quilts tops everywhere!

It seems babies come in threes.  Whenever one friend is pregnant, it seems not long before another two are making announcements.  This spring (summer, I guess?) has been no different.

And with a week on Drummond Island planned for this past week, what better place to get some of those done?!

First up is Frank's quilt.  This one was the first of the batch, so I started on it first.  You've seen a few in-progress shots, but the top is finished.  I actually finished it a day or two after my last post and had good intentions of quilting it that Saturday.  The hubby had to work that weekend, so perfect opportunity.  (So I guess this is pre-vacation quilting just yet...bear with me...I'm still on vacation brain!)

Then The Storm hit.  My area was one of the worst.  The power went out in the middle of the night, early Friday morning.  About the time the storm finished raining sideways.  With our generator, we have the water, the fridge and the furnace all running.  There are also a few outlets, in fairly inconvenient locations, that work.  But hey, running water - that's more important.

I went to work, hoping power would be back on by 9am, as the initial estimate said.  Well.  9am rolled around and I got a text updating that estimate to 11pm Sunday.  Sunday.

But Friday evening, around 6pm, the power came back on.  No text confirming this, as I usually get, but no complaints from me!

Wanna know why there wasn't a text?  It went back off again around 1am Saturday.  Again with the generator and a general what-to-do-ness, as the estimates are often quite wrong.  (Usually predicting a longer outage than what we get.)  Finally, I gave up and started hauling stuff downstairs.  Cause you know where those inconvenient outlets are?  The room with my longarm!

While I don't feel comfortable running something as pricey as my longarm on generator power (the only things I own that cost more are my house and our cars!), there's a nice big table there on the back and a lot of windows (that I love until I have to wash them) in that room.

It started out with a few things and then just snowballed as I needed more and more to keep me busy.  As you can see, the longarm also functions as quilt storage when not in use!  Not the best lighting in general, but with some extension cords, I could sew!

With Frank's baby quilt done, I had quite a few strip sets left over and decided I'd make a dolly quilt for his middle daughter.  I sort of invented this - no pattern, but I'm sure if you look hard enough, someone will have written one.

It's not sewn together here, but you get the idea.

I still had a lot of strips left over.  Doggone it!

The second quilt - in progress...

...and finished.  I just took a photo outside and it's so humid, I'm not sure how there's a breeze.  I think 9000% humidity is about right.  Give or take a few thousand percent.  (Earlier today I authorized the hubby to look into central air conditioning.  While I don't really like it, I'm tired of doing so little in the summer because of the heat and humidity.  We'll see what he comes up with.)

Oh yes, let's share the actual baby quilt, too, shall we?

This quilt is called "Boomerang" by Crazy Old Ladies.  I made it a bit smaller than the original pattern (fewer rows), but otherwise, their pattern was perfect!

When that was done, there was still no power, so keep on rolling!

Binding anyone?

These are for the sheep quilt, the science geek quilt and Frank's baby quilt.  (Left to right.)  I also cut and made binding for last month's UFO quilt.  The black and bright one.

And with a table that large, wrestling the quilt to get the binding on was so much easier!  I think maybe I'll haul my machine down here every time I need to attach binding...it's truly worth the effort!  (But no photos there - I was too busy creating to remember to get the camera.)

Around 2:30 Saturday afternoon, the power came back on.  Along with a text telling me the power was back on.  So I guess that was the final say - it was on to stay.  The hubby returned home about 30 minutes later and I'm sure he was happy to be able to run the window air conditioner!

Sunday saw little quilting, as I had a lot to catch up for not being able to do laundry or cook or anything for the better part of a few days.  But I knew my trip to Drummond Island was the following week and I knew there'd be all the extra prep the week before, so no sewing was really planned.

But I knew I had two more baby quilts to make.  I'd decided on patterns (thanks Pinterest - you're useful sometimes!), but had to get the patterns and the fabric.  So after a middle of the week mad dash, I had that mostly taken care of.  And a few hours of crazy packing and stuffing all the sewing things into a suitcase (it's on wheels, so why not put everything in there?), among a thousand other vacation prep details, we were off!

