Metro Rings Quilt for Jon and Rebecca

Thank you for all your kinds wishes and prayers for my mom and our family!

  Thankfully, her oncologist here okayed her and started her back on a "heavier" chemo last week.  We will know how this drug is working in two weeks when she has more testing done.

 

 

While we are waiting...Life keeps going on.  As it should.

And I am thankful for all the things that keep me busy.  Keep me going.

 

Our oldest son, Jon, is getting married at the end of June. 

What do you do when you love to piece and quilt and your child gets married?

Make the happy couple a quilt.

Which means playing with beautiful fabric, trying out a new toy and sewing.

Happy therapy!

 

Seafoam Symphony

 

 Jon's fiancé, Rebecca, and I sat down one night and looked at paint palettes online at Design seeds to get an idea of colors.  I then went to the Kona website to match solids.  Then I began searching online for fabrics from my favorite designers to translate our idea into fabric.  What I have pinned at Pinterest found a perfect match in Pat Bravo's line Poetica.  Unfortunately, no one around here carries it and it's out of stock in most places online.

 

Kaffe Fassett's Collective Fall 2013's line had similar colors, but with an intensity my son liked better.  I was able to find the lavenders, blues and greens in a roll at a shop in Indy.

 

 

These are so nice to work with!  Soft and silky....yum! 

 

 

 

Just a few of the prints in the roll!

 

 

 

 

They also liked the Double Wedding Ring pattern and I was so excited when my Quick Curve Ruler from Sew Kind of Wonderful and the pattern for Metro Rings arrived!

 

 

Here is Jenny Pedigo's finished version.  She is such an awesome designer and quilter!  Thankfully, she has tutorials on YouTube for helpful hints and how-to's for the ruler.

 

After a hideous, scrappy trial run that didn't involve the Kaffe's (thank goodness I practiced with scraps first), I settled on this design.  Interlocking rings of just two colors.  The greens for one ring and the blues/purples for the other.

 

Here is my inspiration.

 

Pinterest

 

 

Using the greens from the Kaffe Fassett collection and some complimentary stash fabrics, I managed to get all forty-eight green "arcs" cut this week.  They need a slight trimming after a confab with Dawn from The Quilt Shoppe.  Exciting news from her!  She's featured over at Moda Bake Shop with an original pattern called "Finding the 4 Patches".  And, coming soon, a quilt she designed will be featured in a quilting magazine!  So excited for her and love watching her designs go out into the world!

 

 

She had the quilt at the store and it is so happy and cheerful!  I want to make one now too!  I also saw the quilt for the magazine.  There is just something so cool about knowing this quilt is headed where it is.  Seeing it before the world does.  Goofy, I know.  But very cool.  Like a secret you just can't wait for others to know.

 

One of my goals this year is to look in the WIP pile for flimsies and unfinished projects to work on.

In April of 2010, I started "free-piecing" with scraps.  Anytime I go to a quilt shop, I ask if they have a scrap or cast off basket.  You can usually scam great pieces of beautiful, fun, happy fabric to play with without buying yardage.  That way, you get to try out all the new lines or just pick your faves instead of getting stuck with patterns and colors you discover you really don't like.

I have commitment issues.

 

 

There are scraps from all over the United States in here since some were sent to me by other bloggers as scrap packs or were gifts from bloggy friends.  I sewed some of my favorite scraps together, then squared them to 6" and sashed them with 1 1/2" strips of more scraps.  I added a block here and there as I went along.  There are seventy-two blocks and it's a nice twin bed size-ish.  It's like an I Spy Quilt for fabric addicts!  Moda, Kaffe Fassett, Joann's, Sandy Henderson, vintage...

I'm so glad basting on the wall is easy and quick and I don't dread this part of the process anymore.

 

 

It took a week of quilting in between all kinds of stuff that kept me busy to get this bad boy finished.

I started sewing the back of the binding on last night while waiting for Ben at soccer practice.

 

Ahhhhhh!  Another WIP off the pile.  That makes two for this year!

 

Linking up with the gang again this week

 

i have to say

quilt story

freshly pieced

my quilt infatuation

and

sew many ways

 

and you can keep track of me here