work in progress – Sew Bittersweet Designs

Work-In-Progress Wednesday

7 Comments / A Lovely Year of Finishes, baby quilt, free motion quilting, Sew BitterSweet Designs Patterns, work in progress / By Melissa Dunworth

This week I have been busily working on my A Lovely Year of Finishes goal. Normally I don’t attempt to bust my goal out in the first week of the month but I volunteered to make 4 quilts to be raffled off at Anne’s preschool so my sewing time is about to shift back to charity mode pretty quickly.

I’m really happy with the quilting design that I came up with. In fact the only quilting I have left to do is in the gray sections and the borders. I’m hoping to bust it out today during preschool!

Have a Happy Wednesday and if you haven’t already, go link up your November goal!

Progress & Pay It Forward

2 Comments / CeLynn's Sunflower Patch, pay it forward, Quilt Patterns, work in progress / By Melissa Dunworth

I got to sew sew sew today and tonight. My hubs got home late so after Anne went to bed, I got an hour in the sewing room. Here is my progress on my Twirling Around Quilt:

My hubby is working a 24 hour shift tomorrow, so I should be able to make some major progress if nothing catastrophic happens tomorrow.

In other fun news, I got an AWESOME package in the mail yesterday – well actually Anne and I got an AWESOME package in the mail. CeLynn from The Sunflower Patch hosted a Pay It Forward on her blog and I was one of the lucky people to get something from her!

Check it out!

Oh My Lord is CeLynn talented! I first met CeLynn in a swap I participated in and we also happen to be in a virtual bee together. She is wonderful! Check out her blog and check out her Etsy Shop too (she is on vacation until January 9th, but I promise she is worth the wait)!

I have one more Pay It Forward gift to make for my Pay It Forward – I have something special planned for it and I just need to find the time to git er done!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone! I will be working on my quilt and the first two blocks for Jenna’s Sew. Happy. Quilt. QAL. What will you be working on?

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Newest Design

9 Comments / Me and My Sister, Quilt Patterns, work in progress / By Melissa Dunworth

Sorry I was MIA yesterday…I have been having phone problems ever since we got back from our vacation. Three visits from Comcast and one visit from our alarm monitoring company and we THINK that everything is solved now. In other news, and warning – this may be TMI (too much information) for some of you – but Anne used the potty yesterday afternoon and evening SEVEN times! I am so thrilled! I hope this is the start of a beautiful trend 🙂

I have been working on something special and I have a little sneaky peak for you!

I know the colors are slightly assaulting in the mock up – but how about imaging it in these fabrics:

Do you recognizes these fabrics (keep in mind you are seeing the reverse side of the prints)? Check out the name of quilt if you need a hint!

Did you know from one layer cake you can get 672 squares measuring 2.5×2.5 inches? I was able to cut all those squares in 45 minutes! Fastest cutting I’ve ever done and I got to use one of the nifty tools that I won, a Sullivan’s Cutting EDGE Quilting 6.5×24.5″ ruler from Pat Sloan. So I not only got all my cutting done, but I sharpened my blade at the same time – no more dull blades for this lady 🙂

I am hoping to have more of this quilt completed this weekend – my hubby will be working a 24 hour shift on Friday which means lots of extra sewing time on Friday night.

Work It Wednesday

2 Comments / work in progress, work it wednesday / By Melissa Dunworth

Woohoo! Hump Day yet again! This week and really the next two I will be working on the same project, which is so not like me.

Do you see all those BOXES?!? That’s right Brother Lover’s, we’re finally MOVING!!! Our close day, bearing no more construction delays (we’ve only had one so far) is the 26th of May! So it goes without saying that I will be doing a lot of packing and cleaning between now and then.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to let my creativity remain all pent up during this process. I will still have a lot of nap times between now and the 26th when I will need to be relatively quiet. Here is some fabric that I will be working with between now and then.

Yes, it is all bright and obnoxious. No, I’m not telling what I’m making. That would ruin the fun of it. I didn’t pick out these fabrics, these are from a kit that my mom bought YEARS ago and she gave it to me over mother’s day to help in the efforts of keeping me occupied during nap time. The only problem is that at least 2 fabrics are missing along with one pattern piece 🙁 On the upside, I think it will be relatively easy to replace the fabrics with simple solids and the pattern piece I can remake out of paper, would have been nice to have the hard plastic one that came with the kit though.

What are you working on this week?

Work It Wednesday

2 Comments / monkey business quilt, Ryan DeBonville, work in progress, work it wednesday / By Melissa Dunworth

The week is HALF OVER! Woohoo! I love it when the week seems to be flying by and this week definitely is for me. My parents will be here tomorrow night for a short visit. I’m excited because I get to spend Mother’s Day with my mom, which is pretty cool since she lives 800 miles away.

I have been working up a storm the past few days on a quilt top for my youngest nephew.

image courtesy of: Etsy Shop Brodyandma

I bought a set of 5, 1/2 yard cuts of these fun Five Funky Monkey prints by Erin Michaels for Moda in March and I designed yet another quilt based on them.

With fabrics like these it is hard not to get easily and quickly inspired to quilt. I went to my local fabric shop with the Funky Monkey Friends Multi print and matched up the Red, Yellow, Orange and Green with some Kona solids the best I could. The green is slightly too pale, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. This is what I came up with:

What do you think? Keep in mind it is for a baby boy. I was thinking of calling it the “Monkey Mugshot Quilt”but decided to go with “Monkey Business” instead.

Here are a couple of close up pictures of the patch work:

This is the center of the quilt

Bottom middle of quilt

I still need to buy borders, a backing and binding but I am really happy with how it has turned out thus far. For the borders I am thinking a solid white to match the numbers fabric and then a solid blue to match the free floating sock monkeys.

I have really begun to fall in love with designing my own quilts. Not looking in books or on the web for ideas has really freed up my creativity and I think it is really beginning to show. How are you freeing up your creativity this week?

Keep working it!