First up on the agenda was a quilt for my current boss, Jessica.  Though I had a feeling she was pregnant probably a month or more before she announced it, she's next in line for a due date, so her quilt gets higher priority.  (And since the longarm can't go with me...)

Fabrics:

I had fun with choosing these fabrics.  I'm absolutely in LOVE with the graph paper-looking fabric and bought the end of the bolt - way more than I needed - because I've been eyeing it, waiting for an excuse to buy some.  So why not buy a half yard extra if you get it at a discount, right?

This quilt has BIG blocks.  Well, I drew them big.

At 18" finished, a 3x3 block grid of these makes a 54" quilt.  Fairly big for a baby quilt, but that's okay.  I'm no fan of tiny quilts that kids grow out of.  Hopefully this will last and he (yep, a boy) can use it until he's 12.  Or something.

In under 24 hours, including sleep, I finished this top!

The quilt is called "All in Knots" and was created for a Fons and Porter publication in 2015 by Wendy Sheppard.  I used a little creative liberty and removed a grey fabric, but that was mostly because I couldn't find a grey that looked good and the blue graph paper worked just fine.

I think I want to bind it in the darker blue, but don't have enough.  So I'm trying to decide if I want to do it with orange or not.  (I have enough of that.)

And after typing all of this, I sure hope Jessica isn't reading this.  If she is, well, it's not a surprise any longer.  Sorry.

So afternoon of day two of vacation, I dug into this pile of mostly scraps:

Many of these were also in Frank's quilt.  I purchased the lighter of the purples and another pink (that didn't make the final cut) for this project.

I was too busy sewing to take photos of the in-progress, but realize now I made the block wrong.  I'll admit, I drafted both of these patterns myself.  I'm giving credit to who made them first, but if I can figure it out in 10 minutes on my own, well...

Anyways, the finished top:

The pattern inspiration is Cluck Cluck Sew's "Spin Cycle".  If you click the link, you'll see what I did wrong.  It's okay.  I like this, too.  And Traci, the friend getting this one, will never know.  Unless you tell her.  Or she finds my blog.  But let's just go with not telling her if we can, okay?

This took a bit longer than anticipated.  Those square-in-a-square blocks fought me every stitch.  They didn't want to be square.  They didn't want to be the right size.  They didn't want to be trimmed to the right size with a 1/4" seam regularly around each side.  Let's just say I hate square-in-a-square more than flying geese.  I don't see a lot of these in my future.

Now that all the projects for other folks are at a point where I can't go further, it's time for me!

What's first?

Well, I'm terribly behind on the wonky stars, but had dozens of little baggies with sets of 8 squares along.  Plus quite a bit of grey fabric needing to be cut up.  Though I'll admit I wasn't excited about these at first, I got into it.

First I made four at one time.  My iron kept shutting itself off just as I was about to need it.  So either I need to sew fewer and keep the iron hot all the time, or sew a LOT and just let it roll.

Well.

If I make 3 per day, that's 21 per week.  Let's shoot for 21 total and see where that puts me with time.

Done?

Let's do 21 more.  Plus that half-done one because I only brought 7 squares of yellow...

Done!

And here is a very blurry photo taken with my actual camera that seems to mostly take blurry photos any more.  There are 42 stars in that stack and about a dozen more baggies to sew next to it.  Lots more fabric in the stash to be cut, too...

Wanna see the whole stack?

Sure you do!

Oh look.  Blurry again.

At one point, I had counted them into stacks of 10 and knew how many there were.  Not any more, but I think I'm around 200.  Maybe it's 150.  But adding 42 this week helped!

On to my last project.  We're getting close here.

