April Showers {Finished C2C Quilt}

After getting this back two years ago, it sitting on a shelf (and then getting moved!) for 18 months, finally getting the final border added, and sending it off for quilting, my first Coast to Coast Traveling quilt is finally, finally finished!

This was the first quilt that I sent out and received back in our Coast to Coast Traveling Bee group (C2C). I originally made the lone star center and scrappy first border, and then my group members made all of the subsequent borders of this medallion-style quilt, and I finally added the last border this winter after our move.

While in my dreams I would have loved to custom quilt this baby from the center out with fancy flourishes and creative curls, I knew that with as many quilts as I have waiting to be quilted and with the size of this quilt, it would be a better choice to be sent off to the long arm quilter.

The quilting motif is a rose motif that I've had done on a number of different quilts. The backing is an extra wide teal dot print. For the binding, I was set on using red originally, but I found this super cute pear print from the Vintage Picnic line on sale at the quilt shop this weekend and thought it was just darling.

It is so wonderful to have this quilt finished -- it's been laid upon the guest room bed (seen below) and is a great accent for the very red room!

Quilt stats:
Name: April Showers Medallion
Pattern: None, blocks chosen by members of my bee and added in the medallion style
Fabrics: A layer cake of Bonnie and Camille's April Showers line; grey and white solids; additional fabrics added in by my bee mates in coordinating fabrics
Quilting: Pantograph roses
Size: approximately 85" square
Started: January 2017
Finished: July 2019
Future: Bed quilt to keep for myself

Sharing at What I Made Monday, Let's Bee Social, and Needle and Thread Thursday! And Brag About Your Beauties, too!

Too Hot To Trot {Literally}

Depending on where in the world you live, you might have spent your weekend similar to me: being outside as little as possible and avoiding the awful, oppressive heat and counting down the hours until the cool front moved in.

Saturday I had to make a quick trip down to the quilt shop to drop off quilts for their gallery! We are just so excited that Capital Quilts is carrying some of our favorite HBD patterns and that I am teaching a class there in just two weeks! If you are semi-local, consider coming out for a class on our Ready, Set, Soar Pattern!

While I was there, I picked up a couple cuts of fabric. The top fabric, from Vintage Picnic, will be the binding for my April Showers bee quilt. The other two fabrics were picked from clearance for general stash additions.

I spent the rest of the day working on the bindings of the three quilts that my mom brought back to me from the quilter -- two went to the long armer and one quilt she quilted. One by one, I trimmed each quilt and added the bindings to my Double Delight. Good Fortune, and April Showers quilts.

This was the pile of aftermath on my kitchen table from trimming three quilts. While I bought the navy pear fabric for the April Showers quilts, I used the backing for the binding for both Double Delight (the navy fabric peaking out) and Good Fortune (the red fabric). I hand bound Good Fortune, but the other two quilts were bound completely by machine.

(A quick aside: would you find it helpful for me to write a tutorial about using the backing for binding? Talking about trimming your quilt after quilting to maximize usable fabric? Tell me in the comments!)

So spoiler alert: I have three (t-h-r-e-e!) finished quilts that I will be showing off over the next two weeks! But none today, because the heat was just too much to try to take pictures of them outside.

I had also not yet put away my Jingle Bell Square fabrics, so I decided that I would make whatever units I could make -- not necessarily worrying about making full blocks -- and set them aside for the next time I pull out this project. In sorting my scraps, I found some larger pieces that allowed me to squeeze out *five* more blocks for this project!

Now I have 14 red blocks and 12 green blocks -- a total of 26 out of the 49 that I need to make -- now I have officially crossed the 50% mark!

I have also been keeping up with making my border QSTs and did end up with a few extra block parts:

But, ideally, the rest of this week's blog posts will be dedicated to finishes! It will be so nice to have fewer WIPs on my list -- and we'll see how long I can resist starting a new project!

Sharing at What I Made Monday and Wednesday Wait Loss!

Early April Showers {Finished Quilt Top}

Here in Pennsylvania, there's been a lot of rain and a lot of snow since about mid-January. I think we've gotten our share of April Showers and we're only in the second week of March!

I also have April Showers on the brain because I have *finally* (yes, finally!) finished the quilt top of my Coast to Coast Traveling Bee quilt from 2017 -- made mainly from the April Showers line from Bonnie and Camille!

Here's the quilt the when it returned to me in 2017:

This quilt will likely live in the guest room (which is red and white, with a bit of navy -- as it is my husband's baseball room too) on the queen bed, so it needed to have just a *bit* of a border. Because the fabric line came out years ago, yardage of it was no where to be found at a reasonable price (since I'd like to keep both of my kidneys) so I found a similarly colored print from a Cluck Cluck Sew line.

I cut 3" strips and got to adding the borders. (I actually only needed 9 strips instead of the 10 that I cut -- I probably could have cut wider strips had I realized this sooner.)

Finally, a finished quilt top!

Now to decide how it will be quilted... hopefully that part won't take two years to accomplish!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social!

Coast to Coast Bee Round 2 {Starting My Quilt}

Because we had SO much fun last year, most of our Coast to Coast (C2C) Bee have returned for another year! Just a reminder of my quilt top from 2017, which I still need to finish!

My quilty friends this year are:
Audrey (Hot Pink Quilts)
Chelsea (Patch the Giraffe)
Stephanie (Quilt 'N Party)
Karen (who is mysterious!)

Last year I loved starting with a fabric line and letting my cohorts add in other fabrics as they choose. I picked through my sets of coordinating fabric and found a set of two charm packs and some yardage of an older line from Benartex, Breezy Blooms. I believe my mom bought this for me when she was on a shop hop. Here's a sampling of the fabrics:

I also have a few bright solid fat quarters in pink, orange, yellow, and green, and a VERY large chunk of the black floral in the top row of the picture. I saved part of it for myself to potentially use as borders for the quilt.

