Some Friday Finishes

I sew. A lot. But I also like to crochet. I do not knit, but my daughter does. In fact, my first finish is an afghan she knit for me.

 I had bought her a kit for this from Knit Picks about 4 years ago for Christmas. She knit it up and then, I liked it so well, she bought the yarn to make another for me as a Christmas gift. It was all done except the crocheted edge when I went to visit her in August, so I offered to bring it home and crochet the black edge. And now its done. Beautiful.

 This second afghan I crocheted. I began it in 2014 right after I was diagnosed with cancer. I thought I could work on it while I underwent treatment. The pattern is from Lucy at Attic 24 blog. It's called Neat Ripple. It was easy to get started, but hard to keep going and finish. I used Blue Sky cotton yarn.

It's a bit heavier than some other yarns, but I love it and now it is finished too. Hope it cools off soon so we can use them.
My other  finishes for this week are sewing finishes. First, I finished piecing the Cobblestone quilt for my queen size bed.

 I used mostly Improv fabrics by Amy Friend. I love the colors and the basic patterns. I added a couple of other fabrics to the mix just to fill it out.

 It went together pretty quickly, and now I just have to find a backing and figure out how to quilt the thing. There is lots of wide open space here, and I am thinking something with curves.

 Then there is this little cutie. This is the Lucy Tunic by Shwin Designs. This is such a cute pattern and so easy to make. It probably took me about 4 hours to stitch it up. It is designed to be worn over a pair of pants, or shorts, or leggings. You could even pair it with a skirt or dress. Add a long sleeve tee shirt and there you go!

 It criss crosses in the front and is awaiting two button holes and buttons. The cap sleeves have two tiny pleats which help it be eased in, but also add a bit of style to it.

 This is the inside. You can make this as a lined tunic, or you can make it reversible. I am choosing reversible, because two for one? yes please! Also, one thing you can't see is the pockets in the side seams. On both sides and for both fabrics so even if you turn it inside out, you have pockets!

I think Miss N will look sassy in this. She already has a pair of navy leggings and a navy long sleeved tee shirt. Got one more of these in the works too. Next week another big box of goodies is going out, this time to my middle daughter. Once she gets it I will share everything here. Have a great weekend! Linking up with Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Color Play

I know it's been awhile and yes, I have been very busy sewing. As soon as the box reaches its recipients, I will share all the goodies that went into it. But for now, something else.

I spent today, and yes, all day almost, cutting out pieces for a new quilt. I won a bundle of Amy Friend's Improv this summer and immediately bought some more to go with it. I absolutely love it. I wanted to find a pattern to use all of it in a quilt. I knew that when the right pattern came up, I would know it. And it did. Fat Quarter Shop had a fat quarter Cobblestone quilt pattern for free!

 Here is the whole queen sized quilt in pieces. I am looking forward to starting this one. I need to figure out my color placement.

 So what do you do when you get done cutting out a whole quilt, and it's too late to begin sewing on it? You play with all the delicious scraps! They were lying on my cutting mat, just calling to me.

 So I started grouping them together and sewing a few small groups together. I really love these colors.

 I do have a couple of bigger scraps like this grey, that I might cut up to add to this little project. I don't even know what to call it yet. I thought about making some pin cushions.

But then, I laid it all out on my ironing board and now, I'm kind of thinking about maybe a small wall hanging style quilt. I think I'll sleep on it and see what develops.
Talk to you soon.

Fabric Pull

How do you do a fabric pull? Do you start with a focus fabric, or a specific line of fabrics? I have done things both ways, or just a couple of favorites that look good together and then I try to flesh it out. I am wanting to make another large bed size quilt for my queen size bed...because I am crazy. I haven't chosen a pattern yet, so maybe that's going to mess me up here. The one thing I know is that I want to use a particular line of fabric, Improv by Amy Friend.

I won a fat quarter bundle of some of the fabrics from Benartex a couple of months ago and as soon as it arrived, I got on line and ordered some of the other prints in the collection. I don't have the whole collection, but there were some prints I truly didn't like as well as others.

This is the original collection that I started with. The colors here are pretty true. It's a very sunny day so I tried to stay out of the sun so they wouldn't wash out. Some of these are fat quarters and the ones I bought are half yards.

Now the fun...I tried to pull from my stash some things to go with these beauties. Tell me what you think:

 Here they are all lined up together. I think with these additions there is plenty for a queen size quilt.

 I love this dark plum color with the pale pink daisies right next to the raspberry colored fabrics. The centers of the daisies are almost the color of the raspberry fabric.

 Next, I added in the green-ish with dots, the golden tan squares and the grey gingham with the tiny dots. In this picture the first fabric looks much more green than it is and the squares look a bit washed out. So hard to get true colors sometimes.

 The other fabric I would like to use, but it may be too bold for this, is the text fabric. It is black print on cream. What do you think?

So here is the whole line up. Now I need a pattern to show these off to their best advantage. Please tell me in the comments what you think of the additions to the original line. Also, I would love to have any suggestions you might have for a pattern. Thanks in advance for your help.