I'm finally going to cut into these beauties!  I'd spent HOURS the weekend before we left working with the free pattern.  There was a photo with these fabrics used, but no actual instruction of what to use where.  There are five background fabrics and 27 prints in this quilt.  And they're fairly scattered, but kinda going from light to dark across the quilt.  I sat and assigned numbers to each fabric and then put those numbers on the blank layout sheet.  And then figured out each color background and where it went.  My brain (and back) hurt after that effort, but I knew it was going to be worth it.

The pattern is called "Bird Seed" by Tula Pink.  And it's a combination of flying geese (birds) and orange peels (seeds).  The "seeds" were to be machine-appliqued down, but I'm no fan of that technique, so I planned to hand-applique them.  Guess what I forgot?  Freezer paper - my applique template medium of choice.  (There's a grocery store on the island, but everything costs way more.)

So first I'll make those darn geese.

But, hey, they're kinda big...they finish 3x6".  That seems huge after the wonky star bits!

I even had time to trim them all up neat and tidy.

And I still have half a day left...I guess I'll break down and buy another roll (I now own three) of freezer paper so I can work on the "seeds"...

I only got six seeds sewn, but it was getting late and the light wasn't great any more...plus sewing black fabrics...it was time to quit.

But I did cut most of the backgrounds (minus white, as I ran out for Traci's quilt and used the white for this project in hers...) so I'm in a good place to continue once I get caught up from being gone a week.

We had wonderful weather.  Not too hot, as in years past.  Not much rain.  And cool nights, which are a blessing, as you can sleep without the fake cold of an air conditioner.  The hubby didn't catch many fish, but had fun anyways.  And we don't eat them (he does catch-and-release), so it doesn't even matter if he didn't catch many.

Tomorrow it's back to work for me.  And plans to try to get some of these baby quilts quilted in the near future.  And maybe my UFO for the month.  And maybe sew some blue cats, as that's the color of the month.  And maybe finish binding some quilts?  (The sheep quilt is done-done and graced my bed for the entire week of vacation!)  Oh dear, the list seems to grow every time I finish something...

Happy quilting!

Katie

a lot of ground to cover

I've been sewing.  Not as much as I could.  Not always as much as I want, but I've gotten a fair amount done.  And I've been thinking about blogging, but that's REALLY fallen behind.  Again.

So there's a few linkies going on where I want to share my progress.  And I know I should have posted more frequently to keep it simple.  But, you know, life.

So I'm going to try to cover them all in this post!  If you're here for the linkies, hang in there.  For those of you who read my blog more regularly, well, probably nothing is going to be all that different!

First up: UFO Challenge!

My #7 Science Geek Hexie quilt top.  This quilt all started because my quilty friend Linda sent me a message about science geek fabric at a local-ish quilt shop.  All other things were stopped and I drove, in a flying frenzy to beat closing time, to said quilt shop and purchased fabrics.

This was 2014.  Yeah, 2014.

You can see the hexie ruler I purchased for this project in there, too.  I already knew what I was going to do with the fabric.

It took a while to get to the project and cut those hexies (I remember doing some at our quilt show in 2015) and get them layed out on the design floor...

After watching a few tutorials on sewing hexagons (I didn't want those half-hexagons, as that loses the design in the fabric more than I like), I was ready.  I think.

Okay, this is going fairly well.  Onward!

It seems I never posted a photo of this top on the blog, but here it is.  I'm not sure when it was finished to this point, but this photo is from 2015, so there's that.

And then it sat.  I love it.  I want to finish it.  I knew, even, how I was going to quilt it.  Did I quilt it?

Nope.

I put it on the UFO list for this year.

I bought back fabric for it in March - at the same time I bought fabric for the UFO for that month - because I found something so absolutely perfect I couldn't NOT buy it.

Its number came up this month, so I jumped right in and quilted it, right?

Ha ha ha ha.

No.

But last weekend it was cooler and I decided I was going to tackle it.  The lights on my longarm light bar produce a lot of heat, so using it in summer weather isn't always comfortable.  (In winter months, I shed clothing while quilting because it gets warm enough for just a t-shirt...and I'm perpetually cold!)

