"We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad." "How do you know I'm mad?" asked Alice. "You must be," said the cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."--Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
It's a weekend of celebration in my house hold this weekend. I've always said if I could get my daughter to the age of 18 and graduated from high school...I would have accomplished something. And finally my friends, I have done just that. Even through all the insaneness of school events and the big day itself, I managed to sneak in a bit of sewing time.
The end of the month is quickly approaching and my May Island Batik project isn't finished. I'm calling it the Lusty Month of May Quilt and I am itching for a finish. Quilting started this week and it has been all about the lines. Lines are modern, right?
It's Saturday again! I imagine right now I'm probably (hopefully) sitting in the shade taking in the sights and sounds of the 2019 Strawberry Festival Parade. I will have my tissues with me because it will the last time my daughter marches down Strawberry Lane as part of the mighty BU Band. My heart swells just thinking about it. Today I am full of hometown pride and mommy pride.
Needless to say, not much in the way of sewing happened in my world this week. Actually none at all. I did however help prepare quilts for judging at our annual quilt show.
Last week I was basking in a new love affair with beautiful fabrics. We flirted. We went out. And it looked like this. Bits and pieces of bright beautiful half square triangles.
But with all relationships, you come to the point where you have to decide to take it to the next level and we were there. It was time to come together and really build something.
My own little soap opera documenting my work on the May Island Batik Challenge. It's full of passion, wondering eyes and drama...like every good soap opera should be.
I had been seeing my current May challenge project for a few months. I really thought we had hit it off. It had everything I loved, open space for quilting and beautiful simple colors.
The prints on the purple and black Island Batik fabrics made my heart skip a beat, but something was just off for me. Then it entered my life. A quilt I innocently found on Pinterest and I knew I had to have it. I ordered the book. Try as I may, I wanted it to work for me and my original quilt. I told my fabrics the direction I wanted us to go and they were honest with me, they didn't quite see my vision. They didn't know if they could be the new quilt I imagined in my head. Then she walked in...
Welcome to UFO Busting...where we celebrate UFO's we spot and finish, get distracted by new stuff and hopefully just have a good time. We had several UFO's flying around last week, but we will get to them in a few. Love is in the air over here. I have a new crush and I'm crushing hard.
I am wine-ing and dinning this Island Batik Moroccan Bazaar strip set pretty hard. From the moment I set eyes on it, I knew it was for me. It totally made me walk away from a project that could have been, in hopes of something new and beautiful. We've had our first quilty date, but that's for another post. I'm super excited to say, that I've started to work on a secret project for August, but I can't say anything other than that and got caught up on all the quilt-a-longs I'm participating in. I have all my pieces together for Little Bunny Quilt's Daisy Chain Mystery Quilt, just in time for new instructions to come out on Monday.
And the next three blocks for Pat Sloan's A Flower Bouquet are all caught up.
Wednesday the next block in Pat's Out of This World Mystery Quilt was released and landed finished on my table.
Being all caught up on everything so early in the month has me thinking it's high time I pull another UFO out to finish. The big question being which one?
Speaking of UFO's I'm going to take my inspiration from last week's party and get to work. Last week, Janice from Color, Creating and Quilting pulled out and finished piecing a UFO from a few years ago.
She created it using charm packs and it is full of cowboy fun! This UFO isn't the only thing she's wrangled up over there either. Oh, no. She's been building quilty houses like a mad lady that will leave you feeling the rainbow. Make sure you click over and check out all the fun stuff she has going on.
Next up we have Vasudha at Storied Quilts and her UFO finish of Hopscotch Tiles.
Not only did she celebrate an April finish of her Island Batik challenge quilt, April Flowers, she also claims a One Monthly Goal finish of piecing this UFO from over two years ago. I LOVE how those greens and burnt oranges pop against the white background. Make sure you hop over and congratulate her on finishing up both projects!
Now it's your turn. Let's see what you've been up to this week. Link up below and tell us all about it.
Come back on Monday and I think we will have an episode of As The Quilt Turns or maybe The Cut and The Pieced. Will I catch the attention of the Island Batik strip set? Will I be able to convince it to let me chop it up and grow it into something bigger? Or will a ten inch stack steal whisk me away? You'll just have to come back to find out.
I promise this is not a declaration of resistance...we will be making it modern this month! This is a story of how designs/project ideas can change. Maybe this is the story of a squirrel, because I really abandoned my original plan for something totally different.
When I got my shipment of Island Batik goodies and the list of challenges for the year, I went into panic design mode trying to figure out what I could do with the fabrics I was sent and make sure there was enough to go around. I seriously thought I had all my projects planned out from February till August, and for the most part I do. However, now that I'm into things a few months, I'm relaxing a bit and finding distractions.
For the month of May, we are challenged to make a crib size or larger quilt using the Modern Quilt Guild's definition of modern quilt;
the use of bold colors and prints, high contrast and graphic areas of solid color, improvisational piecing, Minimalism, expansive negative space, alternate grid work--Modern Quilt Guild
So this meant I had some work to do...come up with something modern. Ok, I can do this. One thing I wanted was lots of negative space and something easy to work with...maybe half square triangles? I was doing some browsing on Pinterest and some beautiful woodworking pieces crossed my path. I found myself thinking, this would be a wonderful quilt! So I went to work playing around with the design and translating it to fabric...fabrics I had to work with that met my quilty budget, that is. So after much playing this is what I came up with.
I think this quilt would work well for the challenge, but for some reason I just wasn't in love. I'm actually quite proud of it, and think it will still see life. Maybe it's just very different than my normal style? Maybe it felt too similar to stuff I've already made for the challenge? Lot's of points and purple (and I love purple don't get me wrong).
I was however committed to making this project for the challenge...then this happened...My friend was over at the house while I was gathering my fabrics to start cutting. When I told her I was working on the challenge project for May she busted out in song (life is truly a musical if you let it be). I was like what are you signing??? She's like, "It's from the musical Camelot. Don't you remember?" I totally didn't remember. I should have remembered this song.
I just looked at her and said, "I have to make a quilt for the lusty month of May, don't I?" So I put my fabrics back in the box and scrapped my triangle idea. I regrouped with a new plan in honor of my new life/relationship status and the month of May..."That darling month when everyone throws self-control away." Are you curious? Think of this as quilty flirting because "It's May, it's may, the month of great dismay, when all the world is brimming with fun, wholesome or un-" It's May!!
