Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Post-Vacation Productivity!

I'm back from the beach and happy to be back at my sewing machine. This is a bit of a piecemeal post, showing a couple different projects in progress, and then a giveaway...! And if you're stopping by for the first time, welcome! I'd love it if you left a comment introducing yourself and also followed my blog.

Take a peek at the pieced top of my nautical flag quilt--I'm really happy with how it turned out. To see how I made these strippin' dot blocks, click here.

I'm also linking to Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday and Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday to show off this quilt and solicit some advice. I'm looking for opinions: How do I quilt it? My original thought was to do randomly spaced straight lines, both horizontal and vertical. The white sashing (and the diagonal white strips through the blocks) are only 1/2" finished, so there's not a lot of room to quilt there. What do you think? Please leave a comment and let me know.


Next up, a project that I can only show a sneak peek of. I'm working on a quilt for a new book blog hop toward the end of August. It's a fantastic design--I think you'll like it as much as I do--but it starts out with LOTS of strip sets. I cut 16 fat quarters into various width strips and have been sewing them together. I counted...just to sew the strips into pairs, that's 55 seams! Now I'm joining each set of 2 strips into sets of 4, etc. etc.
And I have to say, all this (kind of) monotonous sewing reminds me of driving through Illinois from south to north. It's a fairly boring drive, all very straight roads through field upon field of corn. Nothing to see. Almost as fun as driving through Nebraska or Kansas. We would always joke that we could put the car on autopilot because the highway was so straight. That's sort of how I feel sewing strips together. Does my sewing machine have an autopilot feature???

Finally, for the giveaway. I can't believe that I've hit 50 posts already, and to celebrate, I'm giving away these fabric bundles from Jane Sassaman's Garden Divas collection.

Click here for details.
Thanks for stopping by! Stay cool!



6 comments:

  1. That is a really neat quilt! What a fun design! I love it!

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  2. Love your nautical flag quilt that is awesome. How to quilt it, lines, I think I would do parallel lines in each block with the lines going a slightly different way in each block (similar to the way the blocks are). However you quilt it, it's an amazing quilt!

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  3. What about a sort of zig zag fashion by following a diagonal path along the white parts starting at top left and zig zagging down and across to the bottom right? Great quilt!

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  4. Love your nautical flags quilt! I'd do irregularly spaced straight lines just one direction. But that's only MHO.
    Great job :o)

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