one finish, one near-finish, and one new project

You know me - jumping from project to project! The last days of March were filled with family and some auto travel as Thing 1 was home for a quick spring break week, and then just as she went back to school Thing 2's spring break began. Thing 2 is a high school junior now, so we took a road trip to visit a few colleges in the Midwest. We visited three schools and right now it looks like we have a winner (or at least a very strong front-runner). We'll probably make some more visits though since it is a long while until applications need to be filed, and it's always good to have a Plan B, right?

On our travels to a couple of Indiana schools we were lucky enough to see our nephew John and his young family. So we met baby Zachary for the first time! I finished sewing the label on to the back of his quilt as we drove - a real "just-in-time" finish. But with all the excitement of seeing everyone, I forgot to take some final photos. Hopefully John will be able to send some photos of the finished quilt in Zachary's room.

Here are the last two shots I took of the quilt at my house. First - marked and pinned and ready for quilting...

And a close-up of the quilting detail. I used a light grey thread to sew this 1" x 2" grid. My original plan was to use a 2" x 2" grid, but when that was completed it just seemed a little blah. I really like the way it turned out with the rectangular grid :)

My nearly finished project is the quilt for my mom. The four appliqued borders and the entire quilt top were finished in mid-March, and right now it is waiting in line at Carol's Quilting Service for some lovely custom long arm quilting to take place. I'm still hopeful for a Mother's Day finish, but it will be a close one!

Aaannndd the latest new project - turning this gorgeous stack of Kaffe fabrics...

Into a red-hot version of this quilt, which is an earth-toned version of...

This quilt - Dreamy Hexagons - designed by Liza Lucy and Kaffe Fassett and published in his recent book, Quilt Grandeur.

The grey version is lovely, but it never really caught my attention. The brown version above sparked my interest enough to make me examine how it was constructed. Once I looked into it further and saw all the different techniques used to make the quilt - English Paper Piecing (EPP), hand-applique, and setting blocks on point - I knew I wanted to make one. But I wanted to give it my own spin so I chose a red-hot colorway!

I've got four of the center hexagons rings completed, and I'm still a bit unsure of which colors I want to use for the other four. I'll write more next week about my progress so far and show you some more photos of fabrics that I'm considering.

Until then, have a marvelous weekend! I'm so very grateful that all of our 60+ inches of snow have melted, and it truly appears that spring will actually come this year :) No daffodils, tulips, or forsythia blooms yet, but I think I see some green shoots popping up in the yard where there should be tulips! Oh happy day!!

P.S. If you are interested in making a Dreamy Hexagons quilt, there is currently a video course led by Kaffe Fassett and Liza Lucy offered on the creativebug.com instructional website. I have viewed almost half of the content of this video course and have found it to be very informative, extremely well produced, and fun to watch. And no, they did not paid me to say that :)