Progress

 

I have been working on a couple of projects.  First is the hexagons for the baby quilt.  They are 4" x 4.5" hexagons so I can piece them on the sewing machine.  Definately fiddly and time consuming - but so much faster than hand piecing!

 

 

Piecing the hexagons together.

 

 

Pressing all of those seam allowances - not fun.

 

 

 

 

I got a backing all pieced for the x plus quilt.  As you can see I ended up putting together some scraps used on the front, filled in with some Lilly belle from Bari J (I love this fabric), and finished it out with some solid gray fabric between the pieced areas.

 

Then I got it all layered last week when Kelly was here to help.  I always spray baste when I am going to machine quilt.  It is soooo much faster than pin basting.  I think we had this all together in about 20 min.

 

Quilt all together and ready to quilt.

 

I started quilting along the straight seams of the pluses with my walking foot, 1/4" from the seam.

 

 

This is how it looked after quilting all of the straight lines of the pluses.

 

 

Then I decided to free motion quilt a swirl design in the diagonals of the x's.  It is fairly time consuming, so I have about 6 blocks done so far. 

 

Hopefully I can get more of the free motion done this week :>)

 

Looking forward to May, and hopefully some nice weather.  April here in Indiana was a cold, gray, rainy month, much more so than usual.  In fact, we had 8.59" of rain this April and the most rain ever recorded in the month of April was in 1893 - 8.60" of rain.  So we were 1 tenth off from the record wettest April.  Well, I'm happy to leave this wet month and get to some warmer weather!  Of course once the weather gets nicer I won't want to be inside working on quilts. :>)

 

Hope you have a great week, thanks for stopping by.

 

 

 

 

Fun with X Plus

Just an update on the X plus quilt.  I have been working on it for the last few weeks and really having fun with it.  This is one of the blocks - love the pearl bracelet print. 

Here is a pic of 9 blocks pieced.  As you can see having fun playing with LOTS of fabrics.  Started out using scraps from this quilt below.

 

 

But after just a few blocks I was raiding my stash and coming up with lots more fabrics. 

And here it is almost all 36 blocks.  I was debating on what size to make the quilt.  The block finishes at 10" and this was at 6 blocks by 6 blocks.  But I ended up deciding to add 6 more blocks to make the quilt rectangular so it should end up around 60" x 70".  I love all the fun prints and color of this quilt. 

I was going to try to get the blocks pieced tonight, but not sure that will happen.  Lots of storms, which makes it difficult for me to get to studio which is in an outbuilding. 

 

So check back hopefully I can get it together and ready to quilt by next week. 

 

Linking up with WIP wednesday with http://www.freshlypieced.com/2013/04/wip-wednesday.html

Stashing and Scrapping

Aren't these fabrics so cute?  Pearl Bracelet from Lizzy House, ordered from Sew Mama Sew.  I love these and decided to add to my stash - thinking of course of possible use in a baby quilt.  From the top are Essex yarn dyed in Flax, Crosshatch from Architextures in peach,  pearl bracelet in Persimmon, Watermelon, Peach, Ice skate, Glacier, Citron and Verbena. 

 We have had yet another snow storm - hit on Palm Sunday, and snowed a little all day Monday too,  8" of heavy wet snow.  So tired of the cold and snow and ready for Spring.  I'm thinking the Easter Bunny may need his Snowshoes :>)

Since my studio is in an outbuilding rather than in my house, this meant I had to once again dig out the snow boots and heavy coat to get over to sew. 

 

 

I had been blog surfing the other day and ran across this X Plus quilt.  It was big back in 2011, but somehow I missed it then. Badskirt Amy had a tutorial to make it,   I fell in love with the design and decided to try piecing a few blocks - Ha!  It is addictive.  And you think you are going to use up scraps , but uh, no, not so much. 

I started out doing pretty well with using scraps but then started cutting pieces to go with scraps... but I LOVE how the design is so interesting with the grid and the X's.

I have 12 blocks pieced now and am loving all the fun scrappiness (sorry for the bad photo).  Hope to get more done today. 

Thanks for stopping by, stop back to check on the progress of the X Plus.