Spring Braid

Woo-hoo, another finished quilt! This is a lap-sized French Braid quilt, adapted from the Baby Braid pattern in the French Braid book. I'm calling it Spring Braid, because the colors seem spring-like, although it's inspired by the hydrangea fabric used in the centers and outer borders, and hydrangeas are really summer flowers. It's the second French Braid quilt I've pieced, but the first to be quilted. I'm trying to work up the nerve to tackle the larger one.

Here's a close-up of some of the quilting. I did wavy lines along each braid strip, with a loop in the little square, and then back down along the same color strip. I did connected spirals in the inner border and sashing. Both were done in King Tut Hieroglyphs.

In the outer border, I used King Tut Lapis Lazuli to stitch this spiral with petals. It hardly shows on the front side, due to the busy print, so I took a picture of it on the back. The bobbin thread was So Fine Brooke, a nice medium blue.

Nine Patch Done!

So finally I got the binding on this done, and threw it in the washer and dryer last week. By the time it was done, it was too dark in the house to get a good picture. But it crinkled up nicely. This is based on the Nine Patch Lattice pattern on the Oh Fransson! blog. I wanted it a little bigger than the pattern, to be more of a true lap size, but I didn't want to make the patches bigger or add another row of blocks. So I made the outside blocks 12-patch rectangles instead of 9-patch squares, and then enlarged the plain blocks accordingly. I think it worked out well, and I'm pleased with it.

Here's the back, with extra blocks. This was also in the pattern, I just had to make sure the back was big enough for the beefed-up front. The solid fabric is the same as on the top, and photographed in the same location, so I'm not sure why the color looks so different. It really is a medium dark gray blue, so somewhere in between these two pictures, at least on my monitor.

And a close-up of a plain block, showing some of the prints, some of the quilting, and how it crinkled up after being washed.

Something Finished

Signposts quilt. The quilting was finished in May or June, but the binding wasn't complete until the end of August. And it took until now to get some pictures. This is twin size, so it doesn't hang over very much on a double bed. (I couldn't find a good place to hang it up for pictures.)  The background is Kona Moss, the posts are Kona Cocoa, the rest is from my stash of solids. The quilting was done with King Tut English Ivy for the leaves surrounding the posts, So Fine Olive for the watery filler, and several shades of rusty reds (from different makers) on the signposts themselves.

The back is a large, modified log cabin:

Hawaiian Punch

I actually finished this quilt in May, in time for Evan's graduation, but didn't want to post it until after I gave it to him. And then of course the cruise and blogging the cruise took up June. This quilt had to be Evan's because he helped me start it. Ten or more years ago, he spent a weekend with me while his parents were both away. He was interested in the colors of my fabric and intriqued by the sewing machine. He helped choose these fabrics from my stash, and then I showed him how to cut strips with the rotary cutter and ruler. He cut several himself before learning how to sew the strips into sets. He was going to get bored with it before sewing all the sets, so after a couple, we cross-cut those and he sewed some of the nine patches.

It all got put away in a box until last year when I unearthed it. I hadn't put in any diagrams or notes, so I had to figure out how many more blocks I could make, what layout would work, and how much was available for borders. I was quite pleased with how it turned out, and it's the first quilt completely quilted on my Avante.

Sunflower Quilt

Finally, a finished quilt! The first completely finished in over a year. I'm figuring out what to do about that.
This is a lap quilt for my aunt Doris, for her 90th birthday. The picture was taken on a bit of an angle, which makes it look more crooked than it actually is.

A close-up of some blocks. I quilted it in an all-over curvy design, and washed and dried it when it was done. I used Quilter's Dream Select batting, which said it could give an 'antique, crinkly' look. And after the wash and dry, it really did crinkle up.