Sunshine at last!

At last summer has arrived, and it is hot hot hot. A good time to stay inside and make some progress on the Sunshine Quilt!

Here is what I had last week. I studied this picture long and hard...
...and I decided to take these darker flowered blocks out.

They were too dark for the brightness of the quilt. I sewed more hour blocks to replace the ones I took out.

Then I found a pattern for sunflower blocks in Leslie Beck's book Best of the Best Quilts. I made a bunch for the fun of it...

Aren't they cute! I will need to decide what color to put in the center of the flower.

I added them to the quilt layout and I like what I see!

I've linked up with Friday Sew and Tell at

http://www.amylouwho.com/

Makin' some more Sunshine!

The Sunshine Quilt has gone from leader-ender to up-front-and-center. I've been sewing the hour glass blocks only. I finally laid them out on the floor to see how it is looking.

Here are 180 squares, each one 3.5" square.
If I sewed them together at this point, it would be 36" x 45".

I don't know yet how large I want it to be; I can make a lot more blocks, but I would have to add a larger variety of fabrics. Right now there are nine different fabrics here.

I've linked this up with Amy's Friday Sew and Tell at
http://www.amylouwho.com/

Sunshine

No sunshine outside today, so I had to make some of my own! Here are 113 hourglass blocks for my Sunshine Quilt. At 3.5" each, that only makes a quilt 30" x 33" at this point. Well, I have lots more triangles cut so it should grow!

Here is a quilt named "Sunshine Flower", from Leslie Beck's Best of the Best Quilts, a book I checked out of the library. It is so sunny and happy! I might try to incorporate a few of those sunflowers into my quilt.

The Sunshine Quilt!

More cut fabrics from the church stash. I found a large stack of squares cut from this wonderful fabric. Apparently I had sorted a bunch of fabrics a few years ago, because I had set aside yellow squares with these.
It was so rainy on Monday that I thought I would work with these fabrics to create my own sunshine! I pulled some orange fabrics from my own stash to add pizzaz. I have had enough of nine patch blocks, so I cut triangles to make an hour glass quilt.

After sewing a small stack, it is time for squaring up the little blocks. This is my least favorite part of the quilting process. These are on the small size, squaring up at 3 1/2" each.

And when I spread them out on the floor, I really liked what I saw! This little bit measures 21" by 24". I have no idea how big it will be eventually.

I am making this a leader-ender project. I have all the pieces cut out and setting off to the side of my machine. When I am chain piecing another quilt, there is always the point where the fabric must be cut from the machine. Rather than wasting long threads, I will sew two pieces of the sunshine quilt together and leave them on the machine under the foot. I go and press the fabrics from the other quilt, then come back to the machine for more chain piecing, and no wasted thread!