So I did.

On the longarm, ready for another pass.

I chose a fairly simple overall pattern (simple, ha!), so it went fairly fast.  I still need to decide if I'm going to lop off those angles and make it square or tackle weird-angle binding.  So technically it's not done yet, but again, it's fairly warm and with no whole-house air conditioning, sitting under a quilt to bind isn't exactly high on my list.

A closer look at the quilting (and the back):

The colors are really washed out here, but for a day that's not raining or overly windy, I'll take sunshine for my photo shoot!  The quilted circles are maybe 2" across for the largest.  I love it.  Molecules!  (But my pebbles, as these are at their most basic, aren't perfect.  They got better as I went, though.  Sometimes.)

This quilt is, um, probably about 60"x50" or something.  I didn't measure, but it's a nice couch-size quilt.  If you're not 7 feet tall like my hubby.  (Okay, he's only 6 feet tall, but I feed him well, so he needs his couch quilts to be extra large.)  It's my design, if you can call throwing a bunch of hexagons together at random any sort of design.

And then, while I had the longarm up and running and was feeling good about it and the weather was cooler, why not load and quilt a second?  (This was my plan all along, if we're being honest.)

Sheeeeeeppppppsssss!

This one was started because I'm a fool and thought I had enough green to do this with the rainbow scrap challenge last month (May) when the color was green.

Wanna know how much of my green stash I used to make this quilt?

None.

I also did not use any florals in my stash (because I don't have any because I'm not a girly girl like that and don't buy stuff with flowers unless really I have to).

I did use stash fabrics for the cornerstone blocks and the brown ground strips.

So yeah, not much of a stash-buster.

But so cute!

Load it up! (Sorry, no photos here - story on that soon.)

The colors are a little washed out here again due to sunshine, but you can really see the quilting!

The sheep still need legs and I should probably have done those before quilting, but that epiphany did not happen until I was taking the photos today and realized how much fun it's going to be to try to not embroider legs onto the back of the quilt.

And the back?

Sheeeeeppppppsssss!

When I found this fabric (while shopping for fabric for a baby quilt - more on that soon), I bought it.  Seriously?  When is this NOT the right back fabric for a floral sheep quilt?  It's flannel, but that just means it will be better to snuggle under in the winter.  You know, when I'm actually cold.  Not today.

I still have to figure out what I'm going to bind this with - maybe the leftover florals from the sheep?

The quilt blocks are from the Farm Girl Vintage book by Lori Holt.  And though the blocks are different, it's actually the Picnic Quilt layout from the book.  It's about 70" square.

While I was finishing the science geek quilt, my parents showed up.  We store their boat in the winter and it was about time they retrieved it!  (To be fair, there was a family reunion happening mid-June, hosted at my parent's house, so that sorta took a lot of extra energy and time - now that it's over they can go fishing.)  My mom walked in and handed me a bag of quilt part.  "This is a quilt I made for your dad.  You're going to quilt it." went the conversation.  I'm WHAT?  I don't usually quilt for others.  And when I do, I offer after careful consideration of the quiltmaker and the situation.

Well.

I love my dad and since it's for his birthday (I had a week and a half at drop-off - his b-day is this coming Thursday), I suppose I'll do this.

(And since I was unloading Science Geek and loading Sheep while all this was going on, that's why there's no longarm photos of the sheep quilt.)

I think it's okay to share here, as I don't think he reads my blog.  I'm not even sure he knows I have a blog.  Does he even know what a blog is?  Hmmm...

(Dad, if you've found this and read this far, look away.  Or don't tell mom.)

He's very involved in Boy Scouts.  He wasn't much as a kid, but he saw both of my brothers through earning their Eagle awards and has continued to be very involved as an adult volunteer in his retirement.  He's done a lot of cool stuff (ice climbing anyone?) and seems to have a lot of fun in all his adventures.  I believe my mom told me he was awarded an adult Eagle award not too long ago.  I'm not sure what that's all about, but I did go to the Silver Beaver ceremony (a super-big deal adult volunteer award) a few years back.

