-winded on the topic of that vintage Economy quilt yesterday, so today's post is going to be Short and Sweet!

I have a Major Goal for April as well as a Minor Goal.  The Minor Goal is to get my Color Outside the Lines bear paw quilt off my WIP list.  That entails labeling, binding, and hand finishing the binding on this one.  After clearing off the heaps of fabric debris on the cutting table from my kaleidoscope, I finally had room to trim the bear paw quilt and machine embroider its label yesterday.

Machine Embroidered Label, Ready to Applique

And no, that is not a typo or your eyes playing April Fools jokes on you.  I really did start working on this quilt SEVEN years ago, in May of 2014.  It will feel good to have this one done at the end of the month!

But my Major and Supreme Goal for April is to get my son's kaleidoscope graduation quilt, Giverny Teleidoscope, to the Finished Flimsy stage by the end of the month.  While I had the embroidery module and stabilizers out anyway, I went ahead and embroidered the label for Anders' quilt as well.  It's stitching out right now, while I'm typing this blog post.