Pinky Town

Finally a finish on my second Bitty House quilt.   The first was finished  3 years ago and the extra blocks were lingering around waiting for inspiration.

 

Once I saw this cute hollow Star pattern, an idea for a layout occurred.

As usual, I started hand quilting Pinky Town before my hands told me to give it up and do some free motion quilting.  So happy with the results.

This cross stitch is from a Bonnie and Camille quilt book. I fell in love with her finish in a simple white frame and had to do one.  

Many good memories in these stitches, especially of our sibling trip to BC last summer.

So nice to have some new, bright finishes in the hallway just in time for Spring!

 

 Zinnia Zen

The power of social media got me on this one!

 After seeing some gorgeous finishes of similar quilts I just had to make one.

 I had already fallen in love with this block from Lori Holt and incorporated a few into an earlier quilt. It's still one of my all time favourite finishes.

Most of the fabric for the Zinnias is Free Spirit, but there are also a few solids and other random prints in there. I love mixing solids and prints.

The weather is cold, wet and grey today so the photos are not the best.  

Most of the fabrics are also leftovers from a previous quilt made for my granddaughter. 
The background is 2 different but very similar blues.

My plan was to machine quilt the flowers, which I did, and to hand quilt the background with perle cotton....which I did for about one third of it before admitting it was not working for me.  I am much happier with the loopy free motion swirls . 

The background is 
a Lori Holt fabric.

I have many starts, so it's a refreshing feeling to have a finish!

Linking up with Cynthia at OH SCRAP .  Go check out what everyone is working on, lots of inspiration waiting.

SPARE SQUARES 2024

 

My second SPARE SQUARES quilt from Lori Holt's SCRAPPINESS IS HAPPINESS book.

I guess this is classified as "curated" scrappy since I stuck to pinks, reds, browns and soft neutral low volume backgrounds. 

The stack of pink blocks sat on the shelf  for about a year patiently waiting for the mood to strike.

This backing was bought for another project which didn't pan out, but I really like it with this quilt.  

It wasn't quite wide enough, not a problem, needed to be used anyway.

Machine quilted in a wonky, wavy grid.  

Wow, so fast and easy after the previous hand quilted one!

Binding machine sewn to the front and hand stitched to the back.  Those last few stitches are always a bit sad, silly but true.

Linking up with:

SO SCRAPPY

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KALEIDOSCOPE

KALEIDOSCOPE is a pattern from LELLA BOUTIQUE by Vanessa Goertzen that I bought well before Covid, so I'm guessing 2017.   I believe the shop was in Kitchener and they were part of the July Shop Hop. Of course they had a beautiful sample on display and I just had to have it. lol..

Seven years later I finally got around to it.

This pattern was a treat to piece, nice and easy, especially with a jelly roll.  So the piecing went quickly, unlike the quilting which took a leisurely 9 months.

Big stitch quilting , Baptist Fan design.  It's fairly dense, the lines only spaced half an inch apart.  It was a pleasure to work on and so worth it.  Now that it's washed it has an amazing cozy feel to it.

Binding machine sewn to the front and hand stitched to the back.

Washed and wrinkly here 😍

70 x 70

Linking up with:

SO SCRAPPY

Double Double #3

 Another scrappy finish, YAYYYY.  I get so attached to these, so many pieces means so many memories.  I made two similar ones, in 2020 and 2021.  This baby uses 1, 2 and 4 inch finished squares.

The black and white stripe binding is my favourite part of the quilt.  The second favourite part is the feel of the backing which is a new sheet I purchased. It has such a smooth, cool feel to it.

I wish so badly I had more of that stripe!!!!!

Mostly machine quilted with every fourth row being hand quilted.

Voila, a sweet finish.

46" x 62"

Linking up with SOSCRAPPY

BE AN ELF (X2)

 I had the best of intentions to make 4 Elf quilts for all the grandkids this year.  I should have known that even just 2 quilts almost identical would be a stretch.  These adorable guys were pretty easy and fun to make. The pattern is by Jennifer Long at Sewastory.

I followed the pattern for the Elf  both times but changed up the bottom sections

.  For the Red Elf I just put a longer bottom section , wider side borders and some extra snowflakes.

Our Little Green guy has the called for borders I believe, but I swapped out the original lower section for some trees from Lori Holt's Vintage Christmas Book.

He's hand quilted along with the trees .... but his background is free motion quilted with loopy swirls and the border has machine quilted straight lines.

Backed with a cozy Minky. 

The Red Elf is backed in extra border and background material as well as a strip of fabric leftover from the backing on my Vintage Christmas quilt from last year.

No hand quilting on this baby.  I did  all over fairly large loopy swirls...I am still in awe of how easy my Janome 6650 makes fmq feel.  That extra throat space is sooooo worth it!!  I still prefer to handquilt when my hands lets me, but I'm slow at it so it's great to be able to finish the quilts from start to finish myself either way.

I'm pretty sure the kids will love them, the quilts are plenty big to be used for years to come.

started: March 2024

finished:   Oct. 2024

Linking up with Cynthia at OH SCRAP

 

A B C

My first Alphabet quilt, I'm happy with how it looks and feels.  LOL, the feel is just as important as the look, especially for little ones.  I am planning to donate this one. 

Almost all the fabric is by Lori Holt as are the blocks.

I used the pattern for her 6" tall letters and added borders to each block to increase the size to 10" finished.  The letters are not all the same width so some math was needed ...good  practice.

Machine quilting was done in a grid  on both sides of the blocks and hand quilting inside the blocks.  I was trying to keep it as soft and cozy as possible by avoiding dense quilting.

The quilt finished at 50 x 60  and shrunk to 48 x 57.75 after washing and drying.

The backing is a 60 inch wide Robin Hood fabric.

Two other quilts are in the process of being hand quilted.....what was I thinking !??!

My hands and wrists are not happy, but I'm still hoping to finish them eventually.  Next week I have a dr. appointment to get them checked out finally.

 

Feeling a lot like Fall around here. It's been a busy, fun Summer but Fall is always welcome!