So my mom made this for him. It's a panel in the middle with a few borders around it.  She told me to quilt it however I wanted.  So I did flowey-water-like stuff in the borders and stars in the center.  Fairly simple, but getting from one star to the next without overlapping proved harder than I though it would.  Apparently I left my brain at work yesterday?

(I quilted this early today - trying to stay ahead of the heat!)

It's as tall as my clothesline, so probably about 70" long, but not quite square, so maybe 60" wide.

(See how well I measure things?  I do measure before I buy backing, but I never remember what those numbers were later.  And this one I didn't buy any fabric, I just made sure the back was big enough before I started because that's happened when I quilt for others!)

Between all of this nonsense, there's been the rainbow scrap challenge.  (See, I said I'd get there!)

The color this month was yellow.  My yellow stash is fairly pathetic.

But I had plenty enough for the cats!  Just not so much in the variety category.

I thought I used yellow a lot and should have lots of leftovers.  I guess not?

13 more cats!  They don't look too spectacular here on my funky ironing board, but that's okay.  They'll look spectacular in my quilt.

(I also bought about 5 yards of fabric for part (all?) of the back of this quilt, but no photo yet.  I finished the bolt and can't wait to finish the cats so I can use the back!!!!)

There's also been dolly quilt construction:

I was hoping there'd be enough of the sheep flannel to just keep rolling the big quilt and quilt this one on the longarm at the end.

Nope.

I'll have to piece some backing and quilt it later.

These blocks (aside from the 2" squares across the bottom) are also all from the the Farm Girl Vintage book.  It all started with the grey sheep I made to test the sheep quilt pattern and see if grey was going to be okay and then decided they NEEDED to be floral sheep.  This little guy languished a short bit, but he's happy now surrounded by his patchwork garden.

This quilt is 24" square.  Larger than most dolly quilts I've made, but it's SO CUTE!  Part of me wants to keep it.  But what for?  No, some little girl is going to be so excited to get this for Christmas.  It's going to the fire department for their program.

And last but not least is the current baby quilt.  I shared a fabric pull in my last post, but that's been edited a lot.  And a few new fabrics purchased.  Here's the start of sewing to show the final decision:

Lexie helped with the design floor layout:

(She's so cute!)

This quilt doesn't lend itself well to mass-production, so there was quite an argument with not only Lexie, but Emma as well, regarding my use of the design floor and that I should be feeding or petting the cats because this is NOT a design floor, but the place where heavily neglected cats pace when they decide that not having been fed in 4 hours or petted in the last 10 minutes.

So once I could, I picked it up...

(Colors are truer with Lexie.)

It's ready to sew into strips, but this is where it's been since Sunday.  Work has been a little crazy and it's been hot upstairs in my sewing room in the afternoons, but we'll see how the rest of the weekend goes.  I have to work the 3rd (Monday), but do have Tuesday (the 4th), off...

New news?

The UFO for this month is #12.  That's the Whirlygiggle quilt:

I'll need to dig this out and measure so I can buy a back.  (And then promptly forget how large it is so I have to make something up in the blog post where I share it finished.)

And the color for my cats this month is blue.  I have a LOT of blue.  I was just thinking to myself the other night that I need to make a blue quilt to use up some blues.  Perhaps this blue project, if it gets off the ground, will NOT require me to buy most of the blue that will go into the quilt...as the green sheep project did...?

If you've made it all the way through, congratulations.  (I tried to keep it full of photos to at least keep you interested!)

Now I'm going to go figure out what to feed the hubby for lunch.  I've been snacking all morning, knowing he was going to be home around 2:30 and hungry.  This way we can eat together.  Or maybe I'll drag him out quilt back shopping with me?  I'll feed him as his reward!  (And maybe we'll hit Harbor Freight - his favorite tool store - and see if we can find something quirky for my dad for his birthday, since I don't think telling him I quilted his quilt is enough.  And I'm pretty sure my mom would be angry if I gave him the whole quilt from me!  Maybe I'll let the hubby buy a tool, too?  If I tell him just one, it's a game to find the most expensive thing in the store, though...)

