Some Recent Finishes

I am overly fond of quick patterns & big blocks.  This combination is magnificent for someone with a short attention span and lots of fabric, and working on new projects every week is something I really enjoy. 

I do a lot of my own quilting, mostly by renting time on a long arm in a neighboring city.  The ladies there are lovely & I only had to take a certification course once before being allowed to use the machine on my own. 
The course took about 2 1/2 hours & went over the basics of threading the machine, loading the quilt, troubleshooting basic issues, and practicing a very simple pantone to get the feel of how the machine moves.

I've been visiting the shop for almost three years!!  I've bought around a dozen pantones to use on my quilts & I really enjoy a few hours to myself with zero interruption.  

Last year I didn't get to go more than a dozen times, but I've still got plenty of finished quilts to show off! 
I made 92 last year, but I won't bore you with all of them here.  (You can find most over on my Instagram, anyway!) 

This year I've finished two so far - a wall hanging (or baby quilt?) and a throw!

My first finish is Birds. 
There was a swap I meant to participate in last March, but then the date got pushed back & the three birds I had made got lost on the shelf of shame & then the deadline for mailing them went by & I found them two weeks later :)
So I made a few more birds, all improv - almost all scraps from my most recent Xenia quilt - and put them on the wall til they looked happy together!

I used up some big blue scraps for the back & quilted wavy lines across them all.
It turned out super cute!! (banana bird is my favorite, pizza bird is my son's)

I've never done any improv piecing before & there was very minimal instructions for these, so I mostly just winged it ;) 
There are lots of patterns for birds out there - but I honestly did not use any.
The swap instructions were 1) make them 10" tall and 2) use Kona White for the background.
So that is what I took off running with! 

The second finish is a new one coming from me called Beary Scrappy cuz puns are hilarious & it is a scrappy bear paw quilt.
The current release date is March 3!!

This one is all scraps - I treat my solids differently than my prints & so anything less than a yard of a solid is scrap to me.
There are six different greys here, all left over from a heart quilt I made in 2019.
The red was a VERY dusty fat eighth I found under my cutting table.
The white & black I buy by the bolt, and those last crinkly, uneven bits get tossed in a bucket for exactly this occasion.  So technically, there are four different chunks of white & seven different bits of black I cut from.  Some of them must have been different dye lots & it is a bit noticeable in some lighting, but only if you're looking for it. 

I added some red thread in while quilting this one, to accent the red claws a little more. 
I'm writing this pattern for both small scraps and big scraps, so you can get a variety of looks with the same pattern.  
There's already some tester versions popping up over on Instagram if you're interested in seeing more of this one!

I usually list my finished quilts on Etsy, but since they've recently been making some updates that I don't agree with, so I've been every so slowly moving all my quilting things here!  
I'll be listing these as soon as I can (but I'm about three months behind right now) - in the meantime, if you want to snag one, leave a comment or shoot me an email & we can chat!! 

Thanks for hanging around with me!! 
x Stephanie