WIP Wednesday: tulip wall hanging

This week I'm working on a tulip wall hanging. It's got some appliques. I am learning applique this winter. I'm slowly getting better at it, and finally beginning to enjoy it. It feels so slow to me compared with strip piecing/quilting. But sometimes I think it looks better than simple piecing.

 The tulip blocks were rescued from a friend that didn't like the colors. She had decided to throw then away! An outrageous waste of perfectly good blocks. Honestly, I'm not crazy about the top pattern either (I think it's too large for these flowers), but they are still worth using.  On a whole, I think it's a cute wall hanging.  I love the butterflies flitting in amongst the flowers.  It jubilantly shouts, "spring has come!"  Finally....

Do you ever throw out entire blocks? I don't. I do have a bin with blocks that didn't fit into my project... Then I make them into something else later. I have several unused blocks right now. Do you?

Some of these were left-over after finishing a quilt.

Some I rejected due to color combinations.  

But all of them are useful for some project!

From my scrap-block bin... wrinkled now, but still ready for use--4 different projects

left-over blocks from 3 different projects

the Greek-key is a trial block which  I decided to make smaller; cupcake is left over; butterflies a rescue

WIP: Check out what others from Etsy Team Quiltsy are working on. 

WIP: Earth Tone Brown Quilt

It's WIP Work in Progress Wednesday.  Already!  Where does the time go?  Well, I haven't done much sewing/quilting this last week.  Not sure what I've been doing, but I've been busy!  Aren't we all?  Of course, I'd be perfectly happy quilting for 3-5 hours every day.  I love it so much!  But, I digress....

What am I working on or finished this week?  I've quilted a baby quilt, started a new Jelly-roll quick quilt, cut out and started 20 crayon rolls, and designed and sewed on giant crayon roll.

I did some machine quilting and finally finished my frog quilt. I quilted around the frog, and made little webbed feet with the quilting.  I free-hand quilted some dragonflies/butterflies in each corner.  I quilted around the inside and outside of each of the 15 water drop-splashes.  It turned out pretty well, but I wish the splash appliques showed up better.  Next time I'll get it right. 



 I used matching green minky for the back.  I love the feel of it!  So incredibly soft and snugly.   And, I've found that it holds up well wash after wash without "piling" like polar fleece.

 I also used a thin 80/20 (cotton/polyester) batting.  It is my latest favorite.  I like to have a little polyester to give it a little depth or bounce so that the quilting shows up more than it does on simple cotton batting.

 I love this pattern.  It wasn't very challenging, which is great for a quick gift.  Although, I'm still new to applique, so that took me some time.  I used the fusible webbing to iron each water drop.  Then I stitched around them in the feather stitch.  I think it looks nice, not great, but good.

 I struggled with choosing a color for the applique.  I really wanted to do a dark green to enhance the splashes, but I think it didn't look good in the feather stitch.  If I had done the satin stitch, I would have gone with the darker thread.  I'm not sure if a lighter thread would have helped.  Any suggestions? 




As a glorious reward for finishing my quilting project, I started a new jelly-roll quilt.  It has been great fun to make.  I have half the blocks done and most of the strips together. It is such a great pattern!

I got a special order from Etsy for a 120 crayon roll in teals and blues. It has fun dragonflies and little star-bursts of white.  I love this fabric!!!  I made it two days ago.  It turned out really cute!  I like it a lot.  I made it like the regular crayon rolls except I stacked the layers 5 rows high to accommodate all of the crayons.  This made it rather tall, so I added an extra ribbon to help keep it closed.

Other than that, I've started on 20 crayon rolls for a local Mom and Kid shop.  It's a terrific little store called Blueberry Baby.  I'm really excited to have some of my creations there!  It's rather fun to make so many!  I haven't finished any yet.  I went through my kid's fabric stash and choose matching fabrics.   But, I got them all cut out yesterday.  I have gotten about half of them half-way done.  Sorry, too messy to take pictures this week.  Maybe next week I'll have pictures.

I need to finish them this week.  I have a large variety of fabrics for these crayon rolls from monkeys to blueberries to musical instruments and butterflies.  I was wondering if anyone would like a solid color crayon roll?  My kids seem to like really busy fabrics (often too much for my taste) and they don't really get excited about solids.  My other thought was that perhaps the Mothers or Fathers are the ones picking out the crayon rolls, so I should try to please them instead of the kids.  What do you think?  I'd really really like your advise! 

That's all for now.  Take care one and all.