Happy quilting!

Katie

slow progress

I feel like I spend a fair amount of time in my sewing room every day, but never have much to show for it.  Maybe I'm not in there as long as I think?  (maybe I'm distracted by fur-babies?)

Since my last post, I've worked a fair amount on the sheep quilt...getting all the cornerstones made and figuring out how they all look nice together:

...with help, of course.  (...there may or may not have been a bit of catnip spilled in this spot the day before...)

And then on to actual construction of the top!

It got GREEN really fast and it's hard to tell there are two different fabrics in here, but the sashing pieces are a different print than the background and borders.  And the sheep still need legs.  I think I'm going to do that before I quilt it - so soon.

It's about 76" square.

Once this was done and cleaned up, I decided to pull fabrics for the first of three baby quilts.  The former coworker with the little one already here.

My first pull is this:

I have since ditched #1, #2, #9 and the grey.  I've purchased another pink, subbed in another blue and am currently on the lookout for a few more good yellows.  I love #7, but can't get myself to like #8 in this quilt and have another yellow selected, but am not sold on that one either.  We're getting there, but I want to start this project!

Setting this aside, I pulled my stash of yellows, as the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for this month is yellow.

Fairly pathetic, which explains my difficulty in the original fabric pull for the baby quilt.  I'm on board to purchase a few new fabrics for the baby quilt, but just can't seem to find the right shade of yellow.  I'll be visiting a quilt shop or two this weekend, as it's family reunion weekend and having a mom and two aunts who quilt, you know where we'll be!  Maybe I'll have some luck there?

Anyways, I got to work cutting my yellow cat parts.  I've found it works well to cut all 13 cats parts, keeping them separated between pages of a book, and then sewing as I find time.  This way, the mess is all taken care of at once and I can clean off my cutting table and have it for further construction needs.

While I had the yellows out, why not cut for the wonky stars, too?!

I have these little bins (they have a Christmas thing on the side...) that fit the little ziploc bags perfectly.  One has all yellow parts, the other is more random.  This works really nicely, as the bags are a bit slippery and hard to stack in a neat pile.  When I'm ready to sew, just grab one and go!

Yesterday I sewed a few cats and a few stars.  I'm still behind on the stars, but I'll get there.  Forcing myself to make them is going to make me hate the project and abandon it.  With 60+ stars made and a vision of beauty in my head, I don't want it to go away!

Tonight, once I'm done with the blog and paying bills, maybe I'll head back up to the sewing room and make a few more cats and stars...

And one last fun photo - I got some new shoes!

I don't know that they'll be comfortable enough to wear to work all day, but they're definitely fun weekend shoes!  (And even if I do break them in enough to wear all day to work, I'm afraid I'd spill stuff on them and ruin them and don't want to do that!)

Happy quilting,

Katie

may UFO (nearly done)

Waaaaay back on May 1st I showed you this fabric:

Though I had gone to the store with the intention of buying a black back for my May UFO, once I had seen this fabric, I wasn't going home without it.

And I pieced it into one large piece shortly thereafter.  And ordered pink thread even.

I knew how I wanted to quilt it.

But it sat.

And sat.

And sat.

I looked at it most days as I walked past my longarm - it was hanging on one of the bars, waiting.

I moved it to quilt the 27th birthday quilt.

Wednesday evening, May 31st, I decided to quilt it.  While the hubby and I were out to dinner.

We got home around 7:30pm.  After oiling, loading and watching a video on the quilt motif I wanted to do, I was ready to start quilting.  At 8:30pm.

At 9:45, I had made three full passes.  Two more would be needed, but I had to be to work at 6am Thursday, so I called it quits.

Thursday I flew out of work, knowing I wanted this quilted before my guild meeting that evening.  The first Thursday of the month is a UFO reveal (it has been for a long time, but this year they're doing a formal UFO challenge) and I wanted to share.

