A Short Tale of Two Quilts

I only had one quilt in mind when I started cutting fabrics ... a contemporary lap quilt with Flying Geese blocks.  After cutting all the 7 1/2 in squares to make the geese, I had a lot more fabric cut than I needed for one quilt.  So voila and ooh-la-la ... a coordinating baby quilt.

Lap on the left, Baby on the right

And just as a side note (because I go off on tangents so easily) the French really do say ooh-la-la with cute little regional variations ... the Parisians say it more ho-la-la.  And the Italians really do say Mama Mia ... I've heard it with my own ears.  Ok, back to quilts ...

A simple white binding

4 different fabrics for the binding
so each corner
is a different color

As per my usual, the Flying Geese quilt was laid out in EQ7.  I played around with having the geese flying in all different directions but decided I liked them flying in formation.

Making Flying Geese blocks is painless and fun when you use the full square method which I first saw years ago when Simply Quilts was still on the air.

Here is a link to '...laugh yourself into Stitches' web site.  She has a great tutorial on the full square method for flying geese.  http://chezstitches.blogspot.com/2011/03/no-waste-flying-geese-tutorial_17.html  Also, checkout Stitches quilting ... some pretty amazing work.

  

Just cuz, I made Hourglass blocks with the remaining 7 1/2 inch squares. I ended up with 4 blocks with the white fabric and didn't like the white randomly placed ... so made a design feature out of them with a Square in a Square block in the middle.  I really like the effect.

' 1/4" mark ' has a great tutorial on easy sew hourglass blocks.  She marks her sewing surface like I do so she doesn't have to mark the center line on each piece she sews ... big time saver.  http://quarterinchmark.blogspot.com/2013/05/tutorial-hourglass-block-without-marking.html 

The back of the lap quilt.

There was one last Flying geese block left so it was incorporated into a strip on the back to give the reverse side something interesting ... and I love not so many scraps left at the end of a project.

Soft tonal fabrics with not much pattern ... love these colors together.

Available in my Etsy shop.

Don't know if anyone will be interested in companion
lap and baby quilts, but thought it might be a nice "Mother and Child" gift for a new mom

.https://www.etsy.com/listing/157783016/summer-sale-10-off-modern-baby-girl?ref=shop_home_active

https://www.etsy.com/listing/157783706/summer-sale-10-off-modern-lap-couch?ref=shop_home_active

Aqua Blue and Lime Green and Two Very Different Quilts

Aqua looks good with just about every color ... but my favorite is with lime green.  I've yet to meet something aqua that I was not immediately drawn to.  My heart's desire is a pair of aqua cowboy boots ... someday, sigh.

The circles quilt I made a couple years ago as a wall hanging in the laundry room to hide the electrical panel.  The walls are a soft soft lime color and the floor is black and white check so it looks really zippy. I'm going to try and make a Christmas wall hanging with lime green and red (same plan as I had last year ... one of these year's anyway).

The chevron zigzag quilt is a girls quilt I just finished for Etsy.  I made the chevrons using a square two-patch method because I wanted the lime green strip a wee bit smaller than the aqua strips ... you don't have the option to vary the widths with the half square or triangle method.

The squares are 6" and the circles are roughly 3" and
the circles are pieced with the freezer paper method.

Anyone who has done their own quilting is familiar with Leah Day's website The Free Motion Quilting Project.  http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.com/

I did the quilting in a 'stream of consciousness' way using several of Leah's patterns.  It was a blast to do!  With the heavy quilting it causes a trapunto effect on the front and I hand quilted around the circles to give them even better definition.

The batting is 100% polyester because I wanted to minimize the puckering since it's a wall hanging.  For the quilts I keep warm with I don't like heavy quilting because it makes the quilt too flat (learned the hard way) and I always strive for just the right amount of wonderful quilty puckering ... it's that quilty puckering that makes a quilt so comforting, and warm.

And back to the other aqua lime quilt ... the back is a wonderful Michael Miller gingham that I got years ago.  I have the same pattern it in pink too. They make a wonderful quilt backs.

The strip is made with the little leftover bits from the zigzags.  I really like pieced backs ... and I really like not having scraps left. There was next to nothing left on this quilt.

While we're on the subject of zigzag quilts, thought I would share my sad story of the blue and white batiks ... indigo bleed.  Augh! This quilt was originally intended to be an Etsy quilt, but that beautiful deep rich indigo batik bled into the white.

Chagrin for me ... but not for my brother and sister-in-law ... it's their new boat quilt.  It'll be a great quilt to have for sitting back deck when the evenings are cool.

I did use 3 color catchers in the wash which I think helped
minimize the bleed, but didn't stop it altogether.

Aqua quilt on my aqua screen door.

Here it is on Etsy ....

https://www.etsy.com/listing/156288053/girls-chevron-zigzag-quilt-baby-toddler?ref=shop_home_active