a housewarming quilt (repeat) and the july UFO

Another week of internship down, and just one to go.  It's getting easier...you know, just in time to be done...  But I'm tired of thinking about that all the time, so let's talk about quilts!

This week will be another repeat and one blogged about early in my APQ days, so I expect there will be some who haven't seen it.  It's the housewarming quilt I made for my brother and his family when they purchased their first house in 2005.

A year or two earlier, my mom and sister-in-law had been out shopping and came across some fat quarter bundles and my sis-in-law thought of me, so she picked them up and I got them for a birthday present.  They were mostly homespun plaids and though they might not have been my first choice, they were nicely coordinated and large enough to get a good-sized project out of.

But one of them was the dreaded colors of blue and yellow.  I'm a Spartan (Michigan State University) and my huge in-state rivals use these colors for their school, so what to do?  Well, the sis-in-law and her family are all fans of the rival school (I can forgive her that - she did give me three beautiful, wonderful nieces and it IS a good school), so why not make something for her and her family and their new house?

Enter the book "Stash-Buster Quilts" by Lynne Edwards, given to me by my mom shortly thereafter and we have a plan!

I used the pattern "Crazy Nine-Patch" and a little extra yardage and finished with this:

This is the first quilt I've made by myself completely from start to finish.  Quilting, binding, piecing and all and I'm pretty proud of the finished product.

I quilted the same pattern into the alternate (blue) blocks and I think it turned out well.  I'm not sure if they're actually using it, but I know they loved it.

The blue in the alternate blocks makes me giggle every time I see it.  I've nicknamed this the underwear quilt because that blue reminds me of the look of plaids used to make men's boxer underwear, though the weave is a bit more coarse than underwear fabric would be.

Some of the other fabrics I got in that stash were made into Christmas stockings for the hubby's sister's family - I'm not sure if I've shown them - one of these days I'll figure that out and show them if I haven't.

And this month Judy pulled #2 for the UFO challenge.  That would be my Pure quilt.  You can read about the last time I worked on it here - I worked ahead that month on UFO challenges and I'm thanking myself right now because if I had just left it as a pile of blocks (or less), I probably would have no hope of finishing it this month.  As it stands...

...it's a mostly-finished top and it needs to be trimmed (I think) and have borders added.  At that point, I will consider it finished for the UFO challenge and, since it has no place I intend for it to go, it will hang out in the closet and wait for me to figure out where it's meant to go.

I hope you all had a great weekend.  It's been hot here, but I've stayed inside a lot and can't complain.

Happy quilting,

Katie