WIP Wednesday

It's Thursday, I know, but in deciding which project I was in the mood for today, thought I'd just write about what those choices were!  

First off, I have this fun Ryan McKenna block to work on... "All Cooped Up".  It's a small kit that I bought last year of a block to try.  I love her patterns.  She has a brand new one out called "Dog Park" that looks especially cute...to the dog lover like me!  Anyhoo, I'm gonna try my hand at free motion quilting around the pieces with plans to stretch it on canvas for a small wall hanging.  This piece I started last week...finally!  (Seeing pictures of "Dog Park" sparked my memory of this kit)

And then there is block #8 of the 2013 Designer Mystery Block of the Month hosted by the Fat Quarter Shop.  It's a house called "Heartfelt Home" designed by Polly Minick and Laurie Simpson in Fig Tree's gorgeous reds.  

I decided to put some small borders on the Schnibbles "Clover" that I did a while back, hoping to make it a functional throw.  It's so pretty in the High Street collection.  I got a bright solid yellow for the inner border and a yellow High Street print for the outer border.  This will be a great size for practicing my free motion quilting on my domestic Baby Lock...or who knows, its also a good pattern for straight line quilting.  I'm signed up for an exciting class at Block Therapy for free motion quilting on your domestic machine in February, plus I also purchased a Craftsy class on the same topic some time ago.  Learning to do something besides a meandering stitch is my goal for this year!  

An exciting project that I've gathered fabrics for is a Swoon quilt for my sister-in-law.  She likes greens, yellow and coral, (no blues) with a splash of aqua...so with those colors in mind I've chosen a collection of 18 fat quarters and the background fabric.  It's gonna be interesting to see how well I've chosen my colors to work with the pattern.  I admire Camille Roskelley and love her work and patterns.  It just so happens that the Craftsy class I purchased late last year on Piecing Made Simple by Camille, covers and demostrates the Swoon pattern...an exciting plus!  I've watched up through the cutting of the fat quarters.  

You can probably tell that I got very little sewing done in December, other than making Christmas gifts.  I made zipper pouches for family and friends...super fun!  There was also the fun of getting zipper pulls from Etsy to individualize the pouches.  Wish I had taken pictures of them!  

And one last final big event for me...the sewing of the binding on my barn quilt!  It took me a while to get a photo of it and I'm still not happy with the results, but its done and its totally wonderful!  

I should not miss telling you about the gorgeous quilting on this Barn quilt!  I have a new quilting friend, Kathy Olkowski, "Stitch by "Stitch" who lives in Montana. Kathy does beautiful custom quilting and I totally love what she did to the barns.  The roofs and blocks are awesome ... and I'm sorry my photos don't show you the quilting better.  She hasn't seen the last of my quilts! :-) 

One last note today ... I'm signed up for a class in Sisters, Oregon in July with Julie Herman of Jaybird Quilts!!!  So excited!  

And now its time to feed to feed the dogs...and I think I'm going to begin cutting the background fabric for my Swoon!  

Debbie