Tag Archives: ALYoF

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In 2004, I "gave" my brother a "quilt" for Christmas. It was a work in progress and I really had the best of intentions of finishing it up and handing over the finished quilt shortly thereafter. Here's what it looks like today:

There are 8 completed blocks.

Here's the day I gave it to him:

baseball quilt

Not such impressive progress in 10 1/2 years, huh?

I must say, I'm much more excited about working on a number of other projects I currently have going. But, my goodness, they are snowball blocks! They shouldn't take long. However, I think once I get going on this project I'm going to have to rework the overall plan for it since my brother is now 6'5". So this month's goal is to finish piecing these blocks. There. I've put it out there. Now I'm accountable to all of you. Here's to making progress this month and turning it into a Q3 finish!

Anyone else working on an embarrassingly old WIP?

Linking up to A Lovely Year of Finishes July Goal Post.

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This is the second mini that I shipped off this month for an Instagram swap. This one was for the Cotton and Steel Mini Swap (#cottonandsteelminiquiltswap) and was my June goal for A Lovely Year of Finishes. My partner said that anything and everything C+S is great, and indicated that she didn't like black. I did some sketching and ended up with this quarter log cabin block design on point which used each of my five feature fabrics in each block, without like fabrics sharing seams. It was a bit of a puzzle. This solution makes the mathematician in me very happy. :-)

If you're familiar with Cotton and Steel and look closely, you might have noticed that I cut the Tiger Stripes and XOXO (navy) fabric on the diagonal so the direction of the pattern would show in its normal orientation with the blocks on point.

To finish it off I did some walking foot quilting, I just started stitching without too much planning in advance.

I had a little bit of an issue with the bias edge of the quilt top, but I'm overall happy with it. I have a second set of these blocks sewn in other fabrics, so I'll try to improve on my technique when I piece the quilt top to alleviate the slightly wonky edge that happened (which I think also caused a little bit of an issue with the backing).

Here's a closeup of the label. It hasn't been received yet, so the great white shark is hiding my partner's name. ;-) (It was shark week at our house, so the shark seemed appropriate for the photo shoot.)

 

Once again, I received my mini in the swap before I shipped. Check out this pile of awesomeness that Michelle sent me! Those of you with a Tiny Box Zippy, what do you use yours for? It's so adorable! I just love the mini and the texture from her quilting. It's such a beautiful addition to my wall of minis.

Thanks for visiting.

I'm linking up to ALYoF June finishes party.

This finish is one of my Q2 Finish Along goals. I'm linking up with the Q2 Finishes party.

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I have 5 mini quilts to complete this month, including helping my son to finish his. So, I'm calling my Cotton & Steel Mini quilt my official June goal for A Lovely Year of Finishes. The shipping deadline is June 19 as it's going internationally for the Cotton & Steel Mini Quilt Swap from Instagram. I struggled a little to come up with a plan, but settled on blues. Here's the palette I'm using for the quilt. I like that the Daisies fabric tied it all together.

  • XOXO in Night Owl
  • Daisies in Aqua
  • Tiger Stripes in Blue
  • Dottie in Goldilocks
  • Arrows in Navy

I'll be using Netorious in Kerchief for the background (not shown). I'm leaning toward binding in the XOXO, but I won't make a final decision until the quilt top is finished and quilted.

I designed this quilt to be layer cake friendly (despite the fact that I was working from yardage, and that I ended up cutting two of my fabrics on the bias). I look forward to trying it out with a full layer cake for a larger quilt. It was a bit of a puzzle getting the blocks created so they could be set without like fabrics sharing a seam between blocks.

Linking up to ALYoF June Goal Party.