Coming up with a plan - K's quilt

So it's been a little while since blocks have started coming in for K's quilt, and I've been figuring out how to put them on the shelves.   This week I took down my PoD2K15 Dark Arts quilt from my wall board and started configuring the layout.... a quick peek...

I like how it's coming together.  There has been some conversations on the best ways to quilt this type of project, and this being my 6th version of this quilt (lol that made me chuckle), I am creating a tutorial on how I'm putting it together so keep your eyes open! (I'll update this with a link when it's done) :)

Mail's Here Monday!

This week we got more fun blocks!  I love seeing the purples that come in.  (just in case you're wondering - we're going to shelve them in gradients, allowing for a subtle ombre to happen in the background!)

Making the Mermaid - K's quilt

My friend K and I are a lot alike - we're both landlocked mermaids who wish we could spend more time at the beach and near the waves.  I knew I couldn't pull this quilt together without adding at least one personal mermaid touch - and so I hunted down THIS pattern over at fandominstitches.com and put her together.  (side note:  I would love to do a set of these, one in reverse for some bookends maybe?)

I always start by laying out fabrics to play with color and contrast.  The pattern has her nekkid-ish, so I revamped it a little and added a clamshell (that was seriously a lot of work - if I do add these as bookends on something I'm doing, I'll plan to give her a washed out green textured skin and call it a day)

3 1/2 hours of work later - and I finally got her put back together.  I always have this angst about remembering to give myself the 1/4 inch seam allowance so I can sew it back together!  but it worked.

Isn't she lovely?  She measures out about 7.5 inches tall, which made putting her in to a block with some of our fun gift quilt mail pretty easy! :)

Hunger Games...

I've been slowly but surely taking on the Hunger Games quilt squares designed by Lil at liljabs.com and thought I'd show some of the progress...

HG - Pattern Testing District 5

So I am playing a bit with a new HG square for this quilt.  I'm still in the dark as far as how I'm putting this whole thing together, but I have a few ideas.

This pattern was put together with a red alphabet set, and a green alphabet set - Gotta love that liljabs LOVES all those little pieces!  Slow and steady!

Putting all those little bits together really took some time.  I feel like on squares like this it's important to remove paper as you go, and trim seams down to 1/8th an inch to avoid bulky seams.  I read somewhere that you can "hammer" those bulky spots too to help reduce, but I'm too chicken to do it.

Just a little more.....

and finally - whala!  I've got to work on my own lining up skills (thinking that switching to clips over quilt pins may help).  It's not perfect, but I'm happy enough with it.