First of July Quilting

Yes, the Butterflies quilt is finished, and my dear friend Sallie is its new owner. I love the quilting on it, it’s such a happy, summertime quilt.

I took off most of the week around the Independence Day holiday, and when my husband and I weren’t watching old favorite movies (Knight and Day, The Long Kiss Goodnight to name a couple), I was in my sewing room working on a couple of quilts.

I participated in a half-square triangles exchange with a sub-group of my monthly quilting group, and now I’ve started putting those together with the other necessary pieces to make Bonnie Hunter’s Scrap Crystals quilt (from her book More Adventures With Leaders and Enders). I decided to go with the same colors she used in her sample quilt after much pondering. This quilt will be a gift for my husband’s friend Dave.

I finally finished putting all of the four-patches together. It took me several days of sewing to get that part finished, but now I’m ready to start putting them all together.

There are a lot of pieces in those blocks! Meanwhile, I watched a recent Missouri Star Quilt tutorial called Deconstructed Disappearing Pinwheel. Now, I’m not the most comfortable with the technique that produces so many bias edges, but I decided to try it anyway. This will be a Quilts of Valor quilt.

I pulled red, white, and, blue fabrics from my stash, had to order a couple more whites (I wanted this to be white prints, not creams), and created my own ten-inch squares.

I had a few issues with cutting at first, so I changed my size to 4-inch units instead of the 4¼ that Jenny says to make. I had to re-cut/trim down a few of the units I had already made, but everything seems to be working well now.

I just have a few more to make and then I’ll be able to start putting them together. Fortunately, my extra whites just arrived in the mail. This has been an awesome stay-cation.