Thursday, January 26, 2023

Four Finishes

Four Little Finishes

They all have little panels (or border prints?) as the centers. Someone gave me those panels (or border prints?) ages ago and I'm not one that is very creative for figuring out rounds for medallion type quilts so I never did anything with them. Then last year someone with our Sunshine Online Quilt Guild (SOQG) group issued a panel challenge and so I took on the challenge and made these tops. And now I've quilted them and they are ready for donation.

I think three of them are 40 x 40 and one is a little larger at 40 x 48.   I used quite a few pieces of batting in each of these so I quilted them densely. I don't zig zag together my batting anymore since I learned a long time ago that my sewing machine does not like to hit those zig zagged spots. Most of the time I now just overlap the batting a little bit and that works out pretty well for me. Once in awhile I do use a chevron stitch to hand stitch together batting for quilts I hand quilt. 



Center piece.

I made a few square in square in square blocks to add to the quilt. I used center 2.5 inch novelty squares for centers. I tried to use things that were in the center piece - mushrooms, plants, frogs. I framed them in 1.5 inch strips and tried to stay with colors in the center piece. 

Quilted with spirals. 

The backing and binding.



The second one has a jungle themed center. 

I dug through my little drawer of novelty squares - most swapped long ago - and pulled out some jungle-y squares. They were different sized squares - 4, 4.5 and 6.5. I framed them so they ended up as eight inch finished blocks. 


I quilted this one with leaves and some tropical flowers. 

This one has a pieced backing. I was hoping I had enough of that striped fabric left to use as a binding but it was not meant to be. But polka dots are always fun.



This one is a little larger at 40 x 48.
The center had owls and so I pulled out some owl scraps I happened to have that were 4.5 inches wide so I cut a bunch of squares. I then made some four patches using a constant brown/white polka dot fabric and other scraps in the colors found in the center. I then made some Double Four Patch blocks. After that it seemed kind of plain so I added the top and bottom border in the same blue leafy fabric as the coping strips. I then also made binding of what was left of that blue fabric but I must have put it into the binding box and used it in a different quilt because I sure could not find it when I was ready to bind this quilt. Well, I did have some of that polka dot fabric left so that became the binding. 

I quilted this one with leaves.

The back.

And finally...This one had some animals and ABCs for the center.  And some of the flowers looked to me like pinwheels so I decided pinwheels should be the block to surround the center. 

I had some different blue and some different yellow fabrics that had shapes, letters and numbers on them so made a few pinwheels with those and had to add in a floral and silly string fabric too. 

I quilted this one with spirals.  The binding was the same fabric used in the border on front - blue with letters and numbers. 



My KIDS! KIDS! KIDS! theme for January has helped me move forward and finish a lot of comfort quilts for kids this month. I think I may have a couple more finishes before month end but I am ready to move on to a new theme. Finishing quilts is not my favorite part of the process!

And sew on...




 

13 comments:

Linda said...

Brilliant finishes. Great use of those donated panels. So much to look at in all of them.

Chantal said...

Love your quilts. Especially the owl one. I'm a sucker for blue and brown together. After these four beautiful quilts, we can say that you have mastered the art of using print panels. Bravo! I don't work with panels either. Those that are given to me usually end up as the backing for a small quilt. ;^)

MissPat said...

All great solutions to using those hard to use fabric panels (I may still have a few of them). Now if only I could get motivated to actually sew something.
Pat

Linda Swanekamp said...

The best thing about these quilts is they don't look like you forced panels to be the center, but the design was cohesive and unified but fun.

Kate said...

They are great! Is there one more in the basket?

Elizabeth V Kelbaugh said...

Very cute and colorful. They will be loved. Great job!

djquilting said...

What a good job you did coming up with great borders for the panels.

grammajudyb said...

Well done! I would agonize over what fabric to put where, but you just seem to know! Always fabulous!

Anonymous said...

Those finished to be super! The recipients will be thrilled.

Nann said...

Your framing job turned out so well. I use lightweight fusible interfacing to join batting pieces.

scraphappy said...

Your panel quilts turned out beautifully! Using up all those extra batting bits always feels good, even if it is a little more effort. Love the dotted binding. It pulls out the dots in the backing fabric.

Sylvia@Treadlestitches said...

I love what you did with those panels! Very inspiring. And of course the novelty prints are so much fun!

Alycia~Quiltygirl said...

Those are adorable!!! I think you met the challenge!!!