Next Up . . .

So one of my 2016 Goals is to make 4 Christmas quilts as gifts for this year.  I have one down and am getting ready to start the second.  My goal is to make one every other month and be done with them all in plenty of time to be quilted and bound.

I thought this By the Chimney pattern by Lella Boutique was very festive, who wouldn't like a Christmas quilt covered with stockings.

Selecting fabric is always the hardest part of any project for me.  Here is step one of my stockings.  I'm just going with an assortment of Kate Spain for Moda Christmas prints.  They are from different families released different years, but I think they go together just fine.

I hope I don't like this quilt too much, I won't want to give it away.

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Construction Zone . . . .

Here are my latest additions to my year long Village project.

For April I made these four April Showers Houses.

And these houses are from the scraps of my Picking Petals Medallion quilt.

This is my latest favorite. 

I'm up to 48 houses.  

I bought two Charm Packs of Spooky Delight by Bunny Hill Designs for Moda for my October Halloween houses.  It will be hard to wait until October to piece them.  Wouldn't an entire Village of Halloween houses be fun?  Maybe next year.

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Never Say Never . . .

I've finished my Picking Petals Medallion Quilt.  

For the center I started with Taunja's Picking Petals pattern.  (Available here)

I made  mine bigger and added more squares to the center block.

Then I added this pink and green border.  So far so good.

Next I added this red border, which I really like, but think it overpowers the rest of the quilt.  I should have added more red prints that had different colors in them, to tone down the red some.

After that I added a row of geese, big geese, 4" x 8" geese.

Now my quilt is 72" x 72", my favorite size.  But I don't think it looks done and the red is still bugging me.

 I decide to add some stripy Friendship Star blocks from the Sister Sampler Quilts book.  I made a 9" block first, but thought it wasn't big enough, the petal blocks in the center were big, so I thought the outer blocks needed the same look, I went with the 12" block.

I selected blue middles in the stars to pull out the blue border in the center and stayed with the scrappy theme, just like the center square, for the star points.

Which I think finished things off nicely.  

There's a lot to take in when you look at this quilt, but I think that last border helped with the red, my eyes are drawn more to the outer border and less on the red middle.  I'm also planning to use red binding which I think will help even things out. (fingers crossed)

This is Lifetime Quilt Number 176

The center pattern is Picking Petals by Carried Away Quilting

The fabric is all Bonnie and Camille for Moda, mostly Hello Darling.

It finished at 96" x 96"

It has approximately 1,944 pieces.

Making a medallion quilt was one of my 2016 Goals.  I'm very happy with how this turned out and enjoyed piecing every block.  I particularly love the center block, and if I didn't have so many other quilts that I wanted to make, I would make another medallion quilt using that center but go with different borders, I think the possibilities are endless.

Last year I blogged about being out of the kingsize quilt business, well this top finished kingsize, but that's just the way it was supposed to be.

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Something New

I started a new project.  I saw the pattern Picking Petals by Carried Away Quilting on Instagram and thought it would make a great center for a medallion quilt. 

The pattern is available here.

I changed it up a little.

I made my pieces bigger and added a few extra squares to that center block.

I'm going totally Bonnie & Camille scrappy.

After studying these books I've decided to add three additional borders.

This is the first border, two more to go!

I can't believe it's April 1st.  Where did winter go?!?!?  The good news, I promised myself I could get out my Vintage Tulip quilt today! Even though April showers bring May flowers, it's tulip time around here, outside and in!

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