Free Motion Mavericks - Week 323 - Colour Matching

Dull light doesn't show these colours off to best advantage, but these fabrics have got my enthusiasm going for the next quilt top.  Poking around in the stash has been entertaining, finding pieces I had forgotten about, old favourites and others I have never used before.  The elephants are going to be the centrepiece of the next piecing project, combined with shades of brown, purple, mauve and turquoise.  After putting off making quilts for so long, I am now enjoying myself working with all the wonderful colours.  

I have calculated that I probably have enough fabric in the house to keep me going until I am 96, so I need to try and stay in the habit of keeping my projects ticking.  As usual, I am making things in batches, because one quilt top gives me an idea for the next, so I end up making four in a row.  Will it be five?  We shall see.

Here goes for Week 323 :-

Many thanks to Gail for linking up last time with her mystery quilt.  If you haven't seen her blog post yet, nip over now and see more.

 

If you have no free motion quilting to show, feel free to link up and show any project you like.  Here are the usual rules, but feel free to ignore them.  To keep the original emphasis, however, preference will be given to free motion quilting when featuring projects from the previous week.

If you love free motion quilting, whether you are a beginner just taking the plunge, or you have reached the stage where you can do ostrich feathers with your eyes shut and still achieve perfect symmetry, then please link up.

Remember, FMQ is FMQ, whether your machine was made last week, or it is older than your granny.

Here are the very easy and slightly elastic rules:-

1.  Link up with any recent post, ideally from the last week but within the last month, which features a free motion quilting project, whether it is a work in progress or a finish.

2.  Link back to this post in your own post.

3.  Visit as many of the other participants as possible and say hello in the comments box.

4.  The link up will remain open for five days, from midnight to midnight GMT for the long weekend, Friday to Tuesday.

So far quilters from the USA, England, Wales, Australia, Canada, Germany, Holland, New Zealand, France, Macau, Russia, Ireland, Brazil and Sweden have taken part.  The 

first participant from each new country will get a special mention the following week.

Piecing Quilt Tops

Easy piecing is the name of the game at the moment.  This is the third top I have put together in the past couple of weeks, and even though it is simply a central panel framed by strips, it took me ages.  I am seriously out of practice.

I started by fishing out the scooters fabric from the stash.  I have made a quilt before in this fabric in a different colourway, and enjoyed combining all the pinks, greys and browns to make a really girly quilt.  This time I wanted to make a baby boy quilt, and the first day I rummaged around for scraps to match I managed to pull out all the wrong colours.  The solution was to leave it to the next day.  The following morning I decided to use up the very last of some fabrics I have used in the past.  The bold red spots come from a tiny piece of fabric that I cut into two and put on either side of the scooters.  Because I used lots of last scraps, making this top was a fiddly business that stretched over about four days.

Now that I have three tops made, I am tempted to make a couple more before I actually start quilting.  It is a great excuse to just carry on playing with colour before I get down to the serious business of making all the quilt sandwiches.

Also, I am aiming to plant this year's crop of potatoes next week.  My routine at the moment is sewing in the morning, and digging for the last couple of hours in the late afternoon before sunset.  Colourful piecing is ideal therapy before the hard work outside.

Free Motion Mavericks - Week 321 - Piecing Again

 

Got to get going again somehow, so what better way is there? The strips of squares were sitting patiently in a box, waiting for me to pick them up and make them into something, so today I finally settled down at the machine and started sewing.  Inspiration has deserted me for months, so rather than try and think up a grand new departure, I decided to piece a top for a cradle quilt, which I can practically do on auto-pilot.  Once I have started, I am sure ideas for new projects will come flooding in.

Life has been a bit busy recently.  We have had unusually dry weather for a couple of weeks, so I have been out digging the potato patch so I can plant the spuds at the end of this month.  I am determined to do better than last year, when they went in almost a month late.  Now the wind has changed direction, and we have wild wet weather blowing in from the Atlantic, excellent for staying in and getting on with sewing. 

I had an entertaining few messages back and forth with Andrée last week.  She sent me pictures of 9ft deep snow, I replied with pictures of a green hill and sunshine, and it was several hours later that I realised she was telling me I hadn't done the linky.  Not knowing what day it is is old hat.  I didn't even know what week it was.  So, without further ado, and with apologies for being a week late, here goes for week 321...

Many thanks to Rebecca Grace for linking up last time with her February Christmas sweets quilt - made me feel a whole lot better about losing a week in a time warp.  If you haven't seen her blog post yet, nip over now and see more.

 

If you have no free motion quilting to show, feel free to link up and show any project you like.  Here are the usual rules, but feel free to ignore them.  To keep the original emphasis, however, preference will be given to free motion quilting when featuring projects from the previous week.

If you love free motion quilting, whether you are a beginner just taking the plunge, or you have reached the stage where you can do ostrich feathers with your eyes shut and still achieve perfect symmetry, then please link up.

Remember, FMQ is FMQ, whether your machine was made last week, or it is older than your granny.

Here are the very easy and slightly elastic rules:-

1.  Link up with any recent post, ideally from the last week but within the last month, which features a free motion quilting project, whether it is a work in progress or a finish.

2.  Link back to this post in your own post.

3.  Visit as many of the other participants as possible and say hello in the comments box.

4.  The link up will remain open for five days, from midnight to midnight GMT for the long weekend, Friday to Tuesday.

So far quilters from the USA, England, Wales, Australia, Canada, Germany, Holland, New Zealand, France, Macau, Russia, Ireland, Brazil and Sweden have taken part.  The 

first participant from each new country will get a special mention the following week.

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