Summer Solstice {Finished Quilt}

While I technically finished this on New Year's Eve, this is my first finish share of 2017! My Summer Solstice quilt is completed!

I made this as a part of Melissa at Happy Quilting's Summer Solstice QAL last summer. I finished the quilt top in September with the QAL schedule, but put it aside because I wasn't ready to quilt it. As you might have seen on Instagram, I pieced my backing and was able to do the pin basing the week after Christmas and I did all of the quilting and binding on New Year's Eve.

For the quilting I did a meander with leaves to echo the leaves in the prints. I used an orchid thread for the quilting. White thread seemed like it wouldn't bend well on the front since the background is magenta and magenta seemed like it would show up too much on the green and white fabrics, so orchid it was. I did find the exact shade that I wanted, but it did take a little bit of searching and comparing. Most of the threads were either too pink or too purple!

For the backing, I pieced the remainder of the white print with a coordinating black floral print that I didn't end up using in the quilt and found an additional chartreuse print from my stash. It's always so nice to not have to buy a backing!

For the binding, I didn't have enough of any of the remaining prints (originally I was going to use the black print from the backing, oops), so I used a magenta geometric print fabric from my stash for the binding. I hand stitched this one to the back while watching movies, which is one of my favorite things to do!

Stats:
Pattern: Summer Solstice by Melissa Corry of Happy Quilting
Size: 50" square
Fabrics: Mostly Botanica by Timeless Treasures (won this fabric all the way back in 2012!)
Quilting: Leaf meander in orchid thread

Sharing at Finish it up Friday!

Summer Solstice QAL {Finished Top}

It's the end of the road for the Summer Solstice QAL, which means it is time to link up all of the finished tops over at Happy Quilting! 

I didn't cut my sashing strips at the beginning because I was a little tight on my background fabric, so I figured out how big I could make my strips with the fabric I had left, and I ended up with 1.5 inch unfinished strips as my sashing.

Here's my finished top!

(Don't mind my lemon print kitchen rugs! My kitchen has the best lighting after dark!)

My quilt top measures 51 inches square, which is a perfect baby quilt size, I think. I do have another black print from this line that is a smaller scale leaf print that I could use for a border (plus pieces of my other black and white fabrics!) but I don't think I am going to do borders with this one and keep it as is.

I am planning to quilt this one myself (at some point!) and it will likely have lots of curls and swirls.

Sharing at Happy Quilting, Fabric Tuesday, and Sew Cute Tuesday!

Summer Solstice {Finished Blocks}

After another busy weekend involving over 20 hours in the car over the course of four days, I was finally  able to get back to my sewing machine last night. 

I got working on my Summer Solstice QAL to finish putting together my blocks. I had sewn together the "parts" of the bigger block before our trip two weeks ago and they had been sitting and waiting to be finished. These went together extremely easily for being 24 inch finished blocks with over 50 units in each!

I chose to do the four block layout; here are all four of my blocks together.

Next, I will be working on the sashing and borders to finish up the top, which should be relatively simple but I don't think I have quite enough of my background fabric to sash as the pattern. I have extra of both floral fabrics that I used and I have another yard of a black print that I didn't cut into yet.

For some reason, this fabric (which is definitely mottled) looks more mottled in these pictures and in the blocks than it did as uncut yardage. Hopefully that doesn't take away from the pattern of the blocks!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social!

Summer Solstice and Meadow Mystery Updates

Last week, both of my QALs had new sets of directions that came out! I just love QALs, especially when I don't have to worry about putting up directions. :)

For the Summer Solstice QAL with Melissa at Happy Quilting, this week we made all of our Drunkard's Path blocks. I've done some curved piecing before (in my NY Beauty quilt) but this was all 3.5 inch unfinished blocks! For my quilt, I needed to make 16 green/magenta units and 32 magenta/black print units. Here are my finished units:

These curves were SO EASY to put together and there was minimal waste. Melissa's cutting instructions and templates made it so that the waste you had was just about as small as it could be -- hooray! I ended up with a lot of extra arcs and edge pieces because of the color arrangement in my quilt, but I think I will be able to make a table runner or something similar with the extras. Next week, we'll be putting our blocks together!

