May Finishes

It's been a long while since I've posted to the blog. We're nearly halfway through the year and I've written nine posts. That's pitiful, so I guess I'd better rectify that!

I was really busy the month of April working on these two small challenge quilts. They were due the first week of May, and I actually finished them on time, binding and all. Then I spent the month of May catching up on all the stuff I put off in April while I was working on the quilts.

The pink and green one, "O' Tacoma", was designed by our chapter president as a mystery quilt in three parts. I liked the fact that we had to choose only three fabrics, but the challenge of assembling the quilt more than made up for it. I really liked this quilt when it was finished.

My other challenge quilt, "Snow Day", was a Mix and Match challenge. Each participant drew slips from five categories, which determined the parameters for the quilt they had to make, and each quilt had to measure 24" x 24" at completion. The categories were Theme, Embellishment, Color, Fabric, and Block.

The Theme for the quilt could have been one of the four seasons or a holiday. My Theme was winter.

An Embellishment, like ribbon, lace, yo yos, buttons, etc, had to be included somewhere in the quilt. My Embellishment was ribbon, and I cut small lengths of ribbon, laid them in the center of the star blocks like little pickup sticks, and stitched them down.

My Color, which had to appear in the quilt, was yellow.

The Fabric which had to be included could have been a novelty, polka dot, batik, solid, something like that, and mine was plaid. The snowmen, which were machine embroidered appliques, had patches on each snowman; so I cut a patch from a small scale plaid and stitched in place over top of one of the embroideries.

The Block we chose had to appear somewhere in the quilt, and there was an additional requirement that the block measure 12". My Block was Dutchman's Puzzle, which I placed in the middle of the quilt and then embroidered the snowmen on top of it. I used flannel for the snowmen bodies so the blue background wouldn't show through. They turned out pretty nicely, I thought. You can see the rest of the challenge quilts here.

My last finish for May was this small kids' quilt. The top actually got done quite a while ago, and I finally got around to quilting it.