What's New?

Even though I am not getting to sew and quilt as much as I would like this summer, I am plodding along and doing a bit here and there in my spare time.  I have an idea in my head about a future quilt, so I drew it up, traced it, cut it out and put it together to see if I would like it.  It's not totally what I wanted, but it looked good so instead of tossing it, I made it into a little wallhanging.  I had fun adding the nose, eyes and eye lashes through my quilting.  I learned alot making this little quilt. First of all, make sure you add the iron on adhesive to the wrong side of the fabric.  Both the eyes (both pieces of both eyes) and the face itself are the backside of the fabrics, because I wasn't paying attention.  After ironing the wonder-under to the right side of the purple fabric that was to become the face, I kept telling myself to not make that mistake again.  I cut out 4 pieces of fabric to make the eyes and I ironed my adhesive to the right side of every single one of them!!  argggg!!!  I used them anyway.  I think that maybe the eyebrows, which I had left out of my original drawing, are from some of that same fabrics.  The tongue was also not on my original drawing.  It just needed something else and that open diamond looked like an open mouth and therefore needed a tongue.  Like I said, not perfect, but it works and has actually quilted and bound with hanging triangles so the future owner can hang it on their wall. 

I saw a quilt on Basket Full of Scraps and fell in love.  My favorite all time block is the Monkey Wrench, aka hole in the barn door aka churn dash.  I love this block.  I once made my sister a quilt using this block and lots of plaids.  It is still one of my most favorite quilts I have made, even though the quilt is probably long gone.  So, when I saw that quilt on Basket Full of Scraps I knew I had to make it.  I recently took a liberated basket class with Gwen Marston and this quilt was the perfect combination for me to make.  So, I got started by making my fabric for the basket.

Then I began making my little churn dashes.  I made the two on top first.  They are on the small side.  So I made the three on the left a little bit larger.  Even though I thought the two on top were too small for this quilt, I may enlarge them with a few strips of fabric and use them.  We'll see what happens next.  I am liking the direction this is going, but it is not jumping up and down with excitement and letting me know that I am on the right track.  As a result, I will plod along and make a few more blocks to see what direction this will lead me.