Finishing Up and Starting Something New, The Ongoing Cycle

Things have been pretty slow around here in regards to quilting. We jaunted off to Portland over the weekend to attend a friends wedding and I ended up doing a lot of the driving. Which means of course, no time with the hand work because we're always busy after we arrive at our destination!

Happy Flowers ready for binding

It's already been the year for weddings with our friends and family and still one more left on the schedule for August. I'm starting to think in terms of, either gift, or money in the boot, but not both! It's starting to cut into my quilting money.*wink

I have had very little motivation since returning, but I did manage to finish up the hand quilting on my Happy Flowers quilt. Wowsers, has that quilt been in the hoop for a long time considering how small the quilt is! I picked out all the cherry red binding from my leftovers tote and had enough for half the binding length. The rest came from my stash as I did not want to go shopping for fabric right now.

A new project...

I've been considering this 'Pleasantville' quilt from the book 'Making Quilts with Kathy Doughty' for some time now. I have dithered a lot over actually starting it because the twirly ball blocks have to be cut out from templates. Ughh.. I do so hate drawing them onto the fabric and then having to oh-so-carefully cut them out. Much better to cut out using a rotary cutter and ruler! First I am going to try sewing them on the machine and then if that doesn't work out, I may switch to hand sewing. 

The quilt will not be made in the correct order of sequence because I really need to find out if the twirly ball blocks are even manageable before I progress with the rest of the quilt. Honestly, I am terrible about following directions and it's been a long time since I've seriously planned on even attempting to make a quilt directly from a pattern! Which I'm not. Just parts of it. I've already decided to change a few things just in fabric choices! The layout will probably be the same though and that's where I'll really have to focus and try to get things cut out just right so as not to waste or ruin fabric. If I remember right, some of the Kathy Doughty patterns have been a bit confusing for me to follow along with...

A Little Scraptastic Tuesday Quilt

What do you get for a little girls birthday when you're pretty sure she has everything? Usually I buy things like books and age appropriate puzzles or games. This time I decided to make a little doll quilt.

A little doll quilt in the making

I rummaged around in the orphan totes looking for something to start with. Bingo! Love these leftover little cowgirl squares. Four {sort of} scrappy 4-patches later and we have a quilt top ready to sandwich and pin!

Keeping with the leftover theme, I dug through my scrappy bits of binding to see if there was something there that might work well with the colors in the quilt. Yep! Anyone who hasn't already started hanging onto their leftover binding pieces should really start now. Sometimes people even give me their leftover binding lengths because I just can't stand for them to be thrown away! They are absolutely perfect for scrappy, fast, and/or miniature quilts.

Scrappy {leftover} binding totes

This particular binding was given to me about 5 years ago when my mom changed her mind about what fabric she wanted to use with a specific quilt. Who says there's a 'use by date' on binding?*wink

Ready to hand sew the binding...

So now I have a little doll quilt ready to hand sew the binding onto the back. I think the tension problems from switching out the thread on my machine took longer to fix than anything else in putting this quilt together. I'm hoping to buy a couple tiny baby bottles to put with the quilt and wallah!, my niece can have a little fun rocking her baby dolls and stuffed animals to sleep.

Linking up with Scraptastic Tuesday with Leanne and Nicky. Always a pleasure to see scrappy goodness going on all over blogland!