Wrapping up the Rainbow

As I write this (Friday evening), it’s snowing. Now that is not necessarily unusual here in the Salt Lake Valley at the end of April, but I’m just a bit paranoid; did we miss summer? It’s been raining and slushing all week. I’m sure that if my garden could talk, it would be saying (and here I paraphrase...) "What the Heck?!" The cats have stopped shedding (for now), the furnace is still running, soup is sounding good for dinner, and quilts - well, they always sound good. To console ourselves, we’ve been watching a BBC series on Netflix about the South Pacific. Bonus: it’s narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch. (If you don’t know who he is, it’s time to sell that rock you’re living under, LOL).

We have come to the end of our multi-colored/rainbow scraps for the month of April. Our intrepid leader, Angela of So Scrappy, is again hosting another linky lineup of scrappy fabric goodness. It’s so much fun to see what our online quilting friends have been up to!

So this was my creative week. First, I finished up the pastel rainbow baby quilt from my vintage sheet scraps. It finished at 42x42”. It’s hard to get a good picture of a pastel quilt. I quilted it with simple straight line cross hatch. Well, MOSTLY straight lines, hehe. This will be a donation quilt.

Next I took an afternoon to work in some bright, multi-colored cat-themed scraps and quilted up 6 cat quilts (roughly placemat sized) for Best Friends Animal Shelter. The picture includes one I made from the leftover fabric of my bee-themed baby quilt, so there are 7 kitty quilts altogether.  Most of them are from my precious Laurel Burch scraps.

My Flower Market quilt finally came together, and much more easily than I thought it would. The borders worked out perfectly! I actually like the finished quilt.  It measures 61x72”.

Sorry I have to keep taking pictures of finished quilts up on my design board. I`d sure love a sunny day so we could get outside. Anyway, the back is a yummy black print with white and pink flowers and little white polka dots. It is my favorite print of the line. And the binding is a diagonal black and white stripes because Stripes.Are.The.Best.

This is also my Goal #1 for my Finish Along Goals for Second Quarter, list HERE.

Now, let’s take a look at what got done in April in the name of Rainbow Scrap Challenge, shall we?

Surprisingly to me, I completed 72 multi-colored blocks. Of those, 43 went into the Scrap X+plosion quilt (42 on the front and one on the back), then there were 16 quarter log cabins (upper right in collage), and 13 4.5” bowties blocks (center bottom). I also did one rainbow baby quilt, 7 rainbow kitty quilts and 2 rainbow doggie beds. (Had to correct myself there; I first typed doggie bags).  So, it was a very productive month, which proves how crappy our weather has been because everything happened INDOORS.

And finally, I finished the top (only had to trim and add borders) of the Big Game Quilt that I’m making for our DSIL (daughter Emily’s husband) who has returned temporarily from his overseas assignment for the USAF. He has a month leave of absence, during which he is taking a special class and setting up for his new posting and training beginning in July (in nearby Colorado!!) He will go back overseas for about six weeks and then be stateside for good. So, I wanted to give him his Christmas present for 2016 since he was overseas) while he`s here. We’ll finally get to spend some time with the whole sweet family next week!!

This quilt is a printed design panel from Pattern Jam, just like the one I did at Christmas for my other DSIL, only a different color way. This time I was able to pick out the fabrics and colors. The printing has improved dramatically - I can’t believe how crisp and bright the colors are! The two borders were added by me yesterday, and the backing is the same navy blue and green plaid fabric of the outer border. I think even the binding will be the same. That was a great purchase at Connecting Threads for $2.96 per yard.

Not much else is new around here. Bruce may go back to work next week part-time. We’ll see; he will need to pull his nose out of a book long enough to call and arrange it!