Link A Finish Friday #53

It is now time for Link A Finish Friday.  Today I would like to start with a big thank you to Fat Quarter Shop who has offered to Sponsor our Link A Finish Friday with Prizes.  This month's winner (February) will win a $15 gift certificate to spend at Fat Quarter Shop. 

Please remember to thank our sponsor by visiting their store at http://www.fatquartershop.com/ their blog http://www.fatquartershop.blogspot.com/ and Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/FatQuarterShop

Dared to Dresden by Mountain Quiltworks

Block 7 from BillieBee's Blog

The Crazy Shortcut Quilt from Teresa's Quilt Journey 

(I hear there is a giveaway going on over there.  Stop by and see how she is doing.)

These are 3 of the wonderful quilts linked up last week.  Please share with us what you have done this week.

1) Who likes rules. Toss them out.

2) Add a link to your finish blog or where ever you show off your finishes (Not limited to quilts but I like them the most).
3) Visit a few of the finishes and comment or encourage them on.
4) Monthly random winner picked from all of the months linkups to $15 gift card from Fat Quarter Shop.

Not required but fun to do

1) Follow my blog.
2) Follow the blog of all those that link.
3) Link back to my blog.
4) No finish, go quilt and stop reading the web.

The marvelous color GREEN!

A while back when I was making my Orange plus quilt (yes its still not bound and finished) My son Jared walked in grabbed the quilt and said it was his and ran out of the room.  He loved the quilt but it just was not in his color.  If you have been around you will know he loves Green. One of the first few quilts I made was a rag quilt named "The Green Quilt of Awesomeness" He was so happy to have it.  But it seems that he is not happy with just that quilt.  He wants a green version of my plus quilt.

My quilt design consists of 33+ unique colors to make all of the pluses unique.  So this caused me to hunt for green.  Tanya and the kids had to help because our stash is a mess.  We opened every single box we had and pulled all things that were green or greenish an put it into a pile.  I then started cutting 2 1/2 inch strips off of each of the items.  Because I want to make a rainbow quilt later this year I got more then my 5 squares of each of them so I could build the green stash.  (while sorting I did find a few more orange and gray too so maybe I can work again on that one).  What I ended up with was a pile of  85 different green blocks (above you can see they are pinned into stacks of 5).

Needless to say I have a few too many.  So Jared (yes he is wearing a green shirt as he stuffs his head into my picture) at first grabbed the full stack of greens and screamed MINE!! yes he screams a lot.  We told him he had to sort the pile into ones he liked and ones he did not like.  So he did such we ended up with about 75 he liked and 10 he did not like.  So  I took those away and tried again.  This time I let him pick his favorite 10 out at a time.  Then mixed up the left over and had him pick 10 again.  We did this tell we had 35 in one pile.

Rebecca my oldest girl did not find it right that we rejected 40+ blocks.  SO she also grabbed a pile of 35 blocks (it seems I must make 2 quilts?)  Maybe she can make her own.  Above you can see the bag on the bottom is Jareds they are brighter.  And Rebecca's are on the top. And of course the left overs on the left (I guess it was a couple more then 75 to start with.  Any way expect to see some green over the next month or 2 on the blog.

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Link a Finish Friday winner for the month of January goes to  LAFF#48 entry 6 which is!!!

Valerie of re.engineered for her quilt she made for Ella for Christmas

Congrats I have already heard back from Fat Quarter Shop that Valerie was sent her gift certificate.  Remember to stop back on Friday and link up for your chance to win.

Late in the day work in progress #37

This post is by Tanya

On Saturday I got some sewing done.  I made a simple gender neutral baby top in yellows and greens that I cut up about two  or three weeks ago.

I have been busy with life and my 1/4 inch foot was MIA.  My problem is I currently share a desk and sewing machine with my Daughter Rebecca.  Two people that are not good at cleaning up is not a good thing.  I had tons of scraps from her projects, and at least 6 different colored bobbins and several spools of thread scattered along desk top.  For some reason my space whether it be  my computer area, my dresser, and my sewing desk seem to say to kids put all stuff you don't know what to do with on any one of the three.

Anyway I cleaned off my sewing desk this weekend, we went through several scrap boxes.  We threw away a ton of stuff that was too small for 2 1/2 in squares or string blocks or even stuff to use in appliques.  As new quilters we saved everything, including batting scraps too small to do anything with.  We use a lot of larger batting scraps in rag quilts.

