I really HAVE been quilting!

It's been a long time since I posted anything here. I admit... once I finished my grandma's birthday quilt, I had a bit of a lull in my quilting. Still, I haven't been completely idle! I have a few things in the works, but the best news is that I have a FINISH!

This quilt is for my other grandma's birthday:

You remember the Jelly Roll Quilt Along blocks I made earlier... and then I began the Simple Sampler Quilt Along. Well, I ended up combining the two. I didn't get very far in the Jelly Roll one... I think just four blocks. Then I started the Simple Sampler one, noticed the blocks were the same size, and went from there.

When I first saw this fabric at my LQS, I thought of my grandma. She is a critter lover... chickens, frogs, birds, spiders...yep, even spiders. We won't even talk about how many cats they've had. She just loves living things. She also always had lots of plants and loves making her yard look nice. These fabrics reminded me of her. Plus, her eyes are green, and some of the greens in the fabrics reminded me of the color of her eyes.

I was hoping the quilt would turn out nice so that I could give it to her for her birthday. It turned out more whimsical than I imagined, but I really like it. I hope she likes it, too.

On the back, I chose a butterfly pattern, and the binding is a brown dot:


I am especially proud of how I pieced the back. I had to figure out the best way to lay out the pieces of the backing... the quilt is large enough that I would need to sew two pieces together, so I had to decide which direction to have the butterflies "flying". To have them flying up, I needed to sew two long strips of the fabric together... but if I had just sewn them at the selvages, one whole row of butterflies would have looked conjoined at the wings. :) I'm sure more experienced quilters would have figured this out pretty quick, but after thinking about it for a bit, I overlapped the butterflies on the edges as best I could, and then sewed right up the middle of the butterfly bodies. They aren't perfect, but unless you're looking for it, you can hardly see where it's seamed:

Happy birthday, Grandma!
The fabrics in this quilt come from Freebird, Attitude Girls, Essential Dots, Tweet-tweet, and the white for the sashing is LaAmour. It was machine quilted by Stacey G.

What I learned from this quilt:
To carefully consider which direction to press the fabric. Some of the blocks needed that in order to line the seams up right. Same with the sashing. The gal who ran the Simple Sampler quilt-along instructed us to press the seams open. I've been taught to press to the dark side, so I did it that way. It just didn't always work out with some of the blocks and the sashing. I just need to think it through sometimes to make sure that will always work out when it's time to join pieces together.

That's it's okay to be relaxed about it. Once it's quilted and washed, any little mistakes become less noticeable. I enjoyed the process because I was more relaxed.

The binding is slightly wonky on the back along one side because my seam must have been uneven as I went along.

AND... even though I didn't like one of the blocks when I first started, it looks fine in the "big picture" of the quilt. I'm glad I didn't do it over.

I have a few other projects in the works:

These are the first two months of a quilt-along my LQS is doing:

The three blocks were the first month, and the "Grandma's flower garden" is the second month. I really liked making those hexagons and sewing them together by hand! I'm about 1/3 of the way through the third month's blocks right now.

Remember the "I-Spy" quilts I started for the younguns? I have the top of the one for my son done, and haven't made any more progress on my daughter's. I decided to give them to the kidlets for Christmas, so I'll be back to them soon.

I went to another little quilt shop last week with a friend, fully intending to not buy anything. Unfortunately, there was a sample quilt on the wall made from a fabric that had roads all over it... you know, like for little cars to drive on. I decided to make my son a little quilt, since he is starting to like playing with matchbox-type cars. I'll be giving that to him for his birthday next month.

I've been taking classes at the quilt shop, and one of them was how to make Buggy Barn quilts. We made one block in class, so I need to make four more blocks for a Halloween table runner.

And, the other thing I'm working on is finishing up the binding for the PMS/Comfort quilt I started last November. I should have that finished in the next few days, so I'll post a picture of the finished product when I'm done.

I know it's nothing compared to some of the quilters out there, but I'm pretty excited that I have two quilt finishes this year already. :)