Charm Parade: A Quilt Finish

 A finish.  A years long finish.  I searched the blog and found the first mention of this quilt.  You can read it *here*.   The post is from November 2014! Can you believe it?  That's almost 6 whole years ago!!

The pattern is Charm Parade and was written by Cindy from Live a Colorful Life. 
Mostly Kaffe Fassett charm squares.  The border is a batik.

My cute helper squinting in the sun! 

I did some simple stitch in the ditch.  Any more than that would have been lost anyway and wanted a softer quilt.  I had the quilt stored with the backing for a long time, and had even made the binding. 

 The backing is from IKEA.  Probably six years ago!  I don't know if IKEA even makes fun prints anymore.  It seems the last few times I've looked there haven't been any. 

This particular quilt finished at 49" x 60".  Thread is navy Aurifil and batting a mystery polyester.

Working on the Eclipse Quilt

 I know the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse is old news.  Been there, done that.  But, since I'm slow on the blogging train - here's my bit about the Solar Eclipse, and the Eclipse Quilt

Actually, here in SE Wisconsin, there isn't much to say.  We were pretty overcast so no dramatic pictures.  We were around 80%, it did darken, my bees actually started going home and the pigeons in our silo all came home to roost, too.

I was ready for pictures and my pinhole viewer.

On to the Eclipse Quilt.
At the end of June I had the opportunity to take two workshops with Bill Kerr from The Modern Quilt Studio.  The first was on Quilting the Modern quilt.  I have a couple stitch outs from that class which I may or may not get around to sharing - but we talked a lot about quilting as part of the overall design of the quilt. It was good.

The second workshop was on Sewing Curves.  Now, I have sewn curves.  I've made round bottom bags, I've made stuffed animals and I've sewn garments for years, but never done them in a quilt - and I thought this was a great chance to take a workshop.  Bill teaches curves using their Eclipse Pattern.

Its free on their website!! He even had the original there for us to see and touch.  The biggest design thing we discussed was all bout the edge.  You can use almost any combination of fabrics, as long as you can see the edge.  Mine is a combination of solids and Kaffe Fassett fabrics.

I finished a whopping three curves in the workshop.  I then went home and didn't touch any of it until I took the kids UP north for a couple of days.

Got just a few more finished.  Remember, there are TWO curves to sew in each block.

 Then at home I was working on a HAVE TO project and decided to add in a WANT TO project, so I got some more blocks done.

 So this is what I have done so far.  I will definitely be making more.  I think I will do some more patterned squares with solid curves to fill it out.  This is definitely not my "typical" quilt pattern, but I do like it a lot.