The Plan B X & + Quilt is Finished!

I'm so happy with how this turned out. Many of my quilts are "organic" and this one is no exception. Organic means I don't know what I'm doing, but the end result is perfect.  This is the 15th quilt I've finished this year.  The Stay-At-Home order means no travel, no travel means more sewing time.  It's a good trade-off.  I have two trips booked for next year, I'll have to wait to see if they'll actually happen.

May your bobbins always be full,

The Plan B X & Plus Quilt Top

Not bad for just winging it!  I really love how the X & Plus quilt top turned out.  It measures 50x64".

Now to decide on the quilt back.

 

May your bobbins always be full,

It's Labor Day, and I've been laboring

Warning, lots of photos.  These quilts are the result of my Plan B conundrum. You can read about it here.

This is the first quilt, Giant HSTs, that I put binding on, today.

This is the quilt back, and a shot of the loopy quilting.

I used Kona Chartreuse for the binding on both quilts, and inserted a patch of contrast in the binding.

Here's the second quilt, Random Stepping Stones.  Same fabrics, different design.

This photo shows the dragonfly quilting on this quilt.  The binding patch shows up better on this quilt.  I'm pretty much doing this on all my quilts, now.

Here's the back of this quilt.  It's nearly identical to the back of the top quilt.

May your bobbins always be full,

Plan B equals Two tops and Two backs.

The Plan B Quilt conundrum, has been solved.  I decided to use both for quilt tops.  Here are the quilt tops:

And these will be the backs:

We're mid Heatwave, here in SoCal; I dashed out at 6:45, this morning, threw the quilt backs over the rosemary and snapped this.  I used the script-y number fabric from Ikea for the background, and inserted a row of random width strips in the center of each back.  Right now, at 9AM, it's 83 degrees, we're looking at a scorcher of 108°, midday.

Excuse me while I plot a new quilt, and our strategy for staying cool.

May your bobbins always be full,

Plan B Quilt Back or Top!

Would you believe I still have some strip-scraps left?

Would you believe I really considered turning this quilt back into a quilt top?

Both statements are true.  I love the way this turned out.  I'm still pondering creating two quilts.

 My dilemma is, what would I do for the backs!  What do you think, two quilt tops or one of each?

May your bobbins always be full,

Plan B Quilt Top - Finished

Initially, I really mixed up the HSTs; nothing matched.  It was so bad (ugly) that I didn't even take a photo.  Then I spent time putting the groups back together.  With such a variety of fabric, it wasn't easy, but it was so worth it.

So, let me show you the finished Plan B Quilt Top.

This quilt top measures 66" x 66".

It's 80 degrees with a nice breeze, today.

Now, I'm off to stitch up the quilt back.

May your bobbins always be full,

Plan B Quilt Top, next step

For this block, I really recommend pressing your seams open.  This morning I chained stitched all sides of my matched blocks.  The next step is slicing.

Cut all the blocks crosswise, on each diagonal, creating four HSTs from each block.....

Once the HSTs are pressed open, you can see how different they look.  My next step will be to mix the HSTs all up, then stitch them all together.  Wish me luck.

May your bobbins always be full,

Plan B Progress

Remember this hot mess of strips?  I've been really busy strip-piecing them together.  Then I spent some time "trueing" the blocks up to 16.5" square.

Oh, no, I have an uneven number of squares!  I rustled up 8 more strips, now I have l8 blocks.

My next step will be to join two blocks together.  I'm going to lay them crosswise for this next step, sew around all four sides then cut them on the diagonal, both ways.  I'm going for something like this:

pin, source

May your bobbins always be full,

New Project and Fabric Diet

I'm home from NYC, I had a great time.  If you're interested in more photo of NYC, I'll be posting them on my photo blog, Murrieta365.

Fabric Diet Report:  I'm amazed, this is the first time I've come home from NYC without new fabric.  I'm really sticking to the Fabric Diet, only 2 yards of quilting fabric purchased since 12/1/2013!  That's 6 months!  BTW, Bob is starting to feel this is his "fault", it isn't; he told me I could purchase any fabric I want. As if!

Now that the jet lag as dissipated and the laundry is done, I'm ready to hit the sewing machine.  Before I left town I cut all of my remaining 2 1/2" strips, and others that were close, to 17" length.  I had a plan.  Now, the plan has changed, I'm calling this quilt process Plan B.

Here are the strips fanned out, you can see pieces of a lot of collections, plus some were leftover binding pieces.  Now, to the machine!

May your bobbins always be full,