QM Bitty Blocks--Catch Up

The last two days I've been actually sewing. I gave my Juki a break and pulled out the featherweight... I sure love that little machine!  I haven't been doing a lot of sewing lately, but at this point I am now only four months behind in making my Bitty Blocks.  That's progress.  I also sewed my finished blocks into strips so little by little it's getting closer to being a quilt top.


This layout is in order as each monthly pattern came out.


And the blocks all sewn together, moving around the strips.

For the layout that QM suggests for this size, it requires 14 rows of blocks. I don't think I'm going to do that. I have already made up the flying geese as suggested (3 rows of 60), and I think I've decided I'm going to add 2" strips of white between each row to add to the length and some white space.  I'm not sure what I am going to do for the outside border, but QM suggested a checkerboard border.

A New Finish

I finished up my version of scrappy trips yesterday.  It's all washed up and ready for me to trim some thread tails.... and then on to the new owner it goes!  I am not so great about surprises, so she actually saw this when I was quilting it :)  She was surprised that I was making her a quilt, and loved it.  I plan to leave it at her house this weekend as I will be dog sitting... she doesn't know it's finished.



I think I already noted that I chose Aloha Girl fabric line from Moda.  My friend is Hawaiian, and this summer they took a family vacation to Honolulu, so I basically already had my theme going regarding the quilt pattern and fabric line.  I chose to quilt a Maile lei around the quilt in the white--though some of my leaves turned out a little fatter than what the Maile is.  Maybe a mix of rhododendron in there? :)  I used a variegated pink to yellow thread throughout.


I don't know why I have such a hard time with colors in pictures.  Maybe I need to face facts that I might just stink at taking pics!  But it's generally sort of close.  The backing is a magenta pink, but it looks blazing in the pictures--it's not quite that bad.  My original pictures of the quilt top from a couple of months ago are closest to the colors.

Back:


Front:




I finished it with a hand dyed navy binding, it worked great with the darkest blues of the fabric line.  I can't wait for her to see it!  She isn't a blog reader, so I think I am fairly safe that she won't see this... if she does, I know she'll call right away :)