April's Mini

 There's cheater fabric, and I suppose there's also a cheater mini.  Like when you receive several baggies of quilt "parts" from a non-blogging quilter who  decides to rid her stash of some extras.  Sometimes a baggie can hold 23 feet worth of 1-1/2 inch finished HST blocks, another baggie might hold the beginning of a quilt plan cut short.  That would be this mini.

A really nice start, but since I had no particular ideas on how I might want to build on it, and it is a perfect table topper size I decided to just sandwich it after piecing a backing, and get some free motion quilting practice before working on the FMQ stencils on Younger than Springtime, seen in my last post.

This is the backing, pieced from four smaller pieces of a fallish batik.

Happy to be joining in Wendy's Monthly Mini Challenge at The Constant Quilter.  I'll link to her post on Friday.  Please have a look at other quilters' challenge quilts, the ones I've seen so far are wonderful!

It began raining hard late yesterday afternoon, subsided a bit overnight, but today has been a non-stop deluge.  Hubby finally put the rain gauge out around 2:00 this afternoon and after a couple hours we are closing in on 2 inches.  Hard to say what the total has been since last evening, but from the look of our back yard we are no longer in a drought locally.  The photo appears a bit grainy since it was raining so hard, but the water has inundated the rear portion of our yard, the creek is well over its banks. Thankfully it "shouldn't" come much closer to the house as we are on a little rise.  But the unfinished basement will see some water by tomorrow and the sump pump will be making itself useful once again.

Younger Than Springtime - Finished!

 After finishing stitching the last of the binding down last night, I popped this quilt in the wash for its beauty bath.  Today it was sunny when I returned home from quilt ministry so outdoors we went for a few photos.

Loving how soft and spring-like this turned out!

This one gave me no grief whatsoever in the making - probably because I'd made a similar version a couple years ago for donation.  This one will stay with me at least for this summer, I want it on my bed!  Someday it will go to my granddaughter. But maybe not too soon.

The quilting is a mix of big stitch hand quilting and machine free-motion quilting.  The larger square areas between sashings are a machine quilted stencil, and the narrower blocks and borders are hand quilted in a variety of colors of Aurifil 12 wt.  

The backing fabric is a lightweight almost gauze type fabric, giving the quilt a wonderful softness.  I love this backing and would have purchased more if it had been available.  It's been waiting for a special quilt for a couple years now.  

My faithful companion keeping his distance - he was soaking wet from multiple creek-swimming excursions out back.  Temps reached 78 degrees today, what a lovely surprise after snow three days last week.

I'll hopefully be back with a mini later this week, and maybe next week a peek at a not-so-successsful top that was also finished yesterday. Maybe finished isn't quite the right word for it, but you gotta show the bad with the good, right?

In the meantime, happy stitching!

Lady Sings the Blues - a finished quilt top

This quilt began with a box of twelve orphan basket blocks, the rejects after my friend L completed her own quilt made from a kit of Barbara Brackman's Baltimore Blues.  My friend is a perfectionist and these blocks failed to pass muster for several reasons, basket points too close to the edge, a variety of finished sizes, not square, etc.  By themselves they looked pretty bland to my eyes, but the first thing on the agenda was to border them  and then trim them all to the same size.  But the overarching goal was to preserve as many of the basket points as possible in the process.  Believe me when I say there are a LOT of 1/8" seams in this quilt!

So, after a couple days, we had this.  Still a bit bland but getting better, thanks to enough scraps of that delightful blue floral to fussy cut cornerstones for the sashing.

Last week while sorting through some bins of donated fabrics for our quilt ministry I found what to my eyes would be a perfect border to add more fun to this top.  Lucky for me there was one 18 inch wide strip about 76 inches long.  Enough for the side borders.  It just happened to be a drapery fabric from 1986 according to the selvedge, a bit heavier than quilting cotton, but perfectly serviceable.

For top and bottom borders I tried out a serpentine strip of a similar peachy-pink on solid navy blue.  Really wanted to keep that peachy vibe going since it seemed to invigorate the entire quilt.  And tada, a finished top!

The "stained glass" shot

Kitten approved

Not sure what that streak is in the bottom center of these last photos, suspect it's just a shadow cast by a fold in the center. 

I've been smitten with large-scale prints after using this one, actually there are a couple in my stash that have been waiting for years to be used.  I think their waiting days are about to end!  

Hubby brought the little bistro table and two chairs out to the back porch, and this morning it was sunny and over 60 degrees out, warm enough to enjoy my first summer latte on the porch.  Just waiting now for the hummingbirds to return and the flowers to appear!

Happy Wednesday!