A Finish and More Progress on the Applique Baskets

Playing With Scale is totally completed now! It was one of those Adhoc. Improv. challenges that really stretched the brain waves. In a perfectly relaxed sort of way of course....

Playing With Scale a finished quilt!

It's probably not something you see all the time out there on the Net, these colors and prints combined with the free-cut strips, but I find it ridiculously charming all the same. People who stick with solid colors just don't know what they're missing!

So glad I added the flower into the mix

The {oh-so-obvious} different widths of the free-cut strips are especially appealing to me. Must be part of the old fashioned, utility quilt look that consistently seems to melt my heart.

Interesting to have a graphic look with these subdued fabrics.

I had determined that this one was going to be machine quilted and then at the last second, dumped it into the hoop instead. There was this very real fear of massive puckering from those feed dogs pushing and pressing the off grain strips.

Loving the hand quilting texture

I am so, so glad as the hand quilting bumps it up a notch in my opinion. Plus, this one was a breeze to hand quilt which means it's full of all kinds of feel good vibes.

A snugly looking quilt!

The color palette is not one that I'm instantly drawn to or even have to return to again. Nevertheless, it filled the need of helping to empty out the stash totes of some lingering, but very good fabrics.You know how it goes when fabrics aren't being used up fast enough and before you can even blink, there are newer, shinier fabrics flirting with you instead.

So many different shades of green...

I wondered about the amount of hand quilting. Is it enough? Was I cheating the quilt? And then when the quilt was flipped over and I could see all the stitching on the back, it was totally fine. Big sigh. I want the backs to look 'full', not have large pockets of un-stitched areas.

Always interesting to see the back...

It was tough to get really good pictures of this one. The pale pink fabrics sewn next to the black and very dark brown fabrics wanted to wash out and tended to look white in all the pics, no matter which filter I tried. They aren't. Every single fabric in those areas is a very, very pale pink. The lightest colors have been intriguing me lately and it's always such an interesting challenge to try and make the most of their subtlety. Always so much to learn!

When the centerpiece isn't centered at all...

The first thing I did when finally getting back in the quilt room was to make a new stack of fabric. The yellow/gold stash tote has been overflowing for much too long and so I started there. Had myself an amazingly relaxing evening picking and choosing fabrics that tickled my fancy. Big surprise on the colors that ended up being picked to be added in! Somehow I always end up with this particular blend of colors though I find these quilts hard to give away. Not everyone enjoys a predominantly yellow quilt. Why? I need answers to this important questions! lol

A new stack of goodness

Instead of doing much hand quilting this week, I've been working on the applique for these sweet little baskets. They are approximately 7 1/2" inches but will be a 12 1/2" block when the cheddar hsts are added onto them.

Sweet Tart Baskets all lined up...

As you can see, all the baskets are slightly different as far as placement. I don't think it's very obvious and I wouldn't care anyway. The 'eyeball' placement is what I do best and an attempt at anything else just drives me insane. Completely ruins the enjoyment of the quilting process and so then I just quit sewing, which of course interferes with my ability to get anything done!

Hope this works the way I want it too!

The middle fabric is super sweet, but looking a little bit spotty from a distance. Oh well. Most quilts around here are used, not hung up on a wall to be admired. All 126 hst units have been trimmed up now and so hopefully there will be time to get the basket blocks all sewn up and ready to go. It's always a dilemma, isn't it? Catch up on the blog or spend time in the quilting room....