I'm chipping away at the UFO pile

 or the PhD (project half done) pile with these four quilts, which are quilted and squared, but not yet bound.

Some of these projects are three or four years old  and they've used up a lot of scraps.

The bottom quilt is a string one I started waaay back, and finally machine quilted with my Juki, the top one at left has been waiting for a finish for three years, the roses have been a work in progress for too long, and the blue batik word quilt is a banner I started in January and finally finished handquilting last week. Now on to the binding!

pretty quilted flowers

My blanket of roses lap quilt was included in a Flickr gallery of floral quilts. Head over here to see the variety of free-pieced roses and flowers. My garden is slowly bursting into bloom with a late spring here, so I'm going to leave you with a weekend garden of quilts.

blanket of roses

I just finished piecing the green borders on my bed of roses throw. This entire quilt is free pieced -- no appliques, no paper piecing, and most of all, no patterns. I used a curved piecing technique combined with lots of free-piecing abandon to get the various greens on. Yes, there are some ripples. I'm trusting that some more steam and lots of quilting will take care of those. These were originally inspired by Andrea when we took an on-line class together three years ago.

A bouquet of roses for a weekend away

I just returned from my annual quilt retreat. I had a fairly productive weekend, sewing away at my Featherweight, and one of the projects I worked on was putting together this bed of roses. I had 13 free-pieced roses from several years ago, and I finally put them together. I had been stymied by the irregular shapes, until I realized I could piece them if I cut the outer edges into rounded shapes and joined them in a curved piecing method.

Here they are on a variety of green fabrics. I'm still pondering how to sew them onto the backing -- perhaps a combination of curved piecing and applique, or something else.

As always, the fun part of sewing with lots of other quilters is the cooperation in laying out designs and the many opinions that make a good quilt great. Here Heather and Laura, both from my guild, are laying out the Irish chain Laura was piecing.

Audrey, another guild member, put together this dresden plate quilt in soft colours.

Here's a close-up:

I've got lots more to show later this week.

Stars and Roses?

I've made a huge bouquet of roses -- 14 of them so far. I like them just as a bouquet, joined with green, but then I thought the colours might go with my wonky stars, now sewn together in a wonky nine-patch, waiting for borders.

So I tried that, laid out on my sewing room floor on black yardage. It definitely needs something more, but this is a start. These have been fun to make -- all of the stars and the roses have been made from scraps. I did cut into fat quarters and bigger pieces for the star backgrounds and star points, but the roses were all strips in my huge scrap bag. This could grow to a double-sized quilt quickly, but does it work?

I was thinking of a Gwen Marsten combo of piecing and applique here, but I'm open to possibilities. Or I have the beginnings of two great quilts.

Summer roses

Inspired by Andrea over at the Lazy Gal Summer class, I decided to see if I could make roses bloom indoors. I got out my strings and scraps and started sewing. So far I have a bouquet of seven, most about seven to eight inches across, except for the pink/purple one in the middle. I've figured out the roses look better if I start with a five or six-sided shape in the middle. Quite fun, and much more interesting than my real work on a hot July day.