Patrick Spies a Bottled Rainbow

We are done Patrick's Bottled Rainbow quilt! I'm doing my Happy Dance right now. Both boys' quilts are done and on their beds. Patrick did a great job with his mosaics and he's pretty proud of his quilt. Yay! For details on how I made this a kid-friendly project, check out my post about Daniel Spies a Bottled Rainbow.



Patrick Spies a Bottled Rainbow - Front



Back

 

   

Happy boy!

I'm just about done the binding on Project Y so I'll share that one next week. I'm very happy with how the quilting turned out. I think this one is my favourite quilt to date. 

Happy Friday, all!

Thank Goodness it's Finished, Friday Party!



A warm welcome to you from
our garden gnome Grier



Welcome! After a long week (and boy this one felt looooonng), it's nice to take some time to enjoy what we've accomplished. I'm so thrilled you are here!

As I mentioned in my Works in Progress posts, my two older boys and I were working on some twin-sized (+) Bottled Rainbow quilts for their beds. I needed a summer project that would keep them quiet for an hour or two in the afternoons when their little brother napped and they needed quilts for their beds in the summer. They share a bunk bed so I was pretty happy that their quilts would look similar, but not the same.

Daniel's quilt, called Daniel Spies a Bottled Rainbow, is the first one done so that's the one I'm sharing today. A lot of the mosaics have fussy-cut novelty prints, which gives the quilt a bit of an I-Spy feel, hence the combination name. And because I'm oh-so-creative with names, Patrick's quilt will be called Patrick Spies a Bottled Rainbow. ;) The finished size is 65" by 82.5" - an extra wide twin quilt.

Daniel Spies a Bottled Rainbow - Front



Back



Happy boy!

I made a number of adaptations to Rachel's wonderful Bottled Rainbow design so that it would work for us as a project I could do with the kids. If you are not familiar with how her Bottled Rainbow quilt is made, then what I say may not make sense. Sorry! I'm just trying to be brief about this.

• I made the blocks 17" by 21" figuring that I'd have to trim them down to get them to be all the same size. I ended up trimming them to 16.5" by 20.5", giving a finished size of 16" by 20".
• I used the blocks vertically instead of horizontally.
• I made all of the base blocks first (white centre with coloured border, white centre stitched-in-the-ditch attached to the batting).
• We did the mosaics of one block a day. The boys got to pick which one we worked on each day (same colour for both boys).  
• The boys and I had a ball sorting through my scraps to match them to the blocks.
• Two things I learned after doing the first couple of mosaics: 1) Try to make the pieces big so they take up a lot of room and so it is quicker to zig zag stitch down, and 2) Minimize how curvy or intricate the scraps are so that it is quicker to zig zag stitch the scraps. (It took me 30-40 minutes to zig zag stitch some of those blocks. Oy!)
• Once all the mosaics were done, I had the boys pick the backing for each block so I could make this a quilt-as-you-go project. I had hoped that the back would also look like a Bottled Rainbow, but that didn't really work out as often the dominant colour of the backing they chose was not the colour of the front of the block.
• For the quilting, I first stitched in the ditch around the white centre. I chose a different freemotion quilting motif for each border of the block. I also made sure that the quilting motifs for the blocks on both boys' quilts were different (ie. Daniel has stars on his yellow block, Patrick has circles). The one exception was the red block. They both got hearts on that one 'cause Mama looooooves them so much. :) 
• The fabulous sash and binding stripe is Celebrate Seuss by Robert Kauffman. Love, love, love!
• I took a bunch of photos when I was doing the sashing so I can do a tutorial on the quilt-as-you-go technique next week. I'd do it here, but this post is already too long. And really, y'all want to see other finishes, right?

Works in Progress #11

Busy, busy week! Birthdays, visitors, and lots of summer fun, with a little quilting thrown in. What more could you ask for? My sister and niece arrived yesterday for a visit. It's so good to hang out with them. My sister brought along her second quilt that I am helping her finish up. It's Japanese fabric that she purchased through Kallisti Quilts and it will be a reversible quilt. She did all of the squares by hand -- beautiful work! It's a very cool technique, but she forgot to bring the pattern with her so I don't know what it is. I'll try to get more photos once it is complete.

