A couple of finishes and work in progress

 I have been working on a quilt for a friend of our family. Their oldest son graduated from HS last year. I made t-shirt quilts for both of his cousins but he didn't have  enough t-shirts saved. I debated over what I should make and I decided to make a quilt around the years that he played hockey. After requesting pictures from his parents, I finally got started on the quilt. I never worked with photo transfer fabric before so I did some research and decided to use EQ fabric for Inkjet printers. 

The pictures I wanted to include in the quilt were to be 8.5" square, the width of the transfer fabric. The problem is that each individual sheet was 11" in height. That would mean the waste would be about 3" per sheet. I then discovered that EQ made a inkjet fabric continuous roll so you could cut the size you needed. 

My daughter helped me with setting up my printer to accept a 8.5" x 8.5" size paper. I crop the pictures to 8.5" square and following the directions, I was able to print the photos. This worked really well. 

Next I worked on figuring out the layout for the quilt. I had pieced his last name and centered it on the top portion of the quilt. I also pieced the 2 numbers he wore on his uniform over the years. I put them on either side of his name. 

I used the green, white and black team colors and tried to make the quilt look a bit like the jersey. 

I do like the way the quilt turned out. I did have some issue with the loose dye from the green fabric adhering to the photo transfer fabric. Yes, I did prewash the fabrics and used several color catchers. You can see that the green did not bleed into the white except in the photos. I did soak the quilt in Dawn to try and get more of the dye out but it must be the treated fabric that is allowing the dye to adhere to the photos. At least the faces are not green and for the most part it is only the background.  

Another project I've been working on is more blocks of the Cindy Grisdela quilt I showed in my last post. I added more blocks and put the top together. 

This will finish at 36" x 48" unless I decide to put on some borders.

 

I'm excited to show you the Improv ABC quilt that I made following the technique of @NicholasBall. I took a class with @craftymonkies to learn his technique. I thought that it would come in handy for a quilt with just words. 
I had most of the letters and some of the punctuation marks finished by the end of the class. I decided to hand stitch this quilt. That took a bit of time since I could only do 2-3 letters at a time. 

I added a facing to finish this quilt. 

This quilt will hang in my sewing room to use as a reference to making other letters! I need to add the label, a hanging sleeve and I probably go back and do some more big stitch quilting in the larger negative space. 

That's all for now! I need to work on my RSC block for May and get ready for my quilt retreat in June! 

A new month, a new color and some finishes!

 April's color is Yellow and I have made my Circle of Friends block for the RSC!

I also took a video class by Cindy Grisdela to learn her technique for scrappy curves. They are fun to make. She uses one print fabric and 3 coordinating solids in each block. I'm again using older fabric left over from a quilt I made in 2007 called French Roses.  

Here are the blocks I have finished. 
(I think I have made 2 more sets after this picture was taken)

I have 2 finishes! One is a micro mini quilt. If you follow me on Instagram, you saw that I went down a rabbit hole while looking on Pinterest for small projects. It is definitely a learning process to get your points to match when the pieces are so small but it was fun yet challenging! The tutorial is @jamiemswansonquilts if you want to try!

The second finish actually has been finished for a week or so. After it was quilted, I decided that I would stretch it over a frame. I asked my hubby if he would make me one (he made one previously for my Organic Shapes quilt here.) He said to give him the dimensions. I measured the unfinished quilt and gave him the dimensions. He made the frame and gave it to me, that's when I realized I didn't take off the seam allowances so it was .25" to large all the way around. I asked him if he could fix it or make a new frame (saving this one for another quilt). My good hubby said that he could rip .25" from each side but that it may have to wait a bit. I went ahead and made the facing strip that is used to stretch over the frame, then waited for my good hubby to correct my mistake! But now it is completely DONE!

My friend's beautiful magnolia tree

stretched over the wooden frame

among spring flowers

Linking to Finished or Not Friday @AlyciaQuilts, ScrapHappySaturday @SoScrappy, Off the Wall Friday @Creations..., and Linky Party @Patchwork and Quilts, TGIFF @KatieMaeQuilts, Wednesday Wait Loss @TheInquiringQuilter