A rainbow quilt

I do love rainbow quilts.  It also seems as though I like HSTs. I love solid quilts.  And so, I put them together.

The hard part with this quilt was that I didn't know if it was going to be for a boy or a girl.  So I removed red and purple from the rainbow...even though the center does look a bit red, it's just a darker orange.  Then I found out that the baby was a girl, so I added a purple border.

The Kona colors are: coral, carrot, sunny, highlight, sour apple, clover, bluegrass, jade green, cyan, neon blue (by Riley Blake), Mediterranean, riviera, and windsor.  I was using my scraps, so some of the outside strips have multiple colors in them.

I quilted it with arcs.  This is the first time I felt very happy using a ruler.  I taped off the line on the ruler that I was supposed to line up with the bottom of the row and then quilted an arc of the circle ruler.  I didn't try to use the whole circle, and I think that is what made the difference.  It wasn't fast, but it wasn't slow either.

Backed with minky, bound in sateen, and given to the baby.

Linked with Crazy Mom Quilts.

Pressing

I pressed the seams of a king sized top today.  It took all of my allotted quilting time one night,but it's done.  I binged watched 'Madam Secretary' while doing it.

...and then I tossed it on a heap on the ground.  Wrinkles galore!  But they tend to come out with quilting, so I do it anyway.

Progress through July

1. Robot quilt: Finished and in use!  I just need to get some 'official' pictures...still

2. Bee blocks 2018 (HDD): After dealing with a fabric bleed, I got it sent off to the family.  I just need to post pictures.

3. Wedding quilt (JEM): I need about ten more HSTs and am sick of making them.  I do have several of the rows all put together though, so progress is being made.  It will probably not be done in time for the wedding, but probably by the time cool weather sets in.

4.  Scrap bee blocks 2017.  I made a few more of these and made some notes to myself about what I'm doing so that I don't forget like normal.

5. Quilt Halloween quilt.  I'm about half way done and stalled out a bit.  I'll get back to it soon.

Things I haven't worked on recently (or haven't started yet):
6. Meshing solid HSTs

7. Temperature quilt. 
8. Rainbow Log Cabin
9. Scrap quilt #2
10. Jeweled floors
11. Lost piece
12. Winter quilt
13. Fabric from Christmas
14. Pillow with green/purple fabric
15. Trying to fit in - left over triangles
16. Black scrap quilt.
17. Baby quilt (currently unknown) (TCB)  

18. Baby boy quilt (ZJN)
19. Joshua robot pillowcase

Dealing with a fabric bleed

Yay!!  My quilt was finished!  It was finished before the baby had arrived with a few weeks to spare.  And then...I took it out of the washing machine.

There was a fabric bleed.  This was from a bee block so I don't know where the fabric originated from, but let's be honest...I don't prewash my reds either so such a thing was bound to happen eventually.  I looked on the internet and found these two sources: from SuzyQuilts and Quilts of Love.  They both follow similar methods.

I filled up the tub, added some boiling water, and put a color catcher on the quilt.  I put the quilt in the tub, making sure the whole thing was under the water level, and waited.

When I checked it after...maybe four hours...the bleed was gone!  Yay!  However, there was a new color on the quilt. 

Do you see it by the third safety pin?  I think it was the pin that did it, but I'm not 100% sure.  (I would like to note that having the color catcher on top of the offending fabric was a good idea as it did bleed more.)  Anyway, after beating myself up a little bit for not being able to see the future, I tried putting it back in the washing machine with stain stick.  No luck.  I tried white vinegar + salt + sun.  No luck.  I finally decided to just add another piece of fabric on top of it and call it good, since this isn't a show quilt.

When I took the pin out, there was a small hole in the red part.  The applique blends in very well...I appliqued it on and then copied the quilting to secure the piece and to hide it better.  As for the hole in the red...I'm not going to do anything.  Since it is on the red part it doesn't stand out too much, and I'll take safety pins out of things prior to washing if they aren't needed.  Lesson learned.

quilt notes

I'm working on this quilt very intermittently, and am having trouble remembering what I'm supposed to be doing...

9" squares: turn into HSTs with white triangles.
8" squares": increase to 9" squares
misc: cut 5x to 10.5" squares and the rest to 9" squares

I need 19 little arrows, 5 big arrows, 1 big arrow head, and 5 arrow heads.

I have made, or have parts for...4.5 big arrows (2 made) and 10 little arrows (10 made)

The layout will match that of the picture below, but the fifth column will have the big arrow at the top and the last column will have the big arrow like the fourth column.

Quilting

I recently finished quilting a quilt that my mother-in-law is going to give to a new family member.

In the white areas I did a back and forth in white thread.  For the colored areas I used 'Chevron Peel' from 180 Doodle Quilting Designs complied by Karen Burns.  I used green thread on the outside squares, red thread on the middle squares, and blue thread on the innermost squares.

Chevron Peel is a new motif for me and it went pretty well.  I should have planned out the diagonal direction for the corners better though.  The ones shown here are nice, but there are a few corners that have the same diagonal twice in a row.

Pulleys

I tried to do pulleys, a pattern I saw in a book, on a border, but...mine ended up looking rather phallic.  Needless to say, I unpicked all the quilting. 

(Note: it looks fine in the book example.  I probably needed to make my pulleys narrower...but I'm also not sure I'll be trying this one again.)