New Projects: Holding fast on no new projects. 

Completed Projects: Nada

Current Projects:

Bottled Rainbows (2) - We are so close! The mosaics are done for 30 of the 32 blocks. Woo hoo! Of those, I only have one left to zigzag stitch. I've also started free motion quilting the squares. Four done so far.

Unfortunately, I don't think that I'll get these quilts together before we go on vacation on Friday so these quilts will probably have to wait until we get home. :(

Project Y - I've started free motion quilting it. So far so good.

Stained Glass Lillies - Still plugging away on that mess of leading. Should be ready to take with us on our vacation. :)

On Hold:
Micah's Growth Chart

Landscape quilt

10BX Leaves

Fibonacci's Not Random
Red and Tan Amish Wedding Ring
Christmas tree skirt

Tangled Garden

Red and Tan Bargello in the Round 2
Spiral/Spring seta colour

UFOs that may one day get finished, but really who knows?
Converging Stars

Chop Suey

Wedding quilt
Linus quilt
Nine patch colourwash

WIP Wednesday #11 Recap:
New projects: 0
Completed projects: 0
Currently in progress: 4
On Hold: 9
UFOs: 5

Bucket List: 39

Linking up with Freshly Pieced for W.I.P. Wednesday so let's go see what others have been up to this week.

Works in Progress #10

Wow! I've hit double digits in my WIP reports. Thank you to Lee for hosting Works in Progress Wednesday! Since school's let out, it's become a little ritual for me to post my progress in the morning and then sip (okay, guzzle!) a glass of wine at the end of the day (once the munchkins are asleep) while browsing all of the great works in progress through Lee's Freshly Pieced. Wednesday is becoming one of my favorite days of the week. So here's the 4-1-1 for me for this week. Oh, and the air conditioning has kicked in properly so I'm much less cranky this week. ;)

New Projects: After a brief break last week, willpower has held fast this week. Wait, does purchasing and planning for next projects count? No? Phew! There has been no cutting, I swear!

Completed Projects: No, but I'm so close that I can taste it!

Current Projects:

Bottled Rainbows (2) - I'm a woman on a mission! The boys are doing great. Interest is still strong to start, but I sense a disturbance in the Force! I am fighting it though. We have 26 of the 32 mosaics done. I've zigzag stitched all the pieces down for 21 of those 26. I'm slowly catching up. It's going to be tight to get it all in before vacation...

Don't you just love those VW bugs? They are all over our Bottled Rainbows. Oh, and my kids love selvages, sorry, "the numbers!"

Project Y - Nada! I'm still playing with the quilting designs. Oh, and I thought I had a name but the hubster (yes, it's cheesy, but I do sometimes call him the hubster) said, "well, you might not want to prejudice people". So, rethinking decision a bit, but may very well go with it anyways because I'm a rebellious kind of woman. :)

Stained Glass Lillies - Still plugging away on that mess of leading.

On Hold: (Thinking of finishing one of these puppies off just to knock it off the list! My bet is on 10 BX Leaves or Christmas Tree Skirt - they are both so close to being done!)

Micah's Growth Chart
Landscape quilt

10BX Leaves

Fibonacci's Not Random
Red and Tan Amish Wedding Ring
Christmas tree skirt

Tangled Garden

Red and Tan Bargello in the Round 2
Spiral/Spring seta colour

UFOs that may one day get finished, but really who knows?
Converging Stars

Chop Suey

Wedding quilt
Linus quilt
Nine patch colourwash

WIP Wednesday #10 Recap:
New projects: 0
Completed projects: 0
Currently in progress: 4
On Hold: 9
UFOs: 5

Bucket List: 39

Linking up with Freshly Pieced for W.I.P. Wednesday so let's go see what others have been up to this week.

Works in Progress #9

My, oh, my, Wednesday again! It is hot and steamy here, which is definitely dampening my desire to spend a ton of time in my quilt studio.