This month's assignment for the Meadow Mystery QAL with Cheryl at Meadow Mist Designs was to do all of the basic cutting for the quilts -- which right now is all squares, rectangles, and strips. Check out how my fabrics all chopped up:

Since I had enough (more than enough!) fabric, I did the optional step of cutting the squares that will be used for triangle units with an extra 1/4 added on. Hopefully this will mean all of my units will be gorgeous! Next month we start sewing -- hooray!

Sharing at Sew Cute Tuesday and Fabric Tuesday!

Summer Solstice {Half square triangles}

The most recent "assignment" for the Summer Solstice QAL with Melissa at Happy Quilting is to put all of our half-square triangles together. I am making a four block version of the quilt in the baby size, so I needed to make 96 HSTs! I worked on them a little at a time and finally finished them up Friday night while watching baseball.

My version of the quilt will be similar to Melissa's original diagrams with three colors + background, so I only needed two different colors of HSTs.

For fun, I decided to lay out all of the pieces that I had made thus far and see how my blocks are going to look!

I LOVE how this is looking so far! The sections that are "blank" are the sections that we haven't made yet which will be the drunkard's path blocks. I haven't done any drunkard's path blocks before (but I have done a decent amount of curved piecing!) so this is a fun new adventure for me -- especially with their finished size being 3.5 inches!

Sharing at Happy Quilting -- check out everyone's progress!

Quilt Along Update: Flying Geese and Fabric Selection

This summer seems to be the summer of quilt alongs!

I am participating in Melissa at Happy Quilting's Summer Solstice quilt along and I showed off my fabric selection a few weeks back. 

This week we are making flying geese and here are mine!

I am making all four of my star blocks the same colors so I only need two different colors of flying geese and 16 of each one. They went together so fast and they came out as the perfect size! Hooray! now to wait another week and a half until the next clue comes out!

I'm also participating in the Meadow Mystery quilt along hosted by Cheryl at Meadow Mist Designs. I participated in her mystery quilt along last year (here's my finished top) and I loved it! This month is fabric selection month for that quilt along and here are my picks:

I really like how she explains which colors are next to which other colors because that is such a huge help in picking your fabrics! I started with the light pink dot as my background since that was my largest cut needed at 2.25 yards. I pulled the pink, dark teal, and purple fabrics next since they are the accent colors in the background fabric. The pansy print was pulled last and while the other fabrics don't have green, the pinks and purples in the pansies themselves are a perfect color match to the other fabrics I had pulled.

I hope that this fabric pull turns out well for the quilt! This QAL is a month by month project, so the cutting step won't be revealed until the first week of August! Between now and then, I luckily have LOTS of things to keep me occupied at my sewing machine. :)

Sharing at the normal Tuesday places!
Sew Cute Tuesday at Blossom Heart Quilts
Linky Tuesday at Freemotion by the River

Summer Solstice QAL {Cutting}

This summer I am participating in Melissa at Happy Quilting's Summer Solstice QAL! This is the first time doing one of her quilt alongs after following them for what has to be years!

I am planning to do the 2x2 quilt with 24 inch blocks which makes a 54 inch quilt. Here is my fabric pull:

I won these fabrics over three years ago, so it was probably time to put them to good use. They are from the Botanica line from Timeless Treasures. The fuchsia marble is my background, I am going to use the green marble for my inner stars (the yellow in the diagram), the large black floral will the be "surround" (red in the diagram) and the white will be my outer stars (orange in the diagram). I'm planning to use the smaller floral for my binding and potentially some of my sashing.

I got everything all cut this weekend and ready for the next set of directions!

I am very excited to see how this all turns out! Hopefully I hoarded these fabrics for the perfect project. :)

Linking up with Happy Quilting to share my slicing!