Building Blocks Tuesday -- Bits of Progress

Today I am guest hosting Building Blocks Tuesday again for Quilter in the Closet!

Since I have been working on some secret sewing, I have built (or baked?) a lot of blocks, but I can't show them to you just yet! Here's an Instagram preview of what I have been working on:

I also have finished (YAY!) and sent off my July Stash Bee blocks! Sarah requested Simply Woven blocks which I just happen to LOVE! (My version of this quilt is here!)

Sarah requested super rainbow blocks! I cannot wait to see her finished quilt! It was so nice to be able to use up some of my stashed strips for these blocks.

Now it's your turn to show me what you've been stitching! Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to check out what else I've been up to lately over on the Popular Posts sidebar!

An InLinkz Link-up

Off To The Fair!

Today I took three of my quilts and entered them in the Great Frederick County Fair to be judged and scrutinized! This is my first time entering my quilts in any sort of contest.

These are the quilts and their categories:

Cosmos Starburst -- Long Arm Quilted by Another

Citrus Simply Woven -- Made by Group

Prospect Park Triangles -- Made by Machine Quilting

I was able to enter up to three different quilts among the 25 quilt categories (yes, 25!) so I decided to just go for it and enter some of my most recent finishes. Park Ranger Husband thought that I should definitely enter his Civil War quilt, but I told him that I couldn't because it hadn't been finished in the last year. He was quite disappointed.

The judging takes place next Friday but is closed, so I am not quite sure how/when I will find out the results! Next Saturday the buildings with the quilts will be open to the public, so you bet your life that I am going to be there with bells on when they open!

Since the fee for entering items includes a week long pass to the fair, I might be tempted to go every day and get fair food. This is a terrible idea since the following week is my sister's wedding and there will be zero time to alter my bridesmaid dress if I gain five pounds from eating funnel cakes every day for a week.

Happy Saturday!

Finished Citrus Simply Woven Quilt

While this was my February ALYoF goal, it didn't get done until March, but I can totally accept that after waiting until after the 20th to get the last piece for the backing fabric. Next time I need to double check my backing yardage calculations twice before I order.

Here's the pictures from last night when I got all of the quilting finished:

I decided to bind it in the same fabric as the backing, so this morning I machine bound it. This was my first time machine binding a quilt, and it turned out decently well. A few places are a bit wobbly and my corners aren't perfect, but I can always improve!

Here's the backing with the three leftover blocks:

Here it is on the fence at my apartment complex. I got really fancy with these outdoor shots, eh?

Stats:

Blocks: Simply Woven via Moda Bake Shop made by members of the Stash Bee 2013

Background and binding : from Haven's Edge line

Size: 72 by 72 inches

Quilting: meandering loops in white thread

Started: November 2013

Finished: March 1, 2014

Future: picnic blanket -- Park Ranger husband and I are going to have some picnics on this blanket once it warms up.

Loop-de-loops in process

I finally got the extra yard of backing that I needed for my 2013 Stash Bee Quilt! I forgot to take a picture of the backing before I layered and pinned the quilt, so I'll add one in the finished post.

I have made an effort to quilt this one larger than I quilted the Churn Dash Baby Quilt but it still seems like my FMQing is very small in scale. It's bigger than the near-microstippling that I did prior, but it is still pretty dang dense. 

It's hard to see the quilting in some of the fabrics that have a lot of white in them or have white backgrounds themselves! Thus far I've only had one little edge section that I had to redo because the backing had folded over on itself but that took no time at all to fix! I'm just glad I caught it before it got worse.

At this point I am about half way done! The center-most 4 blocks are all done and about half of the next ring of blocks is more than half done. It seemed to me that the blocks on the edge went a little faster the first time around because of not having to shift around the entire quilt all the time.

I might just be able to finish this in the next three days and meet my February ALYoF Goal!

Sharing at Linky Tuesday, Fabric Tuesday, and WIP Wednesday!

PS. Don't forget to vote for the first block in the QCQAL and link up your fabric pulls for your blocks!

Pins, pins, and more pins.

I hadn't worked on my 2013 Stash Bee Quilt, based on the Simply Woven quilt from Moda Bake Shop, since before we left to go home for Christmas and today I got the top all put together unless I make more blocks.

The name of the game with this one was PINS, PINS, PINS. I had to pin at 6 points per pair of blocks to get the colored strips lined up. This one, I will admit, was not the best choice to have 15 different people make a block that requires so much accuracy to be able to sew it all together without ripping one's hair out. It made for a great variety of prints and some of them came together great -- but NOT recommended as a Bee Block for future reference unless everyone has 1000% piecing accuracy.

I'm still on the fence about how to finish this one. Does it need another row of blocks so that it's not square? Does it need a border? Then of course, I will need to ponder how it will be quilted!

Decisions, decisions.

Weekend Piecing

I started putting together some of the blocks that I have received thus far from being the Queen Bee in the Stash Bee last month. I have a few more that are currently on their way to me so I will finish piecing it all once I receive all of them.

Here's 16 blocks put together thus far:

I can't wait to get the rest of them and put it all together! I will end up with at least 36 blocks -- so this one will end up pretty large! I am planning to make it into a picnic and beach quilt. :)

I finally added the side borders to the Harry Potter paper pieced quilt. I strip pieced the two side borders from 5 strips of light and dark brown fabric and then sewed them together staggered to make the final diamond like pattern. I am very happy with it and probably won't add any more borders to it. Now it just needs quilting! Hooray!

Here's a close up of the trimmed and sewed side border. The way that I cut and sewed the two wood grain fabrics together ended up with the light grain going one way and the dark grain going the other so that they look woven! Hooray for happy accidents!

Happy Sunday to you all!