A Doll Quilt, a Giveaway and Progress on the 6in6in2018

I had determined to make my granddaughter a doll quilt for Christmas this year. Several fabric pulls later and I was almost gagging over the sweetness of everything chosen. I have so few conversation prints and things were looking a wee bit grim. Then Linda's post popped up and that's all it took. That centerpiece....

The doll quilt top is completed! 32" square, made
for use with a 'My Life' doll

So I went digging through the stash totes, trying to find what looked to be the perfect start to a simple doll quilt. I knew I had one of these somewhere and what do you know, it totally fits the bill of being sweet, girly and yet, super easy to add bright, sassy colors to! You can see from the pic below that the original fabric pull had a green fabric that ultimately did not look very good. Sometimes I take that I-love-clash-in-my-quilts a little too far, even for me!

The first scrappy audition didn't work out so well....

It took me awhile to stumble upon the perfect fabric to add into the quilt. One that wouldn't just make a scrappy, mushy mess. {See the blue print I exchanged for the green in the quilt pic below.} That oddball blue fabric really surprised me, but when something works, why bother arguing! I figured out pretty quickly that three repeats weren't going to be enough and cut another square. Yep. That did it.  Everything just sort of locked into place. I apologize for the murky pictures, but as I was working through the late afternoon into early evening, the light just got worse and worse. And you know me, no way would I ever stop working on a quilt just so that I could a great looking picture!

When they sell this particular panel, it comes in a 41-42" length as per usual when it comes to fabric. The panel repeat itself is only about 14" square though, and that makes for one extra 'usable' panel and also a bit of waste as the remaining panel ends up being cut off at a weird spot. {I also prewash and dry my fabric, thus a bit of shrinkage!} Since this has been such a fast, fun little project, I'd like to offer my remaining panel to one of the readers of this blog!  Wanna try your hand at playing with one of these?

If you are at all interested in winning this panel, just let me know in a comment below, and I'll draw a winner sometime next week. If you can't leave a comment for whatever reason, just email me at audkateaster at gmail dot com and I'll enter you into the drawing with all the other names. Also, please, please leave your email address within the comment if you might possibly be a no-reply commentor. Blogger is being fickle again and I don't have all your email addresses readily available!

For those of you who are perfectionists {you know who you are!}, please be aware that this panel is not going to be 'perfectly' centered without chopping off some of the edges of the flower motif. My panel happened to be cut very narrow when I bought it--as you can see if you look closely at the pictures. Not a problem for me, but perhaps could be an intensely annoying issue for you! I will also try to ship to an international address, but not if the cost ends up being prohibitive. Just saying....

A little bit of deep stash digging and a better fabric was found.

Okay, enough of that business. Time for checking in with progress on the 6in6in2018. Honestly, it's  been a little haphazard around here. The thing is, I'm actually feeling pretty good about the total years accumulation. Yeah, about that. Would you believe that all Six of the older quilt projects on the list have been finished up or at the very least moved way down the road toward total completion?

Basket Medallion a 2018 finish!

The Basket Medallion quilt has finally made it to the finish line.*whew....  I really had to grit my teeth and dig in to stay motivated. Such a tough quilt for me to work on. I made the very last stitch in the binding just last night, so I even made good with my determination to finish up by the end of November. Yay!  But now it needs washed and dried so I can take some good pictures to show you. It's not an unlovable quilt. Not at all! It just happens to be a style or color palette that I've sort of outgrown or burnt out on? Or something. The X border is my favorite part of the whole quilt. Love that! And the binding ended up being the perfect touch. An older, reproduction style print that needed used up and was exactly the colors I was looking for. Win, win.

Cream quarter circle orphan units made into something interesting.

The only other 'need-to' work on project for the 6in6 list was the blocks above. Early in the year, I had put these leftover cream quarter circle units on the list. Just for a challenge. Slowly, slowly I have hand stitched all the bits and pieces together. And now, these chunky, naive looking, New York beauty blocks are emerging right before my eyes. Just like I imagined in my head. Loving these blocks so much! Now I'm crossing my fingers they will look as good together as I desperately want them too. 

39 blocks sewn together out of 64! And all that's left to stitch down are the yellow/gold arcs, so things are moving fairly quickly. When I sit down to stitch, I can complete about five {or more} an hour and it's absolutely stress free. No awkward, deep dive curves {or precise, tidy corners} which makes me so, very, very happy! This project won't actually be a completed quilt top by the end of 2018, but if these blocks all make it to a finish, then that's something to feel really good about too. Off to check out the 6in6in2018 November linkup over at Meredithe's! So glad I went ahead and stuck with this challenge throughout the year. Always good to see real, steady progress!