Busy Week!

It has been some time since I posted, but I've been up to all sorts of quilty things. :) I took this week off and managed to get quite a few things off my to-do list. Of course, several things were waiting in the wings to take their place, but I still feel like I made progress. My sewing room is a mess to prove it!

I have been working on a T-shirt quilt for a friend's daughter. I'm really excited about how good it looks so far. I always struggle to find a good layout. I've seen several T-shirt quilts that just use blocks of one size and they are ok, but often what makes these special are the T-shirts that people sign at camp or little logos on sleeves, so I'm trying to incorporate them. Tshirt is a rather tricky medium and it comes with a special set of challenges. I backed each shirt with a woven backing though and that really helped with stretching. It's a little bigger than I planned, too which should make quilting it interesting. I just have to find backing now!

This is going to be part of a wedding present for some friends who are getting married over Labor Day Weekend this year. These are Left-Out blocks from a larger quilt I've been working on. I'm stuck on the quilting because I got so far on it, and then took a look at it. It looks great from the back, as maybe you can see from the picture below, but it looks weird from the front because I quilting it in red and every once in awhile it comes through on the lighter yellow fabrics and just looks weird to me. We'll see. I have time to think about it! I DO love how the backing echos the front blocks because I made it into one giant pinwheel of sorts.  Oh, and I have called it "Latino Flair" in honor of the groom, Ryan, who although Irish, always did things with "latino flair".

Next, a house-warming gift for a couple of friends. They are looking for that perfect place, and when they find it, I will give them this as a present. They love birds, so I worked a bird print in. They actually came over for dinner last week and Molly saw some of the fabric out. I had pulled some to look at and just left them so I could come back to them with fresh eyes. But it worked out, because she commented on how beautiful they were, so I think she'll really like it. It could be a table topper or a wall hanging.

Lastly, a rag quilt for myself. I figured I should make something for myself this week. It went really quickly. I saw a similar one over at Sweetwater and thought I'd give it a try. I made mine bigger than they suggested and with wider strips. I think it's great!