Update on the Super Nova Quilt

I am taking a class on how to lay out and sew together my Super Nova quilt.  I ran into some problems and had to recut some pieces on Block set C, but I have finished the set. I have now finished sets A-D for a total of 20 blocks out of 40. Half way done but I have worked on this  a LOT. I mean a really BIG LOT. Probably 15 hours a week for 9 weeks. Now that I think about it, I haven't done much else. 

Here are the pictures of the finished blocks so far

I am hoping to get new pictures in the next few days. I am really happy with the way this project is moving. I am not going to make the mid-January finish date, but I am going to keep at it until it is done. I am watching every episode of Once Upon a Time, then moving on to something else. I love my new Roku.

30's Grandmothers Flower Garden for One Flower Wednesday

Since I finished my flowers for my Red Hot Garden quilt, I am moving on to working on my 30's Flower Garden. I don't have a name for it yet, so I will have to think about one. 

Here is my flower for this week.

This garden is quite old, at least 3 or 4 years, and I haven't worked on it in a while. I have written about it in some old posts, but I went ahead and took new pictures to see where I am at. The garden is 3/4" hexagons with a fussy cut black on black circle dot for the middle, 30's fabric for the petals, 1 green Jo Morton and 1 Olive/Lime mix leaf print for background. I am planning on making it queen size and the pattern calls for 500 flowers. I want to make each flower a different print, but my eyes are crossing at all the fabrics. 

Here is my progress on the quilt so far.

My flower garden with my finished flowers below it. The Garden has 38 attached flowers and 2 partially attached (one on each lower corner), and 11 completed flowers. I have no idea what I was thinking by not sewing the entire flower to the quilt. I must have thought they needed to go there and wanted to make sure they were sewn into the correct spot. For whatever dorky reason, my husband and I don't think it is right to count them til they are "completely" sewn. I told you, dorky reason. If it helps to get the size of the quilt so far, the pillows on the bed are king size. 

Here is a picture of my flowers not attached to the garden. 

So I ran into a not quite problem, but something I need to think about. Since I wanted to make every flower different, I bought entire lines of 30's reproduction fabrics. This means that I ended up with 3 or 4 different colors of the same print. So when I started this project all the prints were the same and all the colors were the same also. Now that I have been collecting fabric for at least 4 years I have a good mix of colors and prints. What I should now start doing is pulling from my newer fabrics to make a better color mix. So all of the flowers that are already sewn I need to keep until I get further along. Kind of frustrating that I can't use the ones in the picture yet, but I want to do it right because I am putting all this effort into it.


Here is a picture of all of the pieces I have cut up to this date. I am pretty close to having all of my 30's print flower pieces cut. I only have about half of my black dot center pieces cut and half of my green background pieces. There is a LOT of pieces here. The Hello Kitty lunch box is full size and the box beside it is a shoe box with 2 layers stacked on top of each other. I like to use the lunch boxes because they are hard so the papers don't get squished and the needles don't poke through, plus the boxes have the locked latch. Whenever I run out of hexagons, I add more fabric to the tin. 

I have also been working on Attaching all my Red Hot Garden flowers together and I will post updated pics next week.

One Flower Wednesday and Red Hot Garden Quilt

I have done 3 flowers this week and it finishes up all the flowers for my Red Hot Garden Quilt project.  I have decided to make a border of green all around the quilt, then do the hexagon ring binding described in this Hexagon Finishing Tutorial by Badskirt. Several people have told me they like this method and I really like the way it looks. Here are my flowers for this week.

I have done my layout and have started sewing them together. Remember these are small flowers (1/2" hexagons), so they are easy to make and put together. This is the first quilt that I have sewn by rows. I normally just sew the flowers in circles around the middle hexagon. I thought I would try and see if I liked it better.

I am still going to work on this project, but I am going to continue to do my One Flower Wednesday. I am switching my flowers to my 30's flower garden and continue my one flower a week. The 30's flowers are 3/4" pieces so they will take more time to sew. So working on 2 hand sewing projects will be a chore, but I am determined to finish some of these old projects.

A special thanks for the work that Karen does to organize One Flower Wednesday. She does this out of kindness and I know I appreciate it. Thank you Karen.

My I Do and Heartstrings Quilts Plus a Finished Top

This is the I Do Quilt from Cherry House Quilts that I had taken a class on like 3 years ago.

I have all the pieces cut and have started to applique the circles. I had decided that I didn't like the look of the 6 min circle on Cherry House Quilts blog because the circle didn't "poof" out of the fabric just sunk below the fabric. I don't care for machine applique either. So I decided to hand applique all the 40 some 4" circles. I asked for the pain and I got it. I love the look of the hand applique and I only have about 8 circles left (Yeah!). I hope to have the circles completed by the middle of January. 

Here are the pieces laid out by row in stacks.

I have also been working on another class quilt called Heartstrings by Black Mountain Quilts. I changed this quilt by changing the background to a dark red and making it a queen size. I think I still have 10+ blocks to make.  This is another quilt I need to dig out and work on. I put the quilt up on the design wall at my quilt shop to see if I like the dark red background. It looks okay. It is actually a Kaffe Fassett shot cotton with red and purple threads so it has an iridescent look to it.

This is a finished top from a class I took in October. It is a beginner foundation piecing class taught by Carl Hentsch. The class was very good, but my fabric choices were HORRIBLE! I didn't think about which pieces would be dominant in the finished project. I really wanted the brown stars to stand out in the yellow. My main quilting teacher gave me the idea to quilt the pink fabric with purple thread and quilt the purple fabric with pink thread. It might tone both fabrics down enough to make the quilt tolerable. I have several small quilts I need to sandwich and quilt, so we will see if it works then.

Here is the not so pretty quilt

One Flower Wednesday

I have 2 flowers this week to post.

So I double checked and I have 3 more flowers to do before I do my layout of the Red Hot Garden quilt. I also checked out my fabric and my favorite one is big enough for the back! I have decided to do the binding in the green fabrics, but I don't know how many hexagon I will need just yet. One step closer, yeah!

I have also dusted off my other grandmothers flower garden which is a 3/4" hexagon with 30's fabric. I am hoping to make it a queen size, but I may not have enough background fabric. I have some pictures in my older posts. When I switch over working on the 30's flowers, I will repost the progress on the quilt. Marking things off my list feels good!