Christmas in July/August

Before

and after

I love trip quilts...it's always so much fun to see how the colors blend and form the pattern.  This is for my version of the Santa's Trip from the 12 Days of Christmas in July Blog Hop. I'm very slowly working on it....Sarah gave a very good  plan to complete this quilt in the 12 days but I've fallen behind this past week...other distractions got in the way.  Maybe this coming week will be better....only three more panels to cut and stitch.

Most of these fabrics are from my stash and are not actually Christmas fabrics at all.  When I went through my stash and pulled holiday fabrics, I found that most of them were smaller pieces, so I went with color and pulled red and green.  A quick trip to JoAnn's gave me a couple seasonal fabrics to add in.  Much more fun than the plain white I was thinking of.



Linking up LoveLaugh Quilt  for Monday Making

Improv PeaPatch Finished

I realized after my last post that I had sewed some of this together backwards and also left out a piece!  Now that our weather is back to normal, I took some of it apart and put it back together.  I used this to practice my circular quilting...still need more practice..and to test out the power and some stitches on my new sewing machine.  It's my third machine in two months and it's working reasonably well for it's size and cost, so it will be a keeper unlike the previous models.

It's called Improv PeaPatch after a gardening program here that I took part in about 35 years ago when it first started here in town.  For a small price, you could rent a 10 x 20 foot patch of ground and garden.  Lots of families and kids working on their plots so the rows weren't very straight and all the crops were mixed together...one couple grew nothing but dahlias!  Very pretty.  I don't now if it's still going on and later it got quite expensive and very regimented but it was fun in the early years.

This is one panel of my Santa's Trip quilt. I've got two and a half panels done, so only one and a half to go.  I'm hoping that I'll have enough cut and put back together by Friday so I can see how the little squares will look.

Linking with Em's Scrapbag for Moving it Forward Monday and LoveLaughQuilt for Monday Making

Stripes!

I saw the notice of the Improv Stripes Quilt Along on The Quilter's Table blog and decided it might be fun to try even though it takes place mostly on Instagram.  After a couple of days, this is what I have.  I think the lump in the middle is a weed...it doesn't show up on my floor.  I'm now trying to decide how to finish it with quilting and binding.

I have several projects going on that need completing, such as my Bear Paw, the Santa trip around the world quilt, and the fences from the In My Neighborhood row quilt, so why start a new project?  The answer is simple...this one required little ironing!  We are now going into our second week of temps in the high 90's F and I don't have air conditioning.  My cat, Licorice, has hated the fan for the past several years and now is actually sitting about five feet in front of it and getting her fur blown!  That's hot!.

One panel of my Santa's Trip quilt from the 12 Days of Christmas blog hop is now finished and I do hope to complete the three other panels in the next couple of days.

The Second Six Months (Quilty 365)

Looking at all my circles, July seems to have been a pretty dull month.  Lots of pastels trying to forget the heat, reds when the heat got the better of me and a small piece of Japanese bamboo fabric.  I did get some navy blue stars for Independence Day.  The zigzag  fabric was new for an experiment but turned out to be so poorly printed that the lines wouldn't align.  The rest of the piece will probably be popping up in small bits for the next several years!

In my last two posts, I explained that the first six months of circles are now being made into a quilt because of the size consideration.  It's 48" x 60" before any borders.  I don't think that I could handle a quilt double that size.  So now what do I want to do with the next six months?  I haven't put them on squares yet because I think I want to go in a different direction.

Clamshells, maybe?

or flowers

or tightly laid out on the backing fabric with diamonds showing?

All of these were just quickly laid out.  Any other suggestions or comments?

Linking up with Daisy and Jack