A Few Quilty Projects

Our Internet went down last week and so we've had to survive the entire weekend without. At first we were all rather frustrated, but then, oh well, there are always books to read and other things to do! I piddled a bit with my Scrappy Lone Star quilt. The borders were looking a little too simplistic and I wondered about my lame looking efforts.

More work on Scrappy Lone Star

Until I finally put them together with the rest of the quilt. Then I relaxed and went 'okay, this will work just fine'. My expectations are sometimes completely unrealistic and I'm not sure why that is. The letters still need to be stitched down on the bottom border and that will take a special mood. You've heard this before: although I do love words on my quilts, I quite dislike stitching them into place! And I'm still pondering whether or not to add leaves to my vine. Will work that out later I'm sure.

Looking at the border work....

I have really been itching to sew on the machine as well, but sadly, nothing catches my interest of late. So I cut into some random fabrics and just played for an evening. This will probably end up being a back to a quilt, so absolutely no pressure here!

Just playing with fabric....

Also, I started another quilt project last week. Just because. This one just seems to be intriguing me on a whole lot of levels. It will have background fabrics of these {primarily} grayed down cream prints. At first I thought to go buy a single piece of background fabric and then had to reconsider. There is nothing wrong with scrappy backgrounds, and in fact I generally far prefer them for the subtle interest it can add to a quilt.

I am going to be choosing fabric for a new {rough looking} circle every single day for 365 days. It can be one to four fabrics total but mostly I'm choosing fabrics from out of my scrap bin. It will not preclude adding fabrics directly out of the stash because I want to choose fabrics according to the mood of the day--that seems important for this particular project. Depending on my whims, the circle will be just a single fabric or possibly a patchwork style instead. If I don't have time to do the stitching on that day (I'm two circles behind with that already), that's okay. The main thing is to pick out the fabric for each day {or very closely after}, which means I have to be patient and will not be able to jump ahead. I am so very, very curious as to what colors this quilt will be after an entire year!

Project 365: A new quilty endeavor....

 And of course, I had to do some hand quilting late in the evenings. It relaxes me so very much.

And some hand quilting of course....

I'm trying not to get too crazy with the stitching on this quilt as I don't think it will be an extra special quilt to me. Yes I love it, but I don't LOVE it if you know what I mean. The loose echo quilting I'm doing on most of the quilt is coming along very well, slowly adding some wonderful texture. If I think it needs more when I get towards the finish, I can always go back and fill in areas that need help.