Random Sunday

Bee blocks

I have been neglecting my long term projects, but keeping busy with the smaller ones in the last few weeks.  Instant gratification.  Here is my bee block for August, finished on the first of the month!

Patti of Retired to Quilt wanted a Woven block based on this tutorial.  It was a quick block to make and I am looking forward to seeing all those blocks woven together.

She wanted the strips to be in these colours: gray, green, medium to dark blue, pink or purple.  Well that was easy!  Much easier than Pam's request for July.  The task was easy enough: sew a bunch of rectangles together to form a 18" x 4.5" strip which she will use to form a X block (the end of the strip will be trimmed in an angle which is why it is OK if it is narrower).  The problem was the colours.  A wonderful palette of minty green and taupe was completely absent from my stash.  Thank goodness Pam sent a few strips to get us started!  That one was finished on the very last day of July... I don't think the next picture is blog-worthy, but what the heck...

What, a rug?

What else has been happening in the sewing room?  Not just quilty things.  Ever since I saw a tutorial for a rug made of recycled t-shirts, I knew I wanted to make one.  What better way to use the growing pile of kids' sweat pants from the "to repair" pile?  It is much more fun to cut them up and transform them into a rug. 

But where was the tutorial?  I did not pin it, nor did I make note of where I saw it, so I just "winged it".  After a couple evenings, I had this:

The original goal was to make a 18" x 24" rug, but I ran out of fabric and to be perfectly honest, it was a bit boring.  In the end, it finished half that size at about 12" x 18".  I still have not found the original tutorial that inspired me but in writing this post, I went looking for something that would give you the method and I found this one.  Funny that our colours are very similar!

One of the kids thought this would be a perfect rug for a cat (but... we don't have a cat!), but another one was happy to try it on.  Feels good on the toes!

 

Not sure where this one will end up.  Right now, it is in our entrance where it does not match anything, and is not large enough to host more than one pair of adult-size shoes...  Oh well!

Work in progress dilemmas

My latest small project is currently in progress.  Back in January, one of my goals for the year was to send one quilty gift to an unsuspected recipient.  Well I knew just which recipient I wanted to surprise with a gift, and though I wasn't sure what to make, I knew it had to have a tree on it.  I started with a low volume slab for the background:

Then, I appliquéd a tree (raw-edge appliqué and quilted at the same time) and continued some of the quilting lines to make additional roots and branches:

Then I did some echo quilting:

And this is where I am now:

The next step is to add leaves.  Dilemma number one: Should I go with fabric, thread, or buttons?  I think I am leaning towards this:

The second dilemma is, do I make this into a pillow (again?), or into a wall hanging ?  It will finish at 16 x 16.  The recipient is not a quilter.  It is someone I want to thank, but not someone I know well.  I don't know what their house looks like, their decorating style, their colour preferences.  Are they the type of people to hang a mini quilt on their wall?  Would it go well in their décor?  Could they use this to top a table?  Do they like toss pillows?  Would the buttons interfere if used as a pillow? 

Decisions, decisions...  What do you think?