Good Fortune is a top!

It is all together! I met my goal of having the top completed by the end of January. The last 3 years, I have not been able to complete my tops by the end of January. The tops languished until right before the next mystery came out. Not this year. I was determined to get it done. Now to get it onto the longarm and quilt it. This one is for my bed, so I'm eager to get it finished. I'm going to piece the back with leftover scraps and it will be bound with the background fabric.  The outside border floats with the light binding and looks very nice. My colors turned out very well I think. The quilt just kind of glows. Love it! Great design, thank you Bonnie Hunter.

The colors are actually brighter in person. I took several pictures, but they all turn out muted like this picture.

I've been working on a few other things. One is a wall hanging for our local quilt show. It was a bee challenge. We all began with the same 5 inch square. This is what I chose to make. A friend is doing the hand quilting for me. The design is based on a picture of a pillow I saw online. The back is a floral with big mums in the orange color. I named it Bright Blossom.

The second thing I began working on is a red and white quilt. Someone posted a picture of a quilt from a movie she had watched on Quiltville Open Studio. A few minutes later, a very talented quilter had posted the blocks with measurements and fabric requirements. Thank you, thank you!  A red and white quilt has been on my backlist for a long time. I just loved this one. The focus fabric has red roses all over it  The rest is a coordinating red batik. The background is various white on whites. Two blocks are made and I'm getting the rest cut and kitted up to take to a quilt retreat next weekend. Hopefully, if all the pieces are cut and ready to sew, I can get most of the blocks made and ready to put together. That is the goal anyway! 

In other news, I finally finished the binding for Ringo Lake. I am very pleased with the way it turned out. This quilt will also be in our local quilt show.

Update since I wrote this post. I was invited to a quilt retreat where I finished putting my red and white quilt top together. This picture shows it before I sewed all the blocks together. Now on to deciding on the borders. Love the way this one is turning out too! I'm calling it Laying in a Bed of Roses.

Be sure to check out all the other quilts at Quiltville .

Good Fortune The Reveal

First, let me say, I love the look of this quilt. I like six of the mystery quilts I have done, but this is well on it's way to being my favorite. And, best of all, I like my colors too! I knew I wanted to use one fabric for each color this year and I chose batiks to get the look of movement and variation of color without having to go scrappy. Don't get me wrong, I love scrappy and Bonnie's colors are always great, but I needed something different this year. Actually, I was not crazy about the green I chose, but it has worked out well.

The first thing I did when I saw the reveal was make one of each block. They looked like this...

Ok, I love the look of the blue one, but the green one was not exactly what I had in mind. Too much green, I wanted more of the lavender. So, remember these?

Well, I cut them up and made these......

I like this block so much better! Here they are side by side.  (Knew I'd find a place for those shorties, I even have a good start on Emerald City in String Frenzy.)

           

I was able to get a few of each block made so I can really see what it is going to look like. I think with the border, it is going to be just perfect. I am not changing the green triangles in the split half square triangle border, so I'm thinking I may try to add a skinny lavender border somewhere. Have to figure that out later.

I'm hoping to have the top finished by early next week. I still have to finish the binding on one side of On Ringo Lake and I don't want this one to take a year to finish. Check out Bonnie Hunter's blog to see more.