My beautiful bleeding swap quilt

Many, many moons ago I participated in several swaps either through a blog or Flickr. I was part of a Quilting Bee swap on Flickr for a year I think. I'm pretty sure my color scheme for this particular swap was rainbow.

When I was going through my wip bin I came across the quilt. It was already quilted and just needed binding. No clue why I never bound it but it's done now. I found a piece of binding in my binding bucket and it was almost long enough to go all the way around. I just added a small scrap that I stole  from another left over binding.

The shadow of my hand and phone makes me giggle for some reason. 

I just meander quilted it. It's my go to quilting because it doesn't need to be perfect and I love how it gets all crinkly after it's washed. Of course I used cotton batting so it could be crinkly. I also like how thin yet warm a quilt is with cotton batting.

The only problem I had is this one square ran when I washed it. I used two color catchers but that didn't save it. This isn't the first time a quilt has bled on me but it is the first time I couldn't fix it. I google for some solutions and asked on facebook but nothing I tried worked. First the red ran and when I got that under control the orange ran. After the third run through the washer I gave up. My daughter saw it on facebook and fell in love with it blemish and all so now it hangs on the back of her couch. All three kids have curled up on the couch with it so I'm happy. Even though it's Summer one of their couches is under an a/c vent and the ceiling fan and sometimes it gets chilly on that couch. 

Mandy told me every time she looks at the quilt she sees something she didn't notice before. Now I need to go back to the wip bin and find a quilt for the other couch. One for her brothers because I have a feeling that once it gets cool again she won't be sharing. ;)

Working on WiPs

Several years ago I joined a quilting forum called Quilting Around the World. I was really active and joined in the conversations and did a few swaps but I got a little lax last year. On this forum if you don't post each month you're considered inactive and your membership is closed, so I accidentally went inactive last year. They send out emails to remind you but I guess I missed it. No worries, I just rejoined again. The only thing is you start back at the beginning.  This forum like most gives you a rank title based on how many posts you post. Oh well.

Anyways... One of the quilt-a-longs we are doing this year is the year of UFO/wips. You list 12+ projects that have been forgotten and you want to finish them this year. Each month 2 numbers are drawn (one main project and a bonus project) and based on your list those are the two projects you work on. You can win prizes (I've won twice woohoo) if you show progress or finish one of the drawn projects each month.

One month my main project was this apple core quilt that I made using Thimbleberries fabric. I made the top years ago when I was trying out the new Go! cutter apple core die. It's put away at the moment but it is a small quilt good for a table runner or a baby stroller. There's a few wrinkles but overall it turned out alright. I am much better at sewing curves now so I think I might need to make another.

Here's the back. The binding is just a gold that I found in my stash that seemed to match. The back might be a Thimbleberry also but I'm not sure. I bought a mystery box of scraps and all these fabrics were in there. I remember the apple core pieces had the selvages still on them.

Another UFO I finished was these placemats. If I remember correctly I was making bags with these black and white fabrics but my daughter saw them on my design wall and wanted them for placemats. I can't argue when one of the kids (okay grown children) want a handmade item for their house, right? The backing fabric was something my daughter fell in love with when I found it at a thrift store several years ago. I bound them in red because red is her favorite color. I made her a black, white, and red quilt about 8 years ago that she absolutely loves.

It's Plaid - the graduation quilt

This handsome devil graduated high school in May. Cocky little brat. He's my youngest and most challenging child. He thinks differently than his older brother and sister. I had to change my parenting techniques several times while he was growing up. He has always loved to debate so I wasn't surprised that he took debate classes throughout his high school years. He challenged everything even if he didn't care about the topic. He won many discussions with me because he is such a good debater. It's hard to say no when the other person has all the right answers to make it a yes.

This is a picture of Mandy and Robbie. When Mandy graduated in 2009 he wore her robes so they did a remake of that pic. Robbie is 6'4" so poor Mandy is drowning in his robes.

Robbie has been wearing plaid shirts and shorts since middle school. I took several of his outgrown shirts and cut them apart to make a graduation quilt for him.

   

I used Forest Bricks from Mary Quilts. I've made this pattern a few times and I always like the finished quilt.

I even had a little helper.

Miss Mocha loves to bury herself in clean clothes. Anytime she sees a pile of clothes (or fabric) she dives right in.

This last picture is when I was playing with the layout. Everything was going fine until I realize not all the blocks were going in the same direction. When I was sewing the tiles into blocks of four I didn't think it would matter how they were stitched together. I thought since it's square that if one way didn't work then I could just spin it and it would work from that direction. Nope. I figured that wrong so I had to unsew about a third of the blocks.

New Pillows for the Kiddos

My two oldest kiddos, okay adults, moved out earlier this year. I decided their couches needed some pillows. I made the forms from an old pillow a couple months ago but never got any farther. I decided since they were having a Memorial Day cookout I should hustle up and get the pillow covers made. I dug into my red, white, and blue scrap bin and came out with these:

One of their couches is a dark blue so I think these work really well for that couch. The other couch looks like something from That 70's Show lol. It's brown, orange, and gold or something similar. It's a sleeper sofa and only cost $5 from the thrift store so for now it works just fine.

I thought a log cabin pillow cover might be fun. I was going for a bit wonky but I don't think I wonked it up enough. It just came out like a rectangle but on a square pillow form. It's okay, it still works as a pillow and brightens up the living room so all is good.

I do like this patchwork version. These two projects didn't even make a dent in my red, white, and blue fabric scraps.

The backs are just a solid blue that I found in my stash. They are simple envelope style covers. I think it will be fun to make different covers for the holidays or to represent what my kids love. Since the next holiday is the 4th of July these covers will still work so I'm ahead of the game ;)