This year instead of a medallion, I am requesting a row of blocks 48" long from my friends for a row quilt. They can make their rows any height -- 48" long works well with a variety of block sizes! I drew a picture of my "vision" quilt in my notebook that travels with the quilt.

I requested either white or bright solids (I sent some with my fabrics) be used as the background in each row. My plan is to sash the rows together with black solid and then to use the rest of my large floral print as a border. It's VERY modern traditional, and perfectly me!

For my starter row, I chose to make a row of four 12" finished blocks. I used the Folded Corners block pattern. I used a pink solid background for my blocks and made each block in a different color.

My quilt has been mailed off to Stephanie, and I have Audrey's quilt starter to work on this month! Here's what it looks like thus far:

Her theme is "flight" so my initial thoughts are pinwheels and flying geese!

Have a wonderful Monday! I'm going to stay in my Scottie Dog pajamas for as long as I possibly can today.

Sharing at Linky Tuesday!

Coast to Coast Traveling Bee {Month #5}

It's hard to believe that this is the last quilt that I will work on for this bee and that I will get my quilt back soon! This month I was working on a quilt for Audrey of Hot Pink Quilts. She's the one who actually organized our little bee and she has been one of my BBF (best blogging friends) since probably 2012!

Here is what her quilt looked like when it arrived to me:

At the last stop, Susan added the snail tail and New York beauty border around the quilt top. The top measures 62.5 inches long and 64.5 inches wide. Instead of adding a full border around the entire quilt, I decided that I would add a wider strip at the top and the bottom of the quilt so that it would be approximately twin size when it gets back to Audrey.

I decided that I wanted to make a variety of star blocks in a variety of sizes. Here's the design mock-up that I originally sent to Audrey:

The largest star blocks are 12" blocks that were included as part of my QCQAL from 2014, other than the Ohio Star. You can get the entire pattern from Craftsy, but you can also see the original tutorials here on my blog:

• Missouri Star Tutorial
• Nested Friendship Star Tutorial
• Martha Washington Star Tutorial

After shorting through all of my fabrics that fit Audrey's color scheme, I started by cutting all of the pieces for my 12" blocks.

I first made the two Ohio star blocks and two Nested Friendship stars.

Then came the two Martha Washington Stars and the two Missouri Stars.

Next came eight 6" sawtooth stars.

Finally, I made six 4" friendship stars. Here are the two rows completed before they were attached to the quilt:

And drumroll please, the entire quilt ready to be sent back to Audrey!

As with all of the quilts/block sets in this bee, I am tempted to keep it for myself! But seeing the previews of my quilt in progress is very exciting! Check out what Susan has been working on to add to my quilt:

Have a wonderful Wednesday! Sharing at Let's Bee Social, Needle and Thread Thursday, and Finished or not Friday!

Coast to Coast Traveling Bee {Month #4}

This month for the Coast to Coast Traveling Bee, I got my blocks done especially early! I made blocks this month for Chelsea, and she requested the blocks be built around a set of Alison Glass charms from a fabric swap.

She also listed "New Hampshire" as an inspiration and I decided that I would do some research and find a New Hampshire quilt block. In doing some searching, I decided to do one state block for each of our participants!

Here are all of my blocks:

Some of the patterns I used exactly as the original pattern, some of the patterns I adapted the sizes to be able to make better use of the charm squares included.

Maryland: adapted from 50 State Blocks, sized up from 12" finished to 20" finished.

Pennsylvania Parade: from Block Central. 12" finished

California: from Quilters' Cache, 12" finished.

Martha Washington Star: own tutorial, sized up from 12" finished to 14" finished

New Hampshire Star: from Quilter's Cache, 12" finished

Texas Tears: From Civil War Quilts - Barbara Brackman, sized up from 8" finished to 9" finished.

These are already on their way to Audrey! It's hard to believe that the next quilt I work on will be the last one before my quilt comes back to me! Summer just finished her additions to my quilt and I absolutely love it!

Happy Friday! I am off to Wisconsin for a wedding this weekend! :)

Coast to Coast Traveling Quilt Bee {My Quilt Center}

My very good friend Audrey of Hot Pink Quilts asked me this fall about putting together a small traveling quilt bee and I immediately said yes! I have had so much fun participating in the Instagram traveling quilt bee this year and since it is almost over, it's exciting to start on another traveling quilt.

It took me a long time to decide on a color scheme and then even more time to decide on a center motif. I knew from the beginning that I wanted this quilt to be a medallion, since my other traveling quilt is very much not a medallion.

I finally settled on using a layer cake of April showers that I have had for over two years as my inspiration fabric. My intention is that my bee mates can use the layer cake as well as any additional fabrics in their own stashes that would complement the line well. Since the line is red, navy, aqua, yellow, grass green, and grey, that should be fairly easy to accomplish!

My next task was figuring out what I wanted to do as my center. I decided on using this tutorial for a lone star block. I had to modify my cutting since I was cutting from 10 inch layer cake squares rather than from yardage, but it ended up with very little fabric waste, which is awesome!

To get it squared up better, I added some of the cut layer cake fabrics around the block as a border. Here's my finished quilt center:

I did have to unpick the center because it "puffed" a lot. I took in three seams (the three seams holding the four quarters of the center of the star together) and it is essentially flat at this point. Working with lots and lots of biased edges does have this as a significant disadvantage, but luckily just taking in the center seams was a quick and easy fix!

This is already on its way to Audrey, and Susan's quilt center is on its way to me! Isn't her rainbow center starter gorgeous?

Happy New Year to you! Sharing at Building Blocks Tuesday!