PLAY top finally finished

As you all may remember, I'm participating in the improv quilt along called PLAY with Elm Street Quilts.  This was a weekly series of prompts including wonky log cabin. wonky stars, curves and strips, and text.  I did get them all done and will be quilting this today and tomorrow.  Hopefully, I'll be able to meet the deadline!

I'm really glad that I participated and have learned lots.....such as hue doesn't equal value in colors, start with enough fabric to finish the project, curves can be fun and my camera really hates lime green!  The washed out yellowish in the center is really a bright lime green about two shades lighter than the other green I used.

The main thing I learned is that I am my own worst enemy!  Second, third, and fourth thoughts are common and thinking back to my pile of unfinished projects that's a running theme.  For the final layout of this project, I did let it sit for a week while I stared at it, rearranged, and thought about starting over with different colors.  Then I let it sit for another week while I thought and rearranged some  more.  It's a good thing there is a time limit or I'd still re rearranging!

Linking with Em's Scrapbag for Moving it Forward Monday........and, of course, Patty at Elm Street Quilts(link above)

Alien Children Finished

These are my finished children.  Each row is 48" and I can't get it all into one photo...at least indoors but it's been raining like mad for the past several days.  I'm happier with them now that they are finished but they do still remind me of aliens!  I'm still undecided about the faces but I haven't been able to get pleasant expressions in the past, so I'm OK with leaving them as is.

For the first row of this Quilt Along, I followed the directions exactly.  The trees and houses went together rapisily and came out well.  For the children's row, I made some changes.  Since I'm using a solid background, not scrappy, I decided to put the children together and eliminate all the seams.  Once I'd finished the school and put it together with the kids, I realized that my scale was off!  I traced the pattern from my computer screen and didn't realize that it was larger than intended.  I'm just telling myself that the kids are marching off to the school in the distance!

I'm still working on the second row....pinwheels and flowers  and am looking forward to seeing what next month's row will be!

Linking with Em's Scrapbag for Moving it Forward Monday (Emily designed this row!) and Oh Scrap at Quilting is more fun than Housework

Little Alien Heads???

This is the beginning of my third row for the In My Neighborhood  row quilt.  This is actually the fourth row to be released, but I've decided not to do the basket one...at least for now.

I was planning on leaving the faces blank, like Amish dolls. but now I'm wondering if that would look too weird.  I was hoping for charming but now all I can see is an ad from one of those TV channels with all the shows about Roswell.  There is a school house that goes between the two panels and I want the children to be holding hands, if my embroidery skills hold up.

Any suggestions???  Hair with no face/ no hair, no face/ complete hair and face  or ????

Linking with Busy Hands quilt for Finished or not Friday

Sunshine-April Mini of the Month

This is my version of  the Sew Can She blog's Mini Quilt of the month.  This one was designed by Jennifer Heynen and is available as a free pattern on Craftsy.  This is the first one that has been an applique quilt instead of pieced which presented some problems.  I don't have a working printer so I traced the templates from my computer screen.  This method worked well for some of the Splendid Sampler blocks as they had the inch scale printed on the pattern and I could enlarge as needed.  There was no scale on this pattern so mine is slightly larger.  It measures 15 x 13 with the binding instead of the 11 inch square of the pattern.  Part of this was intentional on my part as I wanted more of the sun's rays to show.   Overall, I'm happy with it except for the binding.  My skills seem to deteriorate with each quilt!  I'll probably take it off later and resew hoping for better results on the corners.  I did add triangles for hanging and with the heatbond, layers of fabric and batting that was a lot of layers to sew through.

For the fusible, I used Heat n Bond in the red package.  It was after I had the whole thing laid out and ready to sew did I read the section that said not to sew!  Since it didn't bond very well at all, I don't know how they expect a finished project to last.  I used some scraps and tested using a topstitch needle.  My machine sewed it very well and I had no problems.  I quilted with freehand arcs using a gold thread after sewing down all the shapes.

I used a grey fabric for the background so I'm calling this "Sunset".  I'm out of blue sky fabrics.In fact, I'm now out of a lot of basics.  My stash that I thought would last so long now consists of mostly smaller scraps.  Do you buy fabrics for the current project only or do you have a stash?  How do you choose prints to add to your stash?

Linking up with Em's Scrapbag for Moving it Forward Monday  andLove Laugh Quilt

PLAY- Letters & Filler

We are coming to the end of the PLAY series and I still have lots to do.  This was what I had in my last post...

And this is where I'm at today.  Note...the bright pink is the back of a completed quilt.  My rug is currently covered with thread and fabric scraps!

The last prompt was to use text.  Learn seemed appropriate for this quilt.  A long while ago, I had bookmark the site Quilt Abecedary and used it for the directions .  Very clear and easy to make...saved me a ton of time and scraps!

I decided to work on the letters one evening and when I pulled out all the pieces and laid them out, they all blended together!  I now know exactly what people mean when they say they added "sparkle" to their quilt.  Even though the colors stood out in the bright daylight, they all merged together under artificial light or on a grey day. Since I live a couple of miles south of Seattle, there are lots of grey days! I pulled out the rest of my solids and added a darker grey, navy and a darker pink.  It now looks better but I'm still not happy with the blocks across the top.  I still need to add flying geese and a couple more stars.  Most of this isn't sewn together yet so I can work the new colors in evenly.

Linking with Busy Hands Quilts for Finished or not Friday