At 5pm Thursday, June 1st, this came off the longarm.

It's not bound.  I don't even have fabric for binding yet.  But we'll get there.

Oh, you want to see a photo?

I took about 23 photos, and even got a few where the quilt was hanging flat, but this one had the best color and does show off my hostas that I completely ignore every year, but keep coming back beautifully!

I also got to meet a neighbor and his dog.  She likes to wander and I guess he hadn't been paying enough attention and she ended up in my yard.  He's a nice guy and the dog isn't large or scary - and now I know who to call if she comes to visit again.

What I didn't take a photo of is the quilting.  Hmmm...the quilt is sitting nearly within reach, I just have to get up...

This is my first go at the swirl hook and some are far better than others, but there you go.  My quilting.  It went fast, but took about 4 bobbins!

And for those of you who don't remember, the story of this quilt...

Way back in 2013, Quiltmaker magazine published this pattern.  It was done in similar colors, but with a white background.  They had their Scrap Squad going at the time and one of the gals did this quilt in batiks with a black background and set it on point.  I was smitten!  It's actually one of the first things in pinned on Pinterest!

In June of 2013, I bought fabrics.  (Thanks blog for recording that!)  Gradually, I worked on this.  I remember a quilt retreat where I made all the pointy pink triangles - paper pieced - as well as working on a few other parts of the block construction.

And then later I put it together not-on-point and couldn't figure out what was wrong.  I didn't have the photo with me, so just sewed away.  I decided to put on a blue border and that would fix it.  It did not.  I remember a full day spent sitting under a tree on Drummond Island literally tearing this quilt apart.  Row by row, block by block.  But hey, I was outside!

I remember a guild sewing weekend where I layed it all out on the floor - I'd left some rows together to avoid re-sewing where I could - and figured out what needed to be sewn, what else needed to be ripped and constructed the extra alternate blocks I needed but didn't calculate for because, again, I wasn't looking at the right instructions.

This quilt has had a rough road and by the time I had to quilt it for the May UFO, I wasn't sure if I liked it any more.  But like happens so often when I actually get to the quilting part (and get past that first pass where I'm white-knuckling the handles because I'm SURE something is going to go horribly wrong!), I fall back in love with the quilt.

It's about 70x90", but I haven't taken an official, final measurement.  If it's large enough, it may go to the niece with the new twin bed, instead of the Twisted Blossoms quilt I had planned.  But we'll see.  It might also look good on my couch...

Also finished this month - actually finished, not just nearly finished like another one or two - is one dolly quilt:

I took this out and pinned it up on my barn.  It's about 17x17" and is my own design, inspired by something I saw on Pinterest.

But I loved the contrast of the modern quilt on my old paint-peeling barn that I ran back inside and grabbed another quilt and some extra pins:

I AM going to hang this quilt in my bedroom.  The hubby knows quilts are going up on the walls (also considering my paint chip challenge and my Xylem ASQ challenge that went nowhere) - in addition to returning a few of the pieces that were there originally.  (And a few aren't going back up...)

So there you have my UFO for May.  Not quite finished, but much closer than before.  And more likely to be actually finished than before it was quilted.

Now we're on #7 for the month of June.  That's my Science Geek hexie quilt.  I have the backing already.  I know how I'm going to quilt it.  I even have the orange thread!  Maybe I'll start on this before the last day of June?

And yellow had been chosen for the rainbow scrap challenge color.  I don't have a ton of color, but it's such a bright, happy color, I know I'll enjoy making my cats.

I'm way behind on my tiny wonky stars and have no inspiration just yet for the June dolly quilt, but the hubby has to work this weekend, so once I'm done here on the computer and run a quick errand, I'll be able to sew a bunch.  I still have my ridiculous list of projects, but I'm getting there.  I'm not going to let it overwhelm me - it's going to INSPIRE me!

Happy quilting!

Katie