It's Not Plaid!

I finished up the triangles for the outer border of the triangles quilt and got it quilted and bound a few days ago. This was the leaders and enders project I worked on while I was finishing up Patrick's Plaids. It was such a nice respite from the many hours I spent making plaid blocks that I decided to name it It's Not Plaid! Two finishes for March! Yay!

It's Plaid

My friend's quilt, now called Patrick's Plaids, is finally quilted, labeled, bound, de-linted, photographed, and packaged for delivery. I promised her it would be done by the time she came home from Florida, and I'm so pleased I've met this deadline.

I quilted it with a feather pantograph called Paris. Then I worried all the way through the quilting process that the thread color was too dark, but everyone who has looked at it so far seems to think it's okay. I emailed pictures to my friend, and she seems very pleased.

My friend Chris has come into the yarn shop on many occasions with a couple different versions of this crocheted handbag, and I have admired them. I asked if she would make me one in exchange for working on her quilt, and she agreed. She gave it to me early on in the quiltmaking process, and I decided I wouldn't use it until I finished her quilt. So this is my reward, and I'm excited to be able to finally use it!

Part of the appeal of Chris's crocheted bags is that they're lined with old denim jeans, and she does a perfect job sewing in the linings. Mine has five pockets inside the bag, and it tickles me that the zippered pocket is the fly from a pair of jeans.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge -- Yellow Ribbon

It's been a really busy month trying to finish some things up, but I only realized last night that I haven't posted since the end of February. I thought it had only been a couple of weeks.

I think I like waiting until the last week of the month to get my RSC blocks for the month done. Most of that time seems to be spent choosing and cutting the squares for the ribbon and arranging them. The actual sewing doesn't take long. This month's color was yellow, but I was having trouble getting the yellows to contrast enough to create the ribbon, so I followed the example in my book and threw in a bunch of rusty colors. Sometimes I have trouble telling the difference between those old golds and cheddar yellows and the rusty colors anyway, so it seemed like a good thing to do. I won't be making an orange ribbon though; and when orange is selected as the color of the month, I'll make a brown one since there is more than one brown ribbon in my quilt layout. I think this is my favorite ribbon so far.

You can see what others are working on for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge here.
 

I worked on my small triangles quilt as a Leaders and Enders project concurrently with my friend's plaid quilt, and it worked out well. Both those quilts are nearly finished now, and I'll put those up on the blog in the next couple of days. While I was putting together the yellow ribbon this weekend, I worked on this little mini quilt called Cascadia as the next Leaders and Enders project. I spent quite some time cutting and sewing the two-patches; and with that work already done, the strips went together quickly. I have two more strips to make to finish Part 1.

Cascadia was a mystery quilt from Lori's blog, Humble Quilts.  She posted the first part to her blog in November of last year, but I didn't discover it until quite recently and wanted to make it. Lori evidently does some mini quiltalongs from time to time, as I've found a few others on her blog. There's another one called Mountain Trail that I really want to make too.

 

Next month I start the serious work on the wedding quilt, and I have a new project picked out for the next Leaders and Enders quilt while I'm doing that.