You Make Me Smile Quilt

 In 2019 I stumbled upon this HST triangle quilt on Instagram and I fell for it hard. 

Handmade Myrth

I have a healthy collection of low volume prints and this is the perfect way to showcase them, but I'd be lying if I said I still didn't bring them home from time to time

 I intended to make this a long term leader-ender project, but once I sewed a few, I simply could not stop. I had so much fun pulling colored fabrics from my scraps and stash. Anything goes.

The HST's finish at 2 1/2".  I used my Easy Angle ruler and cut them from short strips. I like to nest my seams and this is what worked best for me and how I pieced the blocks. I just let everything fall where it fell. 

I finished piecing it in September 2020. There are so many fun fabrics in this quilt! 

And as much as I love the whole quilt, the fun really begins when you take a closer look. 

Jackie said that when Sandy was quilting it, she kept calling Jackie over, saying, "Look at this one!"...:and this one!"..."Oh, this one is so fun,"..."Come look at this one!". She used a pattern called Whisper. 

I ordered this fun wide backing from Missouri Star and used a turquoise print from my stash. 

I call this my You Make Me Smile Quilt because when I was piecing it, I would often break out in song: This song

I also sing this when I'm dancing around the kitchen a lot - it's one of my favorites! It's part of the song track of my life.

This quilt finishes at 74x82 and I'm seriously considering making another one because this one was just so much fun and now I want everyone in my life to have one!

Under the Needle: February

February was a mixture of snowy, wet, sunny, windy, cold, warm days. We're delighted with any and all moisture because that means we may actually have a green spring. We don't get many of those around here. February was also a happy month for sewing.

I made more progress on my HST Chaos quilt - it's supposed to be my leader-ender project for the year, but I have become smitten with these little low volume prints and I ended up sewing 20 blocks and laid a few out:

Then I had to re-evaluate as the blocks weren't nesting the way I liked. I decided that my 4-patch base wasn't the best course of action so I spent some time with my seam ripper and remade my blocks in this manner:

I cut and pieced the blocks for the Economie Zoologie quilt that I bought on clearance as a kit from Craftsy a few years back and stitched it into a top. I need to find something a little less colorful for the back because the top is pretty happy:

I cut and pieced this Wildflower pattern that has been in hiding in a bin for too long:

And I cut and pieced this baby quilt top:

I am making the binding for a quilt I picked up from Jackie on Monday:

I also pulled out my bin of potholder pieces and am attempting a machine binding.

Epic fail 😏:

I'll be ripping this out as we settle in to watch rodeo this evening. I have one finish this month: this baseball baby quilt:

It feels good to be making progress on some projects. I actually made a quilty road trip with some friends on Thursday. We went to one of our favorite shops for the first time in 2 years. We had a ball, but would you believe I walked out without buying a single thing? It's true - I walked out empty handed. I looked for a binding and was on the hunt for a couple of backings, but although I do my best to support local quilt shops, I'm not paying $12.99 / yd for backing. I was tempted by numerous pretty fabrics, but I have so many projects ready to work on here that I just could not justify bringing more home. March is going to be busy so I'm not expecting to accomplish as much in regards to sewing, but I'm ok with that. There's more to life than sewing, but a little stitching is good for the soul when things get busy.