Obnoxious III

Wait a minute!  Where is the posting about Obnoxious III?  I have investigated the situation, and it appears I did not post about Obnoxious III, last November, when I completed it.   I just had sooooo much going on last fall!  I had to glean through my massive collection of photos to find it.  Without further ado, here is the photo of the amazing Obnoxious III quilt:

After I made the red border on this one, is when I decided to put red in the center portion of the next one (Obnoxious IV).  I did actually complete this last November.  The blocks are 5 1/2 " blocks with a back and forth rotation orientation to make the zig-zag effect happen.  It is quite a simplistic design, so pretty quick to assemble, sew, and get finished.

Obnoxious IV

 If you look back on my September 27th post, titled "What's on the Design Wall in September,"  you will see what this was looking like last September.  It is finally completed.  It is very bright, all except the little tree in the lower right-hand corner.  I truly believe it is obnoxious, however, several of the quilters at the meeting last week, were saying, "That's not obnoxious!"  What?!  Are you kidding me?  It is certainly not reserved, glamourous, or sophisticated.  It IS obnoxious and I love it.

I just really had to put that red in there.  I used the black with yellow and orange bursts from the backing on Obnoxious III, and pretty much used up every scrap of it.  I deliberately made sure there was not as much pink in this one as the previous three.  I added the blue and my wonky houses.  The blue and white VFW fabric came along just in time to be the binding on this quilt.  It is like the topping on the cake!

Left Overs Make Eight Point Stars!

Happy June!  The heat is here and I have been busy in the AC.  I have alot of green, brown, and blue fabric left over from making the Crayon Quilt Challenge quilt, so I used some of it to experiment with eight point stars.  I happen to have the Bloc Loc set of flying geese rulers.  I have never used the largest one, so I decided to give that a go.  I made nine blocks using the large flying geese ruler and this is how the quilt turned out.

If you wish to give this a try, I figured out how to 'add a page' to my blog.  Look to the right and you will see the heading "Tutorials".  Click on the Eight Point Star tutorial and see what it is all about.  Not so very hard.  Give it a try and let me know how you do.  See the tips portion, as the half-square triangles border was made using the part you cut off from the flying geese.  Amazing!  

OMG! G is for Goodness!

 OMG!  Did you see the new "Cutting Corners Kits" at Jordan Fabrics???  The demo is amazing!

I don't buy kits, but the demo is amazing! Trust me on this.

Crayon Quilt Challenge

Oh my! I nearly missed posting something in May.  It has been busy. Last September, the quilt group I belong to started a crayon quilt challenge.  We actually met in person at our fearless leader's house, where we social distanced in the back yard and had dinner and show and tell.  Also, a brown paper bag was passed around and we each reached our hands in and pulled out five mystery crayons.  What we did with the crayons was make a quilt with those colors and have done by our May 2021 meeting for a big reveal.  I actually got my quilt done in February and hung on to it for the big reveal.  

Of course it is a snowball quilt with owls in the centers.  As it happens, my colors were brown, green bean green, and three different shades of blue.  I do not have much brown (yuck!) fabric and less green bean green.  So, my pal, A and I went to Joann's first, just to see what we could fine.  She found one fabric that matched one of her crayons.  I found these adorable owls; not exactly green bean green, but if you actually color with the crayons to see your colors, you can color less hard and get something a wee tad lighter.  Then we went to the quilt crossing where they were very helpful with finding us additional fabrics, so they could lighten our wallets.  I found several decent green bean greens for my quilt, along with that amazing blue I used on the corner triangles that pulled my whole quilt together.  The good news is, I did go sorting through my stash and did find some wonderful blues with greens and combination blues, so I did use some of my stash.  After this one went to my favorite long-arm quilter for quilting, I played around with eight-point stars using my left over crayon fabric colors.  I did make a second quilt out of those left-overs.  I think there is enough for two more quilts!  Will it never end?!!!

Spring Bling and an Artful Pillow

I am keeping busy with three big quilt projects, but in between I like to break and do a smaller project. I was asked to make a wall hanging/art quilt for the Nurses Week raffle coming up in May.  I put on my artsy thinking cap and dragged out some of my scraps and grew an art quilt.  Once I got the central part completed it had to rest a few days, until I could decide on the background/border treatment.  I settled on the amazing yellow fabric I bought from VFW website.  Then, I had to think about how to quilt it.  I knew I wanted to use my walking foot and do it myself.  I looked back at my "Greedy" wall-hanging for inspiration.  I stitched in the ditch on most of the center portion and continued repeating parallel lines, and took it on out into the framing area of the piece. 

The cherry blossoms where in full bloom on the tree in our front yard, so I photographed my finished work in that springy location.   Remember you can hover over the photo, then click on it to see it enlarged.  It has bunnies, sheep, bees, butterflies and so much more!

Sometimes I just want to try something I see. I get it done then, I can get back to my bigger projects.  I belong to a club called Mr. B's Preview Pack Club.   Every quarter I get a little packet from Benartex Fabrics which has a news letter called "The Fat Quarterly" and a few 5" X 5" cuts of a new fabric line.  At the end of March, I received my quarterly packet, which had instructions on how to make a 16" pillow cover with the 5" X 5" squares that were included (if you also bought some of the same fabric line for the main color and the backing).  Well,  I have a crap ton of fabric, so I used my own fabric to make this marvelous pillow.  I still have the purple squares, from Benartex, which I am sure I will use at some point.  

You sew the 5X5 squares into half-square triangles, then arrange them in rows of four, to achieve this pattern.  So you sew together sixteen half-square triangles and the pieced part is done!  It was amazingly simple. I used some of the left over fabrics from the Tile Style quilt I made last September-October, so I have gifted this pillow to the owner of the Tile Style quilt.  The top is quilted. After I quilted the top, I surged around the edges, before putting the back pieces on, so it will hold up well in the wash.  Ta-da!

Poker Run Quilt aka Horse Quilt Finally Finished!

This quilt gave me a few headaches, but I have persevered and it is complete. It is the last of the nine UFO's on my list to complete last year.  It was all done, but the binding on December 31, but I had to let it wait a bit longer, because I also had to sew 18 button eyes on it.  But it looks great.  The second one down, on the left, is Old Blue.  In March, actually, I photographed it in front of building 34, at the BVAMC, a historical site, which back in the old days was a horse barn.  It seemed appropriate.

Joe and Gayle are the quilt holders and actual quilt admirers.  If you wish to know more about this quilt, it is mentioned at least three other times on this blog, in past posts.  Or send me a comment, I would love that.