Summer in December?

What you haven't heard of Summer in December? Well, there's Christmas in July, and since I just finished my picnic quilt I figure why not Summer in December.... maybe it'll catch on, whadaya think?

I stuck to my tried and true 1/4" off the seams quilting, this time I quilted parallelograms into hte center doublehourglass section, and for the wonky words, I just did simple parallel lines as I dindn't want to the quilting pattern to distract from the words.

She's all quilted and washed, gotta love the wrinkly goodness! Only 5 months late... or maybe 7 months early?!

Out of Season

So... my month with the MMSB bee was December.... plenty of time to have a picnic quilt ready for this summer..... um yeah, right!

For last few days I`ve been "playing" with white scraps, to create these wonky blocks.

They are fillers for between the wonky words outer border.

By the time I had made the scrappy filler blocks and two thin borders to give the words more breathing room, this is all I had left of my white fabric stash...

I think the biggest piece is only 1"x 3"... talk about luck! But, I think all the fiddling was worth it...

We are now into rainy September... so I guess our inaugural picnic will have to be next summer!

Black or white... or rainbows all over

I've been contemplating the borders for the picnic quilt. My original plan was to do a thin black border between the double hourglass blocks and the wonky words...


But I've been wondering if it is too harsh...

So then I was thinking of skipping the black and going straight from the double hourglass to the words... but I think that something is missing.

So now I'm thinking maybe doing a pieced border which continues the rainbow gradient of the words and the double hourglass blocks... hmmm

Serendipity is....

Serendipity is pulling out your wonky letter blocks and finding out that you have exactly enough to border your double hourglass blocks in exactly the colours needed ...

Summer is coming!

With the weather finally warming up, and the big move almost here (1 week tomorrow and I'm back home!), the drive to make some forward movement on my WIP list continues.

There's something about having to pack things up and not having access to them for a weeks while they are in transit that makes me desperate to spend time with them... even though I havn't touched them in months!

So, since the last of the hourglass blocks arrived, I spent an evening sewing them all up.



I was originally thinking of doing a random layout, but I was worried it would end up too busy once the wonky word border is addded, so I decided to adjust my plan a bit.

With the quick addition of a few blocks my rainbow was born.... I love how the individual blocks shine (thanks MMSB ladies!), but there is still a bit of order and structure.

Yummy! Now, can I get the words finished before I have to pack everything up?...

Trimming the fat

All 49 double hourglass blocks for my Picnic Quilt are finally finished, so tonight I squared them all up to 6.5"

It's a bit tedius- especially without a 6.5" square ruler!- but I actually find squaring up blocks quite therapudic. And the little pile of cast-aways....

a bit like fabric spaghetti (can you tell I live with a chef?!)

Yum, nice and bright and summery. Now it's time to sew them all together!

Filling in the missing pieces

The final few blocks are coming on for my Picnic quilt, so I started up a double hourglass factory (based on this tute) to make up the missing blocks.

I also played around with a few layout ideas ...

But I've got other ideas... once I get the last 2 blocks I'll be able to start sewing them all together.