Sunday Quilt Inspiration: YELLOW

 Although we've gotten a few rain storms here, they are short lived and before you know it, the sun is drying things up again. We are talking about a brilliant, sweltering, yellow sun. I doubt that it's any brighter at the equator. Regardless, I've been thinking yellow today. The steam on the concrete only adds a hazy, mushiness to the yellow. It's bright y'all. I thought I'd share the glory...

And a couple of yellow quilts to add to the glow. Don't forget about my "heart, quilts" board!

To See Such Fun ~~ finished!

And another finish! This little quilt is a 62 inch square of pink and yellow scraps to be given away this weekend. 

The pattern is Amanda Jean Nyberg's from her book No Scrap Left Behind. (The link goes directly to the QAL.)  I made another quilt (here) during her June Quilt Along in 2017. 

I made several changes with this quilt. Mostly I turned everything into  4½" blocks and then sewed those into strips. The center sections create large four-patch blocks, the cornerstones are made of broken dishes blocks and finally I made the 4½" strips in to square blocks and didn't worry about which way they got turned. 

My original version of this quilt
following Amanda Jean's directions.

Nope, wait. One more difference is that I didn't use the on-point setting. Hmm, is this still Amanda Jean's pattern? I'm not sure, but it was definitely inspired by her design.

To quilt it, I decided to use some of the curvy medium-sized motifs that are such fun to drop in. They are smooth and easy and, if I keep them large enough, are easy to see and appreciate. The quilt should be really soft and wrinkly when it gets washed. I haven't washed it because it's going to its new home this weekend after the church fair. We will have a silent auction, which I agreed to run, so I decided to add a quilt to the mix. (More on the fair and the silent auction early next week.)

For the back I used a fuchsia linen and some lighter, wide pink strips left over from previous projects. Every bit of fabric came from my stash or scraps. My latest roll of batting came in just days before I loaded the quilt, which was great timing. 

The title To See Such Fun is from a line of the "Hey Diddle, Diddle" nursery rhyme, so this quilt goes into that series. I just couldn't resist the title because everything about the quilt is simply fun.

		Quilt Stats
	Name:	To See Such Fun
	Size:	62" X 62"
	Fabrics:	4½” pink strip scraps, 4½” yellow scraps
	Pattern:	Inspired by Amanda Jean Nyberg QAL
	Backing:	Pink cottons and linens from stash
	Batting:	100% Cotton
	Binding:	Pink scraps from stash
	Quilting:	Mid-size curvy graffitti motifs

Oh, the LINK UPS!

The Scrappy Camper, who has her first linky party today. Good luck, Amy!
Alycia Quilts - Quiltygirl blog for Finished Or Not Fridays 

My Quilt Infatuation for Needle and Thread Thurdays

Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?

From Bolt to Beauty for Beauties Pageant

Cave in Yellowstone ~~ an art quilt FINISHED!

A couple of years ago we visited Yellowstone National Park and much of the Great Northwest from the Dakotas to Montana and points south all the way back to Louisiana. (The post marking the beginning of that trip is here.) Although we have visited over half of the States, the beauty of our country amazes me. And I hope we live to visit the ones that are unbuttoned on our Across America map.

The beauty of the West, especially Yellowstone, has really stayed with me. I love looking at the photos and decided a while back that I needed to create an art quilt that would capture some of the beauty of those mountains.

 This is the sixth art quilt in this series. Because they are hand quilted with little space between the lines, it takes quite some time to complete one. Nevertheless, I really like this one. 

The yellow colors and striations, the darkness of small caves and rock shelters, peaks against a brilliant sky are all part of what I had hoped to capture in this quilt. 

Other pieces in the series: 
Indigo Dusk
Sunset in Utah
Big Sky in Montana
Southwest Strata
Louisiana Swamp at Sunset

I am enjoying making these art quilts and am not sure I've gotten it out of my system. In fact, I have the next one planned. Want a sneak peak this week?

Cotton Robin round 3

Round 3 of the Cotton Robin bee came some time before school let out, and I had plenty of time to finish it and get it out to it's happy owner. This is how it started:

Photo credit to Cotton Robin blog

But it went through two rounds before arriving at my doorstep, so there were some pretty awesome quilters feeding ideas to me through their work. Of course, no one told me what to do in words. Let's just not open that squirmy can.

The first border is the colorful balloon one with a black background. The second border is the HSTs in yellow and white. First I tried a black binding, thinking it would frame the piece, but I didn't like the additional darkness. In the end I had to go with the yellow for an extra punch of brightness. Plus, I had a yellow that came from the same line...sort of the fabrics making the decision there. But whatever. I liked it. 

Quilting is all custom quilting: SITD around the bird with some weird feathery lines that mimic the print on the body, clouds in the blue background, bubbles in the balloon border, and curvy lines in the HSTs. 

The bird needed only one more detail: an eye. You can see in the pictures above that a little beady eye really brings it to life. Strange how a beady eye on one creature is perfect, on another not so much. Take an alligator--when the only thing sticking out of that murky water are those beady eyes, it's creepy.

So this guy got a beady eye (literally a brown bead). I took all kinds of close ups of the bird's face with that eye, but not one the whole quilt. I have no idea why but it's likely the same reason I didn't snap the back of the quilt. Yea, yea, goofy again. You're probably tired of that story, but it's the truest one and I'm sticking to it.  

That wrapped up my work on the Cotton Robin. The only thing left for me was to wait for my own quilt to arrive. It has, so there's a round 4 coming your way in a day or so. How's that for a tease? Are you curious?

From full to finished...almost!

I've spent the last two days cutting scraps into strips and sewing those strips into wide strips.

And then what did I do? Cut the wide strips into blocks, of course. I've been meaning to make a strip quilt using scraps, which (let's face it) I have plenty of. Out came the green scrap bucket and I cut strips of 2½", 2", and 1½". 

This is what the green bucket looks like now. I forgot to take a before picture, but the yellow bucket is a good example of what it looked like.

  
 I tossed a few of those yellow scraps into the quilt, and the quilt found it's name:

X's and O's.

And a project is well on its way to the longarm. Hopefully they will begin their visit tomorrow.

Sunday Quilt Inspiration: HONEY

Yes indeed, honey and honey bees! (of course) Starting with little honey-colored fabrics, accessories, even a honey covered barn...

You know it...honey-colored, honey covered, honey bee, honey everything in the way of quilts.

Lots of honey on Pinterest, y'all. Go take a look!