"Summer Flowers" Modern Quilt



I bought the book "Sister Sampler Quilts" by AnneMarie Chany with Christmas money. I had done one of AnneMarie's BOMs in 2015 using 9" blocks and I liked her designs and her instructions. This book has three BOMs and I chose to do the newest one called "Bonfire" in a 9" block. Her version had beige where I have the large floral and I thought that was way too boring so I selected the large floral and added the five recommented number of colors to make the quilt-red, peach/orange, yellow, grass green and turquiose. It now reminds me of summer flowers! It is a BOM which then displayed completed blocks on Instagram (which I'm not on) and on the Gen X Quilters Facebook page. I got to April's block and decided to just make the quilt!
The outside half square triangles, both piecing and quilting them, were rather boring but the blocks were a lot of fun. I hadn't sewed much with curved piecing or string piecing in a long time and both styles add to the quilt. It is machine quilted on my regular sewing machine with white, red and variegated thread.
 
 These are a few of my favorite blocks in which we made two of the same block but in different colorways.
 Some of the curved piecing.
String piecing using a rainbow color layout and it was a great idea using random strips!
I am now going to devote the next several quilt projects to ONLY portrait quilts. I have a few ideas drawn up and I am inspired to do a Prince portrait quilt. I have purchased the "unofficial" Purple Rain fabric from Cherrywood Hand Dyed Fabrics, from Minnesota, for that project. I am playing around with photo manipulation to posterize and pixel pictures for a different technique. I'm never bored.....!

It's Summer So I'm Gardening More and Quilting Less!

It is Summer and I live in Zone 4
which gives me 4-5 months of gardening time. I am quilting less because I love my cottage garden with the whimsical artsy garden art that myself and my boyfriend have created through the years.



This is the front yard decked out for the Fourth of July-it gets a Northern Exposure so not a lot of sun and therefore all the hostas.

I am sewing two BOMs I found on Pinterest and Facebook. The one in the top photo is from Facebook and is from Michelle Foster and her Aiming for Accuracy II-Quilt Along called Mishka's Playground. It began in March and on the 7th and 21st of each month a new set of small (8"-9") blocks are emailed to me and I can make them anyway I want. There is a FB page where we can post our work as well as view all the fun and varied versions of this pattern. I chose a white background and colorful fabrics with white polka dots. Sometimes the I disagree with the instructions and do my own thing!!

This BOM is called Moccasin by Gen X Quilters and the designer is Ann Marie Chany. It is smaller than the first BOM I talked about at 67" square. The blocks are 9" in size and each pattern makes two of the same block but with different color ways. This BOM is more "modern" and I was totally enjoying it until June and July's blocks. The triangle block which is on the bottom of the photo was a huge problem using templates. I haven't used a temple since the 90s and it was still not a fun thing to do-not the most accurate triangles and I cut off the tips but I'm not re-doing it! There is a Facebook group but not many people post their work there. There is a Flickr group but I'm not into that. The BOM sample was in pinks, purples, orange, indigo, white and brown and I chose to do cooler colors plus lime green.

These blocks are from a book called Arcadia Avenue by Sassafras Lane Designs. Each block is 18" in diameter and there are 12 paper pieced blocks. This pattern appeared very fun because of the use of the color wheel and I intend to use it in my color theory teachings. Once I began I realized each block was very slow going because of the pre-cutting all the fabric and making 1 wedges that are difficult to put together. I planned to make 9 blocks but since they take so long to make I am leaning towards only 4 blocks!

Lastly, I am in an art quilt group formed through Facebook and every other month we create a small wall hanging based on a theme one of the members. The current theme is due July 31st and is called "snowflake." This photo is a sneak peek-I used sparkly plastic snowflakes from The Dollar Tree as a crown in the hair and a "statement" necklace on the clearance rack at Gordman's in Green Bay, WI and hand tacked it upside down. I used a few novelty snowflake fabrics, all cool colors with some shiny and some fuzzy fabrics. I will share the full photo on July 31st.
I have had a few ladies request I convert two of my quilts into patterns and I intend to but with the summer weather I just can;t be inside on the beautiful sunny days. It will happen!