Test Block

I am working on my New Years goal to finish 12 UFOs in 12 months and am pretty close to being on track with that goal. I really started this in June and am finishing up my 6th quilt. I have decided that things I start need to be worked on at a steady rate and nothing new will be started till they are finished so in other words only one new project at a time (this excludes forever projects a my friend Shelley would call them...........handwork projects that are good for take along and can take years to finish). All that said I have started something new.

I have been cleaning out my sewing space and have lots of fabrics and decided that I needed a good stash buster project to clear out fabrics. I have been mulling over what to make and have decided on Bonnie Hunter's Mountain Majesty. It uses 8 1/2 inch squares of fabric and has lots of setting options. My latest color combo seems to be blue and orange. I have lots of orange fabrics and a good amount of blues in that can accommodate that size. I decided to try a test block to see how the block goes together................ok I like this. I made the two blocks above. I think I am good to go with this pattern. I am not sure what setting I am going to use. I love the colors and think of New Mexico sunsets outside my window. I have a view of Sandia Crest and watch some amazing sunsets. I am going to cut out squares for this project over the next week and sew these together. I really love this new project and hope to have it put together in the next few weeks. I do love quilting but after a day quilting on the longarm it is nice to go to my sewing room upstairs and do some piecing and if I make this project into a kit it will be a fun relaxing project to work on in the evenings.



 So what is on the longarm............well right now nothing! I just took this off yesterday. It was one of the improv projects I made last January. In fact I did a tutorial on how I put this together. I was jut calling it Improv II but I have renamed it A Walk In The Woods as that is what the colors and the design bring to mind. Below is the top before quilting.........one of my UFOs.

 Here is a closeup of some of the quilting. Looks simple...............WRONG! I have not tallied the hours of quilting yet but it is quite a few.

 People ask me where I find my designs. Well I like to come up with my own. I loaded this quilt on the longarm on Friday last week and did not start the quilting till the day before yesterday. I was stumped. I could just do lines like I see lots of modern improv quilts but that is too simple. I needed something more. I spent hours looking at quilts on the internet for inspiration and gave up. Well the other night I wanted some computer time but my daughter was using my computer for school so I decided to try out a drawing for my quilt and stumbled on this.............humm the more I drew the more I liked it. In fact I love the way it came out on the quilt above. It is just what I came up with when I broke down the parts of the quilt and I came up with it as I went along. I decided to just use one color thread on the entire quilt and really like how it adds another dimension to the quilt. I will reveal the finished quilt as soon as it has a binding and a hanging sleeve.

 

The last thing I have are a couple of 6 inch heart blocks for my friend Cathy. She is recovering from heart surgery and a group of us are showering her with heart blocks. This was a fun little block to make.