Rainbow Binding

Here's the rainbow binding attached to the fish quilt. And I was quite surprised by how much fun it was to assemble. I thought that setting up the rainbow progressions on each side and then sewing the blocks together would send me over the deep end. But instead, it was thoroughly enjoyable. Now I'm wondering if another fiddly project should be in my future.

Cabbage 1.0 tutorial

Cathy at Sane, Crazy, Crumby Quilting blog suggested I fatten up the bunnies on cabbage before Mr. Fox eats them. A simple snowball block on top of a strip of dirt-like fabric might be suggestive enough for cabbage. However, shown above is a four leaf cabbage. Probably it would be best to try making both and see which ones the bunnies prefer.

The head of cabbage measures 5.5 X 7.5 inches unfinished (without background sashing). The center leaf is cut 3.5 X 4.5 inches, the side leaves are 2.5 X 4.5 inches and the top leaf is 1.5 inches by 7.5 inches. Plus you will need six 1.5 inch squares to make flip triangles. Cut four out of the fabric for the top leaf, and one each out of the fabric for the side leaves.

The center leaf gets four flip triangles on each corner...these are made by sewing the squares on the diagonal and then ironing the flap back. Each of the side leaves gets one flip triangle of the top leaf fabric. And now to give the cabbage some contour, we need two 2.5 inch squares of the background fabric.

This shows the flip triangles of the background fabric sewn to the bottom of the cabbage. The next step will be to sew the long strip of the top leaf of cabbage to the top and then sew two more 2.5 inch squares of background fabric to the top corners.

I added background sashing to the sides and top, and a strip of dirt at the bottom. But if you were going to plant a whole row of cabbages, you would probably wait until the whole row was assembled before adding the strip of dirt.

Fish quilt progress

I've finished quilting the inside of the fish quilt. I went with simple lines along the sashing. I didn't want to machine quilt lines across the fish because they might think it was netting. Then they might get scared and start swimming every which way. And I definitely didn't want the fish to get out of order.

Meanwhile I've decided that I want to add a rainbow binding. Of course, it would have been lovely if I had thought about this when I was making the fish blocks. Instead, I am deep sea diving into my stash to find the original prints.

Yellow bunnies

We're getting ready for spring with yellow bunnies. Hope they are faster than the red fox. To see more yellow...the color for March at the Rainbow Scrappy challenge...hop along to the Superscrappy blog.

Preparing the cranes

I'm still machine quilting the fish quilt, but I thought I would get the origami cranes ready as well. Both of the quilts are going into a local quilt show at the end of the month. Yes, procrastination is my middle name.

Spinning

Here are some more vintage spin blocks. I finally had a day where I spent more time sewing than I did shoveling snow or chipping ice or discovering a fox had gotten into the house for a light snack.

Today was a snow day. Yesterday was a warm day followed by rain, so the ground this morning was finally showing out in the woods.

And here are the woods after about five inches of snow.

Fish quilt returns

The fish quilt is layered and pinned and ready for quilting. The hardest part about getting this quilt ready was clearing the table. I pin baste on my cutting table which had disappeared from view. The second hardest part will be clearing away the area around the sewing machine so I can quilt it. Sigh.