Whoops

First I told you with big fanfare that my Apple Owl Quilt was pretty much finished, and then I never showed it to you, geesh! (at least I couldn't find it in the posts :)


I've been sleeping under this quilt for a couple of weeks now and it's lovely! I just enjoy the colours so much, they're mild, for want of a better expression, or maybe soothing expresses my feeling better...


Spirals galore!!!


Another finish - makes me happy happy happy :c) My UFO pile is decreasing every week!

And here once more, with a different perspective and some scale (thanks to the lovely quilt guild ladies for holding up the quilt!):

Apples and Owls

I had been trying to decide how to quilt my apple-owl-9-patch quilt for a long time... I pieced it last July, finished the backing in November later and since then it's just been getting used to its folded-up state in the cupboard.


After reading some free-motion quilting blogs, I felt a pressure to NOT do an overall pattern but quilt something matching the 'vibe' of the quilt. Well, the vibe of a 9-patch is pretty edgy, and after all the nightmares of small square-quilting on the spring quilt, I was definitely going for curves.

I don't like stopping and starting and dealing with all the thread ends very much, so what does that leave me with? An overall design :)


Last night, I looked at this quilt, felt a big wave of "JUST DO IT" attitude coming up and quilted half the quilt with big spirals, just like I did on the brown and turquoise quilt at new year's.
I did the other half this morning, sewed on the binding that's been ready since last summer as well, hit a minor snag when I realized I had miscalculated the length of the binding by 7.5" - check out the gap in the picture below:


But I fixed that and am now half-way done sewing down the binding on the back. This quilt will be ready this weekend, yeee-haaaa! It feels gooooood! I haven't finished a big quilt in quite a while... they're all "almost ready" - not quite the satisfaction feeling I get from actually putting the last stitch in :)

Another One Ready To Quilt

Last night, I had the urge to just DO something quilting-related, get something done! So I basted away (and had to cut a few destroyed nails off afterwards ;)

I don't think you've actually seen a photo of the finished Apple Owl Quilt yet, since I had run out of the border fabric in the summer...

Here it is - I love it and am just brain-storming on how to quilt it...

Apples and Owls

I've had a backing ready for my apple and owl quilt for a few months now, but have dragged my heels quilting it.


The reason was probably that the backing was just plain blue, boring!

So I pulled out some fabrics from my stash, a bit like a mad-woman - I was really on fire that evening ;) - and mixed and matched until I came up with this - much happier now!


So Apples and Owls 9-patch is still a UFO, but slightly less though :)

Apple Owl Quilt

Another recent fabric purchase were the half yard cuts of 4 prints of Timeless Treasures Apple fabric. I decided on a 9-patch baby quilt, since everyone seems to be blogging about 9-patches these days, thanks without doubt to AmandaJean :)

My proudest moment was when I selected and cut out all the fabric needed for this quilt except the backing. I felt like I had a quilt kit in my hand, zoom zoom, done!


Thanks to my enormous fabric purchases earlier this year, I have all kinds of solid fabrics in my stash and felt like I was in a fabric store, wandering around with the Apple fabrics and matching the solids to the prints.


The green leafy fabric will be the binding, and the grey-beige the sashing.

And while that plan stayed the same, I quickly decided from looking more and more at the fabric and how cute it is, that I wanted a big quilt with it. If I had made the baby quilt first, I wouldn't have had enough fabric left over...

So, I went back to cutting, and then started making 9 patches...

Making a big quilt had the advantage that I could strip piece more of the 9 patches! 3 strips per fabric pair gave me 8 9-patch blocks, and since I had 4 fabric pairs, that got me up to 32 blocks. I made 3 extra for a 5x7 block layout.


Originally, I had planned 1.5" inner sashing and 2.5" outer sashing, but with only 5x7 blocks, I needed a bit more width, so rather than using more blocks, I made all the sashing 2.5" wide.

Here are the 4 fabric pairs showcased:


I love the owls!



By cutting along the selvage, I managed to get strips long enough for the width of the quilt.


I pieced the outer sashing for the length of the quilts, and am in the process of adding a pieced border out of the left over pieces of apple/owl fabric I had from strip-piecing.


This is how far I've gotten in 3 days, gosh, it feels good to make progress like this! I have the top and bottom pieced strip ready, then there'll be another sashing border, I'll probably use the 2" strips I already cut, because I'm getting low on this particular fabric, and the it's time for binding. Oh, and a backing.

Does anyone else have a hard time picking out backing fabric???

I always try to match the backing to the front, though I see many of you don't, and it still looks great.

Also, I think of quilt backs purely as a necessity to hold the batting in, I look at the top, not at the back, so I don't want to use pretty fabric that I might want to use on a quilt top some day... very tricky!

Any tips and tricks how to overcome this backing-block? :)