Here are a couple of pictures of Julia with the bear Rebecca made her.

Richard has been busy cutting up 2 1/2 inch squares.  He has now quilted half of Rebecca's twin quilt.

Over and Under A Quilt Design

Like every thing I design, I always start with yellow and orange.  You might just love this crazy color or do I just have issues.  Well that's simple I just have issues.  That and any time I can get my wife to look at something and just sigh at what I have come up with that helps too.

I sat down today while Julia was sleeping, she is still sick and I did not want to go too far away so I could grab her if she woke up so I opened up Electronic Quilt 7 the Quilt design software I bought for Tanya (she never uses it, but her birthday was closer when I had the money to buy it so she got it.  How many times have you gotten a wrench or a new saw just cause it was your B-day).  If you have never tried EQ7 you should, it is a lot of fun.  It has tons and tons of blocks and you can do many things with it.

I have been trying to make more modern designs and as a not so modern person I struggle at it.  My design process for this quilt was a little different than most.  I wanted to make a on point quilt.  So I went though all the blocks in EQ7 (yes it took a while as their are hundreds of them) and I finally settled on about 8 I wanted to play with.  One of them was the block here that on its own is not that impressing, but when I filled the full quilt up with them it gave me a million blocks.  So being modern, I just can't have a full quilt of the same block so I started removing squares one at a time from the designer (squares, not blocks)  this too some time to do.  I first went and colored all of the lines gray of the blocks I wanted to make go away.  In my finished quilt I wanted the blocks to be solid (not the gray on gray lines) so I went and started making blocks to replace the blocks that had pieces cut out.

So I ended up creating 5 new blocks out of my 1 original block and started replacing them in the design (Yes a lack of bars is not a block per say, its just a piece of fabric).  So I have the design done and I invited my son over to help me come up with a name.  His first though is I don't like the colors. (yes he is as bad as Tanya, no one understands my vision).

The left one was the last of James color choices its a purple and dark gray on a light gray back ground.  I added the border, could not decide if I liked it or not.  The first of his color choices was the brown and green on the blue background and the pink and light gray on the obsidian background was his 2nd.

Of course I show the design to Tanya and she hates mine (like she ever likes my choice) she thought the purple one was OK on James choices.  None of them was Tanya.

So yes the blocks should have given it away, we will end up with a brown and green quilt on a tan background.  The blocks by the way are 12 1/2 square and the borders are 3 inches.  It will end up to be a 91 x 108 inch quilt or so EQ7 tells me (well it says 90.853 x 107.823) but the rounding sounds better.

This, That, and the Other Thing

 I have not been so good at blogging the last few weeks, with Julia under the weather. I have been working on a few various projects.  You can see to the left of me I did some quilting, then some more quilting on my plus quilt (Its not named yet, but I will this week pick the name, at some point before I finish it, and I have only binding left). You can see the backing material its a tad bright, its the the color on the top right of that image.

 I did work on more string blocks.  Below is my work in progress and on the right are the 12 finished blocks I did this round.  I think I have around 30 of these blocks not that much  since they only measure 6 1/2 square.  The pattern in the picture is sorta how I plan to finish it.  I still need plenty more blocks and I have plenty of strings to still go though.

 Below is my plus quilt its finished quilting.  We are trying to figure out what to bind it with.  I bought this orange fabric to bind it with and after sitting it there I just don't think its right, who knows.

 I pulled out my batik quilt its one of the largest I have made, I pieced it a long time back and finished making a back for it just yesterday.  So now to see if we (Tanya) can figure out how to baste such a large quilt in our small house.

 Rebecca has been making some taggie toys and bought a bunch of ribbon for it.  Julia has helped some and ran the ribbon all around the room.

My first twister top is done. It's baby size and I made a block to piece into the back and both my wife and daughter, said oh a pillow.  Nope no pillow, just a pieced block (the black twister is the block that will go on a angle on the back.












I guess Julia is serving hard time for messing with the ribbon, here she is in Toy Jail.  The big bear behind her in the picture is a project Rebecca is working on for her sewing class.  Its a bear that is as big or bigger then Julia.

I forgot to blog about this a few weeks ago. I found this on the table, I think Tanya is up to something.

It flew away shortly after I took the pictures, but maybe with some luck it will return one day.