High Five Quilt

So, I hopped on here to post about my 3rd (and final) January quilt finish and realized I never posted my second!! I’m really going to have to nail down some blog time soon. It’s nice finishing things faster than I can blog about it though. So, after this I have another quilt to post about as well as a post at some point (hopefully) dedicated to my mini quilt swaps and bee blocks! January was a pretty productive quilting month this year!

But on to the good stuff. I finally finished my High Five Quilt that I began working on when I was pregnant in 2015. I began it because I wanted to play with scraps and needed a break from working on the quilts I was making my kids for Christmas. 2016 was a slow year as far as quilts go. The baby needed a lot of attention and well, she’s the last so I needed to give it! Funny how quickly things are changing. She still takes up a lot of time but she nap times and sleeping through the night help free up some time for quilting.

So, here’s my High Five in all her colorful, scrappy glory!

Isn’t she lovely???

This was such a fun quilt to play with scraps! Sometimes the girls would pick out color combos for me and just stack them by my machine while I pieced the blocks. I love that they are interested in sewing and quilting! Hopefully, I am passing the love of handmade items on in my family!

I also really love the combination of small and large blocks in this quilt! Scrappy, bright and colorful really is my favorite.

This is another quilt from my often mentioned favorite quilting book Sunday Morning Quilts. What? You don’t have that book? Seriously, order is now! You will not regret it! (I promise I do not get paid to say that – I just seriously love that book!) Anyway, it’s written by the amazing Amanda of Crazy Mom Quilts and Cheryl of CherylArkison.com.

Honestly, I cannot remember where I got this backing fabric. It’s something I ordered in a clearance sale but it goes with this quilt marvelously! I used my darning foot to quilt some loopy lines. I think this is one of my favorite quilt ways to quilt. Heavens knows I cannot do anything too fancy!

The binding is actually scrappy but all black and whites.

This quilt is already a favorite around the house!

And yes, this is normal January attire for the Mississippi Gulf Coast! Don’t worry, we’ll need jackets in a few days. We have some crazy weather around here!

 

 

 

Work In Progress

So, I’m posting my first WIP (work in progress) Wednesday post. I’m going to try very hard to make this a weekly habit. Heavens knows I have plenty of work in progress projects going on.

This week, my big work in progress project has been a scrappy quilt. I’m using basic directions for the High Five Quilt found in Sunday Morning Quilts. If you’ve read any of my blog posts you will know it’s my favorite quilting book of all time! I began making these blocks in September when I just needed a break from the projects I’d been working on. They are fun blocks to make and if your scraps are handy you can sew a bunch of these together pretty quickly. Here’s one of my early batches of these blocks.

I added blocks here and there as I had time (or sometimes when I didn’t have time but wanted to work on something else – I do that a lot!)

At the end of the year I had 200 blocks sewn together.

These are really fun to look at! 🙂

Anyway, the pattern calls for 260 blocks plus an addition 5 large blocks I’ve yet to make. I laid these out to get an idea of the size to see if I plan to make all 260 blocks. Then I decided I really needed to trim them to size before making a decision. This week I’ve spent quite a bit of my sewing time trimming these blocks down to 5″ blocks. Look at all these trimmed up blocks! Eeeeekkkk!

I still haven’t decided how many more blocks I’m going to make. I think my next step will be making the 5 larger blocks and see how I like the size at that point. This could very likely be my work in progress for some time yet…

Check out the Work in Progress Link up at Freshly Pieced to see others participating this week!