Happy Mardi Gras Quilt!!

 I finished binding my Mardi Gras Quilt just an hour ago, just in time for Mardi Gras day.  I'm really missing Mardi Gras this year, but at least I now have a fun quilt to hang up on our walls to celebrate in our own way.  I'm also linking up with "Quilt Story"'s Fabric (fat) Tuesday today.  Be sure to check them out!

I decided when I was quilting this that I wanted to try out using tracing paper to transfer a Fleur de lis design to each center square.  I found a design on the internet, sized it appropriately with our printer, which is also a copy machine, so I could enlarge the image.  I then traced it onto paper, pined it on, and sewed along the lines free motion style.  I absolutely LOVE the result!!  I did more free-motion quilting along the other batik prints as well, then did the binding, along with a sleeve on back to hang it with.

I find that as I get better and better at free motion quilting, I have gone from just trying to get a quilt done as fast as possible to not knowing when to stop!  I wanted to do some quilting in the black and white parts, but after doing the Fleur de lis, decided to stop there to keep that in focus.  I can always go back and quilt some more, but I doubt I will.  If anything, I'm tempted to sew on some "bling" in the way of bead crystals, or even rhinestones. Hmmm.

I set up my machine on the kitchen island / counter to do my free-motion quilting, and my family is so incredibly nice about letting me keep it there, but even I'm getting tired of it being there, so I need to make the next few quilts I'm going to do easy and fast.  It's funny how this small wall quilt took more time to make than the queen sized quilt on our bed!  I don't know why I thought a smaller project would take less time LOL!  But I'm so glad it's done, and hope you all have a happy Mardi Gras!  Laissez le bon temps roulez!

Good things come to those who wait, and WIP's

It's Wednesday, so I'm linking up with Freshly Pieced blog's WIP wed party!!

Back in the fall, I started 2 quilts with "That Girl That Quilt-a-long".  One reason I only finished one, is that everything in my stash clashed horribly with the "Bliss Quilt", and I couldn't find a suitable back.  I put it away, planning on finishing it for next Christmas.  Well, sure enough, soon after Christmas, I found a bolt of the Bliss line on clearance at my LQS!!  Yipee!!!!  So of course I bought a few yards, happy that I waited, and that's next on my to-do list.  You can also see my work station in the back ground!

I also have my Mardi Gras Quilt pinned and ready to quilt.  I had this Mardi Gras colored fabric that I had bought about a year ago, also on clearance.  I bought it for another quilt back, but have enough to use on both quilts.

I also used some of the scraps from the Mardi Gras Quilt to make another Kindle cover for my Etsy shop, and made a few more as well.  I bought the Texas Longhorn fabric at a quilt store in the Dallas area when I was there visiting my family in August (ugh... something to think about when I'm freezing here).  But I ran out of velcro, so I included a WIP kindle cover so you can get an idea how I make them.  They're really easy to make, but I do spend a bit of time quilting them to make them special.

Here's a shot of this one this morning when the sun was coming up and shining through our east-facing dining room/kitchen window.  Pretty!

I made my son an ipod cover, complete with glow-in-the-dark thread.  I was going to include a picture of a WIP pair of pants that I made for my son also.  They're all done except for a snap I wanted to put on the waistband, but the local fabric store is sold out of big snaps right now.  But as I was dropping him off at school today I noticed THAT HE WAS WEARING THEM! LOL!  I sure hope they stayed up all day!  I'm getting such a chuckle out of that, and it's the ultimate compliment!  He's been in a "camo" kick for years now, and these pants were of course camo.  So sweet!  Hopefully I'll be able to put a picture up here soon! (still giggling)

Speaking of kids, my kids have scattered all of my big binder clips that I use for layering all of the quit together before pinning it.  I had to buy more today so that I can pin the bigger quilts.  How do you keep kids (and spouses / partners) out of your sewing stuff?  Or how do you get them to return them?

Mardi Gras Quilt

After finishing up my jar quilt last week, I spent the week-end doing something I've put off for a while... sorting all my fabric scraps.  I have enough now to make more than a few quilts if I wanted to.  I dumped them all out into a big pile, then started sorting them by color into some smaller shoe-box sized clear plastic bins.  I had put off the task, but once I got started it was quite satisfying.

Once that was done, I started planning out my next quilt.  I grew up mostly in Louisiana, and this time of year means one thing..... Mardi Gras!!  The 3 colors that represent Mardi Gras are purple, yellow, and green.  Some say that the colors represent justice (purple), peace or faith (green), and power (yellow, or gold).  Louisiana State University took the purple and yellow as their school colors, while my Alma mater, Tulane University (which used to be the University of Louisiana) adopted the green, (as well as light blue).  I had plenty of scraps of each color, and added white and black to make up a traditional "king's crown" block.  I used a pattern out of the book, "More Quilts From The Quiltmaker's Gift".  I'm so delighted at the result.  I hope to get borders on it and get it quilted up this week-end.  Then I hope to get another quilt finished before starting something else...

Unfortunately, our ISP has been causing us much trouble lately, and half the time I can't even check email.  It's made blogging and many other things increasingly frustrating.  They said they'd have it fixed by today, but this has been going on for weeks now, so I'm not counting on much.  They are the only high speed Internet in the area, so if we have to switch, I may be on here much less :-(.  I'll keep you posted...

Hope you have a great week-end!!