2014 Sewing Weekend - End Results

(Note - since I didn't get this post edited and ready to publish until now, I'm also using it for Judy's Design Wall Monday.)

Our 2014 Girls' Sewing Weekend is in the books.  Here's a summary of everything we worked on (note - as far as the weekend goes, we count a quilt as "done" as long as the binding is machine-sewn on the front - Mom likes hand-sewing it down and will work on finishing that up after the weekend):

Quilt #1 - I pieced this top before the weekend with leftover pieces from a previous project.  During the weekend it was tied and the front binding applied:

The challenge with this quilt was making sure the school bus fabric stayed right-side up.  I got very lucky in how the leftover pieces worked out so I could use it in the borders!

Quilt #2:  This was designed by L prior to the sewing weekend, but assembled, tied, and front binding applied during the weekend.  I like that he came up with putting the stripes on the sides instead of carrying the pattern out all the way.  It uses some of the "official" fabrics from this year:

Quilt #3:  I assembled this prior to the sewing weekend, from the leftovers from one of our first Linus weekends.  I really love this - it is one that perfectly used up all the leftover scraps and I think it turned out really neat.  I love taking scraps and trying to make them look like something that was planned!  This one has a leftover piece of red flannel as the backing, Sis got it tied, but we didn't bind it during the weekend, because we just didn't have anything that was quite right.  That is part of my homework from the weekend.

Quilt #4:  Designed by D prior to the weekend, again using this year's fabrics.  Assembled, tied, and front-binding completed during the weekend.

Quilt #5:  A kit that I brought home from my Guild's charity table a couple years ago.  It had been partially completed, and then returned and I thought it would be quick to complete.  Um, no.  The seam allowances were about 3/8" instead of 1/4" so the pieced blocks didn't like up with the squares.  Luckily, the previous quilter also had tension problems and in many places I could pull out the whole 6-inch seam without having to cut the threads at all.  I redid much of the piecing, but the whole thing still didn't lay very flat so I knew it should be tied, not quilted.  Then we had to come up with a backing.  I took it to last year's sewing weekend, but Sis vetoed my backing choice (and she really was right - I was trying to make use of something i had on hand, but it wasn't a great choice).  So it came back this year with a backing that was approved.  A second piece of homework for me is to find a binding and get it put on:

Wow - looking at some of these pictures, there is a lot of wrinkles.  The picture above, part of the problem is the piecing issues.  But I think I need to find a different way to store the quilts while we are working on them!

Quilt #6: The "Lemons & Limes" quilt that Mom made.  This one snuck in for the weekend as it is not actually for charity - it is for Mom to keep for herself.  She'd pieced it over the summer, and wanted Sis to do the tying and me to help with getting the binding on the front, so we added it into the rotation.  It is larger than we usually make for Project Linus - it probably counts as 1.5  quilts as far as the number of ties required.  It also used a thicker batting, and felt like it took about 2 years to get the binding on the front because of how big and unwieldy it was!  But, I absolutely love the look - what a great summery quilt:

(As a side note - Mom's goal was to mostly see the yellow and green stripes as opposed to the individual strips.  She really hit that on the yellow - there are three different yellow fabrics.  In person, I don't think that dark green shows up as much as it does in this picture.)

Quilt #7: Another top I had pieced with leftovers from the zigzag quilts a couple years ago.  I think the kids helped me design this one, but I don't remember the specifics.  I did check, but this red wasn't quite right for binding the blue & yellow quilt that still needs binding:  

This one has Thomas the Tank Engine fabric for the backing:

We also did a lot of piecing.  Usually the goal is to make sure the quilts that are pieced new during the weekend are the priority for finishing, but it just didn't work out that way this year.  I had brought the fabric for this year's project, and wanted to do disappearing nine-patches, but play around with the pattern so we could see different things happen based on different combinations.

Top #1: This is from a nine-patch block with blue in the four corners, yellow in the center, and green in the remaining 4 patches.  I had made a similar small quilt a couple years ago, and loved it so much that I kept it.  Sis also mentioned liking it, so I wanted us to have a chance to work on one to give away.  I think this is a really interesting quilt (the yellow is actually brighter than it looks here), and yet very calm:

Top #2:  Same block, some of the same fabrics, much different look!  The nine-patch blocks were all done with orange for the center block, and yellow in the center on each outer edge.  The four corners were purple, blue, green, and pink.  I spent quite a bit of time on the floor trying to get it to look pleasingly random - there was more purple and pink than green and blue, and I am not very good at letting things just be random!  I REALLY like this top, though, and might make another one out of the leftovers:

Top #3:  This used green in two corners, and light teal in two corners.  Yellow in the center, and dark teal for the other four blocks.  This is assembled into rows, but the rows still need to be sewn together.  That's where we will start next year!

So out of the weekend, we made 7 quilts, and 3 more tops, plus worked a little on two other tops that didn't get mention here.  And lots of togetherness and girl-talk and enjoying being with family, which is always a great thing to combine with quilts!