kaleido-Finish!

Now that I am able to finally spell kaleidoscope without having to lean on spell check, I am happy to report a finish!

Approx 72x56"


I had more plans with quilting in the other triangles--freemotion all the way through the rows, but I decided that it had enough quilting in it, and it would be great the way it is.  Because of all the turns going on with the straight line stitching (I am not ready to master holding a ruler with my Juki and freemotion the lines), each of the 9 rows took me approximately 90mins to finish.  I started this quilt in May, but the top sewed up in no time.  It was the quilting which took me the most amount of time.



A low-nap Minkee fabric was used.  I would have liked it a little thicker, but this is soft regardless.  it's hard to tell in the photo, but it is a green and black houndstooth.  The green did not pick up very well and looks very light here.


This quilt is headed down to Vegas for a special little boy this week!  I am also boxing up some goodies to go with it that would work well for snacks during a movie time :)  I think I am almost ready to sew up another kaleidoscope quilt, it was fun to do.

Kaleidoscope Quilting

I finally figured out how I was going to quilt the kaleidoscope quilt, and it is going to take some time.  Four blocks partially done with straight line quilting, 59 to go.  I have a plan for free motion quilting in the other part of the triangles, but I figured I would get the part I like least finished first.  I like the effect, just not the time it takes.

Kaleidoscope Progress

I finished all 63 blocks for the kaleidoscope in progress.  I am already planning another but I may put that idea aside for a little bit since I am a bit tired of sewing those triangles.  Time for something different.



I am trying to figure out the quilting on this one--not as easy as I was hoping.  I don't want to do in the ditch lines, and I've already nixed doing circles.  I'd like to do something a little less expected but in all my searches I am finding the ideas hard to come by.

Next up for this one is to get the blocks sewn together and then find a backing fabric.  I'll probably have it totally finished in a couple of weeks.  This one already has a future home too.  I find it so much easier to finish projects when I know where it is going to go when finished.  Maybe that's why I have a harder time finishing up my UFOS?  Anyone else have this problem?

Newest Start: a Kaleidoscope Quilt

This is the latest pattern I am attempting.  I took the photo with my iphone, just wanting a quick shot that I could blog about.  The fabrics are all in the green family, but some did not photograph very well.  I originally saw the setting with the pattern using Tonga batiks, called Tonga Rising Sun, Red Dawn quilt.  Here is one link for it at batiks.com.


Right now I am a little intrigued with kaleidoscope quilts.  I may play with various fabric options on other quilts down the road.  After sewing up the 24 blocks (I need to make 63 total), I checked out pinterest for the different styles.  The ideas are springing forth in my brain!  I was also VERY disappointed to learn that none of my isosceles triangle rulers are the right dimensions, so I had to actually cut out a template.  As of today, I have a ruler now on the way (I wish I already had it with my other rulers! so frustrating not to have the right size).

I did some stash acquisition today to add some more kid-friendly greens to the mix.  By the time the quilt is finished, it will have 30 different greens, so it should be a nice scrappy quilt.  The blocks finish at 8".  When it is all together, it should have some eye tricks with circles appearing... I hope!

Fun stuff!