Another quilt finish and a thrift store find

The next quilt I'm featuring that I finally got quilted and bound is Alex's quilt.  I blogged about it before and after way over-thinking the corner squares and getting some much needed intervention and advice from some good quilting friends (thanks Joan and Kim) I finished the top, layered it, and promptly added it to the pile.  I finally quilted it on Sunday and it came out great.

So far I free motion a meander over my quilts.  But, I'm going to learn to do other things.  Somday...

Yesterday I popped into the thrift store on post becasue I was too early for the post office.  I looked around and didn't really see anything, but I had some more time to kill, so I kept looking and my eye finally fell on something in the bedding/linen section.  It is a hand crocheted coverlet/throw and it is marvelous.

Here is part of it.  It looks very LeMoyne star/tumbling blocks, doesn't it?

What is really neat?  The little crocheted pompoms!  They remind me of the fuzzy ball trims that are so popular right now, but they are all crocheted, not fuzzy.  I love it!  I have no idea where I'm going to display it, but I had to have it.  Oh, and one of the volunteers told me she had just put it out on the shelf.  It had been consigned that morning by an older woman who said her mother made it.

Today I'm back to hand stitching binding.  Anyone have any good streaming Netflix recommendations?  Yesterday I finally watched Whalerider--it was really good.

Aloha,
JoAnne

Granny Squares

Another one of this month's finishes.

Maybe you remember seeing this magazine out on the shelves last year?

It is the October 2010 issue.  I picked it up and was taken with the cover quilt.  The story that the designer, Lissa Alexander, provided was that one of her coworkers was going to teach a crochet class, but it couldn't happen right away, so while she waited to learn to crochet, she decided to quilt a granny squares afghan.

This design appealed to me for a number of reasons.  First, my great grandmother crocheted and made granny squares, so it immediately reminded me of her.  While I do know how to knit, I was never able to crochet more than the chain stitch, and yarn is just not my medium.  I love yarn and all the textures and fibers, but it does not love me.  Second, I practically never meet a scrap quilt that I don't like.  And finally, I loved how in constructing this quilt, the value of the fabric was altered in different places in the different blocks to achieve a wide variety.  It was so much fun!

Here is a good example.  I loved doing the outer most fabric of the granny square in an fabric almost matching my background, brown fabric, making some of the squares appear smaller.  I really remember that look in the old granny squares afghans.

Here is the whole thing spread out on my living room floor. (I just love having the balcony above for photographing large quilts!)  I precut all the pieces I needed from the brown (which is a Basic Grey grungy brown--since I scrapbook, I love having fabric that matches the paper I really like to use.)  But when it came to construction, I selected and cut the fabrics for each granny square and then sewed the block one at a time instead of chainsewing several blocks at once.  I will admit that I sort of cheated and used fabrics in similar color and value to what the designer chose for each block, but not always.  It was lots of fun to pull fabrics and make a completely different-looking block each time.  But you should have seen my quilting room--fabric containers and fabrics all over the floor!

The one aspect of the pattern that was a bit tricky--this pieced inner border.  It was all bias, so stitching it between two brown strips was challenging.  It required pinning and lots of careful sewing!  I must have done alright, though, because it lays flat and has the same number of segments on all four sides!

Aloha,
JoAnne