Quilt Finish #2 This Week ~ Gingham Porch Quilt #5

 Hi Quilting Friends!  This is just a quick little post to share my second finished quilt for the week, the yellow gingham porch quilt. 

As with all the others made this year, I used the scraps from the front a little extra solid white to make the backing.

The solid white binding was attached by machine.  The plan was to make 12 of these gingham quilts this year.  As usual I can't stick to a plan.  This is quilt #5 and it means I'm behind schedule.  I should have 7 finished.  I could play catch up but I think the homeless quilts are more important than me decorating my front porch.  I also had planned to finish UFO's this year.  So the gingham quilts will take a back seat to the homeless quilts.  I think I'll just keep making the charity quilts until I run out of franken batting then work on my UFO's so I can produce more batting scraps for charity quilts.

Until next time...

I hope you find time to stitch up something sweet!

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Planning for February

 New fabrics and two new quilts are in the plans for February.  These red, white and blues were impulse buys yesterday when shopping for pillow inserts for the grandkids reading pillows.

Remember my bright idea to make a small gingham quilts for my rocking chair on the front porch?  Well I didn't get one made in January so why not make two in February.  I couldn't resist the polka dots and cherry fabric.  The gal at the store was looking at me kinda funny when I pulled the bolts of fabric down and walked about 20 feet away to look at them from afar.  I needed to make sure there was going to be enough contrast to make a gingham quilt.  It's not as much contrast as I wanted but it's the best I could do with the options at Hobby Lobby.  No reason to buy quilt shop fabrics for a quilt that will be seeing all kinds of weather.

The blue fabrics have great contrast.

The plan is to cut and piece both of these quilts at the same time.  It'll be a nice quick project to give me a break from quilting the current UFO.

The Amour de Cerise quilt has been giving me a little trouble.  Let's hope this isn't a sign of things to come.  The problem is more me than it is the quilt.  Finding the right quilting design is taking far longer than I thought.  The one below requires more measuring and marking than I would like so I decided to try something else.

My brain just couldn't get away from the complex designs.  Again this is too much marking and would be time consuming.

Crosshatching is one of my favorite ways to quilt a quilt so let's go with that.  It's fairly easy to mark a quilt for the lines.  However one inch crosshatching is too much and doesn't leave room for imperfections.

I opted to go with two inch crosshatching.  The imperfections are harder to spot.  The arrow below shows the last line made on this quilt top.  The squares on a couple rows will actually be rectangles. It will blend right in and not be noticeable when the quilt is finished.  The quilting in the quilt blocks will be free motion so there's no need to mark anything.  Now to finally get this girl on the quilt frame.

Until next time...

I hope you find time to stitch up something sweet!

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Easy Gingham Quilt ~ Free Pattern

 It's no big secret I adore gingham.  So this new trend of large buffalo plaid everything makes me very happy.  Last fall after months of not sewing a thing I broke the ice by making a very simple gingham quilt for my the rocking chair on my front porch.

Since the quilt would be out in the weather it didn't make sense to  use expensive quilt shop quality fabric.  The cheaper the better.  A quick dig through my very small stash of orange resulted in the light peachy colored fabric.  Not exactly sure where I acquired this one, I'm pretty sure it was in one of my estate sale hauls years ago.  Probably dating back to the late 80's or early 90's.

A small piece was cut from the corner, about a 2 inch square, stuck it in my jeans pocket and off to Walmart I go.  I needed some pantry staples like sugar and flour so I could sneak these fabrics into the food shopping.  Mr. Podunk never questions charges on the debit card for groceries. 😉  

The dark orange and background are both Walmart Waverly fabric. I purchased a little more background fabric than needed for the quilt top so the extra could be used along with the peach fabric to make the backing.  And a little extra of the dark orange for the binding.  

The entire quilt from start to finish was about a total of 12 hours over a 3 day period.  The plan is to make one for every season.  Well let's be honest I want more than the four seasons, I want one in every color!  The rainbow and more!  

The fabrics below are the ones I choose for a Christmas gingham quilt.  But it was never made.  The thought has crossed my mind to make one a month in between my UFO busting.  A good one for the winter months would be blue.  What do you think?  I think a good dig through the blue stash is in the plan for today.

If you would like to make one of these you can find the FREE pattern at Quilters Candy.  The quilt finishes at 55 x 65.

The instructions are well written and easy to follow.  I know it's a simple pattern and most of us could figure it out on our own but why take the time to do the math when someone has already done it for us! 

Until next time...

I hope you find time to stitch up something sweet!

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