Merlin Magic

I needed a quick project after my trip to Oklahoma to see Autumn's birth and welcome her to the world. Yes, I know my granddaughter has enough burp cloths and they are already being put to good use as you can see.

But my daughter really liked this wizard-print flannel fabric and I'd had a hard time finding a coordinating flannel I liked. Hence this flannel yardage did not make it into the 1st wave (shown here) or 2nd wave (shown here) of burp cloths. Here were the candidates I bought, tucked under and to the right of the featured Merlin wizard fabric.

I really wanted a lavender/lilac to pick up the colors in Merlin's beard.  The two lavenders I bought really did not appeal to me. The upper one was too crisp and geometric and the lower one was cream rather than white and looked dirty against the white-ish milky way pattern of stars. I thought about using maybe a dark blue, like the polka dot, and might have gone with that had it been stars instead of dots, despite the lack of contrast. I tried to branch out with the green multi-dots. The dots were the right color family of blue-violet and I really almost went that route but you know how when you have a certain picture in your mind it is hard to change. In Oklahoma my last visit (to be at the birth of Autumn) I bought a pale lilac flannel that had a starburst-like print on it.  It had the color in Merlin's beard and the star image I wanted. Also the stars are blurred around the edges and not such a sharp image. Here is the front and back of the finished burp cloth.  I made two. In retrospect I wish I had sewn one with the green multi-dot, just to be different but, oh, well, I did not. The lilac appears kind of grey in the photograph but it really is a lovely complement to the wizard's beard.

This is truly an American multi-state burp cloth... wizard print from California, backing lilac stars from Oklahoma, and burp cloth pattern from Kansas.  I bought the pattern to use for my nephew's baby girl while I was in Kansas with my daughter, buying her wedding gown.  Daughter and gown are shown below from May 2011 wedding day. Odd, how the little bits of life come together.  Little did I think (nor did my daughter!) when I bought that pattern that, slightly over a year later, I would be making burp cloths for her baby girl!

I will not do much quilting this weekend and I did nothing special for Halloween.  I am returning to Oklahoma to visit that new granddaughter of mine. After all, I have been away two whole weeks! This will be a quick trip... out on Friday, back on Monday.

Completed projects:  

1. Wizard burp cloths
2. Caught up on quilt blogging- even made non-WIP entry this week just before this one

Ongoing projects:  

1. Doll quilt - still awaiting binding and next up on finishing since it is so close
2. Grinch quilt - still on design wall for assembly and creative sashing solution
3. Chicken wall hanging to back, FMQ, and bind
4. Square pumpkin/iris/red modern wallhanging to back, FMQ, and bind

New projects:  

1. Wizard burp cloths
2. Returning to Oklahoma this weekend to visit

This week's stats:

     Completed  projects - 2 burp cloths

     New projects - 2 burp cloths

     Currently in progress - 4 

     Those in closet - many enumerated in earlier posts and not repeated here 

 

Quilt Immersion Weekend

Every fall, near the end of September, Alden Lane, the local nursery in Livermore, hosts an outdoor quilt show called Quilting in the Garden (details here) which runs Thursday through Sunday. Quilts are hung among clothes lines amid the giant oak trees on Saturday and Sunday and a modest number of vendors are there. Classes and lectures and garden tours are offered throughout the four days. I took a class called Fan Dance from Alex Anderson on the Thursday.  Here is a block from my Fan Dance class that included paper piecing (fan blades), curved seams (outer fan radius), and machine applique (smaller inner fan radius) - a little bit of each technique.  The fabric I chose is mostly from a line by Ty Pennington with some turquoise and bright green additions from my stash.  The turquoise and green will get distributed more than they are in these few learning blocks.  I have no real time scale or size plans for this quilt.  I took the class mainly for the instructor and techniques taught.

On Saturday I went to the quilt displays with my husband.  Here are a couple of the quilts that I especially liked.

We also visited some vendor booths on Saturday. I expanded my stash of dots and added a unique broken stripe fabric.



On Thursday through Saturday was also a Quilt and Crafting show in the neighboring town of Pleasanton at the Alameda County Fairgrounds which was mostly vendors and a few displayed quilts.  My husband also went there with me on Friday. I love to use these events to stock up on my reads-like-a-solid basics. For me this "basic" translates to polka dots, checks, and stripes.  (Which reminds me of a song by the Parachute Express you can hear here on a U-Tube video.)

I want to make a quilt using the pennants and numbers prints from the Reunion line of fabrics that I bought in Oklahoma during my visit there during my daughter's second trimester. I was on the lookout to match or at least blend with a particular gold-ish beige in the Reunion line and succeeded in finding these options. I plan to add these to break up the too matchy-matchy look that sometimes comes with sticking to just one fabric line.

This is the Reunion line from Sweetwater.  I especially like the first four pennants prints.

At the show in Pleasanton I picked up this novelty print, too, just because.  After all, with my new granddaughter (see last post) I may be traveling a bit more.

Our family enjoys a good game of Scrabble so I could not pass up this novelty print.  I have no idea of what I will use it for, but you have to admit, it is pretty unique.  Perhaps I can use the letters individually on something or maybe make a carrying case for the game with a matching drawstring bag to hold the tiles.