New Projects: Willpower broke this week. I needed a hostess gift so thesse mug rugs were the result. At least they were small, right?

Completed Projects: Mug Rugs  :)

Current Projects:

Bottled Rainbows (2) - Still going strong! We have 20 of the 32 mosaics done. Yippee! I'm still finding it a challenge to zigzag stitch all the pieces down - of those 20, I've still got 8 to zigzag stitch. The key is to use big scraps and straight edges, neither of which my kids seem to interested in. ;)

Project Y - Last week I showed you what I was contemplating for the backing. 

Below is the result - I felt that piecing the squares into the background was going to be way more complicated than it was worth so I machine appliquéd the squares on the pieced background. The edges should fray up nicely once it is washed. Still unnamed. Maybe the name will come to me in a vision as I sweat away in my sauna of a studio... ;) 

I'm dusting off Stained Glass Lilies because I want to take it with us on vacation later this month. I started this project last summer, with the idea of having a hand work project to take with me on vacation. I thought I'd finish the whole thing while away. Funny how projects take much longer than you anticipate. I got as far as as this last year.

Over the Fall and winter, I've been slowly trying to turn this

into the lead for the quilt - in one piece. Doesn't this look fun? Yeah, this is an exercise in patience and frustration. I want to finish prepping the lead before we leave so that I just need to do the stitching while I'm away. I think it's going to be really nice when it's done though. If it ever gets done... ;)

On Hold:

Micah's Growth Chart
Landscape quilt

10X Leaves

Fibonacci's Not Random
Red and Tan Amish Wedding Ring
Stained Glass Lillies
Christmas tree skirt

Tangled Garden

Red and Tan Bargello in the Round 2
Spiral/Spring seta colour

UFOs that may one day get finished, but really who knows?
Converging Stars

Chop Suey

Wedding quilt
Linus quilt
Nine patch colourwash

WIP Wednesday #9 Recap:
New projects: 1
Completed projects: 1
Currently in progress: 4
On Hold: 9
UFOs: 5

Bucket List: 39

Linking up with Freshly Pieced for W.I.P. Wednesday so let's go see what others have been up to this week.

Works in Progress #8

Happy Wednesday! This week, it's been rainbows, rainbows, and more rainbows.

New Projects: I'm still holding off on any new projects. Willpower...still...holding, but weakening fast.

Completed Projects: Nada

Current Projects:
Bottled Rainbows (2) - We're doing some work on this everyday so the quilts are progressing nicely. We've completed the mosaics for 8 of Patrick's blocks and 4 of Daniel's blocks. The boys are having fun picking the scraps, telling me what shape they should be cut in and placing them in the square. We've added in some of my coordinating novelty fabrics, such as soccer players, stars, VW love bugs, aliens, etc. It's interesting to see which child picks which fabrics. Invariably, Daniel loses interest midway through the block so I'm having him pick the fun fabrics first and I do the fill in with the remaining scraps.

The challenge I'm having is actually finding the time to zigzag stitch all the pieces down. But, really, who needs sleep? Next up is putting on the backing materials. We're going to do this quilt-as-you-go so we're choosing coordinating backings for each block. If this works, we'll have a bit of a rainbow effect on the back as well. As it stands now, having these puppies ready by the end of the month for hand stitching the back sashings and the binding may be possible. It may be all rainbow, all the time to make that happen though.

Project Y - I figured out what I think I'd like to do with the back. The piecing might be overly tricky though so we'll see. This is a rough idea what I'm contemplating. Thoughts or suggestions are welcome!

On Hold:

Micah's Growth Chart - No progress.
Landscape quilt

10X Leaves

Fibonacci's Not Random
Red and Tan Amish Wedding Ring
Stained Glass Lillies
Christmas tree skirt

Tangled Garden

Red and Tan Bargello in the Round 2
Spiral/Spring seta colour

UFOs that may one day get finished, but really who knows?
Converging Stars

Chop Suey

Wedding quilt
Linus quilt
Nine patch colourwash

WIP Wednesday #6 Recap:
New projects: 0
Completed projects: 0
Currently in progress: 3
On Hold: 10
UFOs: 5

Bucket List: 39

Thanks for visiting my blog. Now, let's go check out Freshly Pieced to see what others have been up to this week.

