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

I'm back and so soon 😜

 I'm back again with more updates of what's been happening. Since I didn't want to overwhelm my last post, I decided to split it in 2 so here is part 2.

August's color of the month for the RSC is yellow! Since I was on vacation for the first 2 weeks of August, I got started with my yellow button blocks this past week. 

I can't wait to see all these buttons together as I now have quite the stack of button blocks! I'm linking to Scrap Happy Saturday @SO Scrappy

This is the 3rd year that I have participated in the #30daysofimprovqal hosted by @shannonfraserdesigns and Amanda @broadclothstudio. The QAL started on July 30th and we are in the 4th week. Again, I was on vacation for the first 2 weeks but caught up by doing all 3 prompts in one week - stripes, L shapes, and triangles! This week was curves! 

As you can see, this year I am sewing only from my green scrap bin. I will probably make a few more blocks as we arrange and rearrange in Composition Week next week. 

Before my vacation, I pulled out a UFO that I started last year called 'Oh Say Can You Sew' on Facebook. The original quilt pattern called for 1152 - 1 1/2" HST. 

That is where I stopped and put the project bin away.  

After pulling that bin out again, I decided to cut down the size of the finished quilt so I would need to make fewer HSTs to finish. I would only need 648. The quilt will still be a nice size laid out in a 5x7 grid. 

Here is a peek at my current progress. I have all the blocks finished and I'm working on piecing the sashing. All fabrics are from my stash or scraps. 

I think that I can see the light at the end of this tunnel. It is rare for me to put away a quilt that I have started for as long as this one sat. Do you have projects that you give up on? Do you eventually finish them? 

April brings on PINK!

 April! Bring on the PINKS! Angela announced pink for the RSC color for this month. I finally got some  time to pull out my pink scrap bin and start my RSC blocks! Here is my Hang Ten block, all pretty in pink!

The bonus blocks I get from the Hang Ten block are my Squiggle blocks!

I just love pink and gray together. Don't you!

I'm linking to Scrap Happy Saturday @SoScrappy

I also worked on a few more projects! Here are my first 2 Scrap Buster blocks for April. This is a Facebook group.

                      and here is the flimsy for Hands2Help. This year Mari @The Academic Quilter is hosting Hands2Help for Sarah.

Stay tuned for more updates. 

Linking to Finished or Not Friday @AlyciaQuilts and Linky party @Patchwork & Quilts

Last weekend I took a class from Craftymonkies and learned Improv Curves. This was a fun class. Here are the blocks I made in class.

And finally I will show you my March calendar journal. 

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend! It still is not warm here (-30º from last year's temperature). We will still enjoy some family time, Easter egg hunts, Easter baskets, and Easter dinner!