Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Color wheel quilt

This summer I am finishing things. I'm getting my pile of WIPs back under control.

Today I'm working on a color wheel quilt that I started in 2013. The pattern is from The Purl Bee.



A photo posted by @carriebee04 on






The fabric is all hand-dyed by me, with the help and supervision of Kristin of A Little Crispy. She was kind enough to give me a half-day crash-course in dying. I love the results! The piles of hand-dyed fabric are so beautiful that I had a really hard time cutting in to them.

I sewed these blocks together and then abandoned the project. I remember I was on the fence about how to quilt and bind it, and I wasn't thrilled with the curved seam on the center circle. I wanted to do some fancy free motion quilting on this, but my skills weren't there yet. They're still not. After re-examining this WIP, I decided to leave the slightly-wonky curved seams alone. I remember ripping and restitching the seams a bunch of times when I initially pieced the blocks, so it's probably as good as it's going to get. I decided on straight-line quilting with variegated thread. Simple and colorful. I love it!

I'm going to attempt a rainbow binding. I'm more than a little nervous about that because I have limited quantities of this fabric, and I hate having a lot of seams in my binding. Wish me luck!

Friday, June 12, 2015

Two finishes!

This week I managed to finish two quilts that have been in my WIP pile for far too long. The first is a lovely quilt from my do.Good Stitches circle from March of last year. Sigh. The blocks are reverse applique and they all looked so pretty and spring-y. I love how it turned out and it felt great to mail it off to Threading Hope yesterday.



The second finish is a mini quilt using the Wild Olive Summer Stitching Club pattern that I bought back in 2013. Sigh. I used a mix of American Made Brand solids for the embroidered hexies, and hand quilted with DMC Pearl Cotton.



A photo posted by @carriebee04 on





I had some doubts about my color choices after I started embroidering, but I think the pink binding pulls everything together nicely. I'm happy to hang this up for summer!