Works in Progress Wednesday #7

New Projects: As I mentioned last week, no new projects until I finish a few. With all these great quilt-alongs popping up across the blogosphere though, it's really hard!

Completed Projects:
One Thing One Week Challenge with Amy's Creative Side - finished!

Current Projects:
Bottled Rainbows (2) - Patrick and I have done two of his blocks -- the dark and light purple. We are both loving this project! It's wonderful just spending some quiet time with him, talking about shapes, colours, school, life. Every day, he's asking if we're going to do more. Yay!

Project Y - This week, the top went from this...

to this...

Colour me happy!

Micah's Growth Chart - No progress.

On Hold:

Landscape quilt

10X Leaves

Fibonacci's Not Random
Red and Tan Amish Wedding Ring
Stained Glass Lillies
Christmas tree skirt

Tangled Garden

Red and Tan Bargello in the Round 2
Spiral/Spring seta colour

UFOs that may one day get finished, but really who knows?
Converging Stars

Chop Suey

Wedding quilt
Linus quilt
Nine patch colourwash

WIP Wednesday #6 Recap:
New projects: 0
Completed projects: 1
Currently in progress: 4
On Hold: 9
UFOs: 5

Bucket List: 39

Thanks for visiting my blog. Now, let's go check out Freshly Pieced to see what others have been up to this week.

Works in Progress Wednesday #5

I can't believe it's already Wednesday again. I'm feeling very inspired by my virtual trips to Finland and Thailand so I've added a few projects to my Bucket List and links to my list of Favourite Blogs. So much beautiful work out there in the blogosphere!

New Projects:
Bottled Rainbow - It's off the Bucket List! I pieced the blocks and showed them to the boys. As predicted, son #1 now wants to do one too. Yay! So that's actually two (or three, depending on how you look at it) quilts off the bucket list (Bottled Rainbow and twin-sized quilts for the boys' beds). Good thing I bought 1/2 meters. Not enough white though -- oh darn, I guess I'll have to go to the fabric store again. What a pain! ;)

Completed Projects:

From Light to Dark and Back Again - Just need to get the label on it, but otherwise this puppy is done! Once I get the label on, I'll take more pictures and do a post. Woo Hoo! Here's a sneak peak of the back:

Current Projects:


Project Y - No progress

Micah's Growth Chart - No progress. A couple of people have asked about this project, so if people are interested, I can do a tutorial.
Completed Tops Awaiting Quilting:

Landscape quilt

10X Leaves

Fibonacci's Not Random

On Hold:
Red and Tan Amish Wedding Ring
Stained Glass Lillies
Christmas tree skirt

Tangled Garden

Red and Tan Bargello in the Round 2
Spiral/Spring seta colour

UFOs that may one day get finished, but really who knows?
Converging Stars

Chop Suey

Wedding quilt
Linus quilt
Nine patch colourwash

WIP Wednesday #5 Recap:
New projects: 1
Completed projects: 1
Currently in progress: 5
On Hold: 6
UFOs: 5

Bucket List: Hmm, two removed, but two added - 39

Thanks very much for visiting my blog. Let's go check out Freshly Pieced to see what others have been up to this week.

Jumping on the Bottled Rainbows Bandwagon

I do love a good bandwagon and I've been eyeing the Bottled Rainbows quilt along for some time now. I know that I probably won't make much of a dent in my stash of scraps (there are just so many!), but I just love the colours and I'm eager to try the ticker tape technique. I've managed to convince my four year old that he wants this to be the next quilt that "he" works on. Win-win, don't you think?

So I'm in, but I'll need to do some work fast to catch up to the group because they started in February! I bought the remaining fabric that I need yesterday. It's washed, ironed and ready to cut. Yay!