Teal Postage

Here is my teal postage stamp block...but not soon enough for Angela to send us all postcards from her wonderful trip. Make sure you visit the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge to welcome her back.

And given we are half way through our year (YIKES!), I've assembled all of the postage blocks I've made so far.

I-spy front layering

It's a lot easier to layer a quilt when all one is doing is attaching the quilt top to the batting. In particular, I didn't have to worry about the batting going one way and the backing going another. Well, except for when Molly started pulling the batting down to the floor. Molly is a cat of many passions...clearing the design wall, pulling apart a layered quilt and climbing to the highest place in the room.

Center Medallion

Here's the center medallion for the Garden Mosaic/Dementor/Bat Wing Quilt. I made four panels and put the single layer of sashing through the middle to have the diamond come out. And now I can take it off the design wall. Poor Molly has been going nuts with both the I-spy and this quilt laid out. She does like to keep her design wall clear.

Defanged Dementor

This is a bit weird and technical. In making this quilt using bat wings instead of half-square triangles, leaves a gap at the intersection. This is solved by a sashing that alternates a goose and a two-patch. In my case, I made four patches and then stuck flip triangles on two sides. And yes, I just noticed that the two-patch on the right end should be two light patches, not two dark patches.

I-Spy Front Quilt Top

Here's the front quilt top complete with my nephew's name and age when he gets the quilt. He may still be 3, but is still at an age where the preference is to round up rather than down. Before I put the four hunks together, I did pull a block out and replace it. There was an annoying column of yellow and gold that directed my eyes to it. But otherwise, I didn't get too fussy about block placement.

And here's Buddy reminiscing about his morning's glory when he and Molly conquered a large pile of teal scraps. I think this is the origin for the term scrap busting.

Day Late Progress

Here are the teal coins for the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge, one day late. On Saturday, I pulled out blue scraps and green scraps to pick out the blue/green and green/blue bits. I also thought I should make a teal chameleon, so I pulled out lots and lots of batiks...but the chameleon was too well hidden in the fabric so that was that. On Saturday, I made a mess and this morning Molly and Buddy dived in and out of the piles chasing after the laser dot. Such fun!

I also made a third panel for the "garden mosaic," AKA demented, AKA dementor quilt. And now I am going to change its name to the fake-out quilt. Because this looks so much harder than it is.

I agree that this quilt has a lot of seams, but it does not require handling tiny pieces.

A chameleon's eye is the smallest part of that block at 1.25 inches. Because that's usually as small as I'm willing to go, the chameleon block is quite large.

Meanwhile, I use strips to make those weird rectangle units that are cut into triangles---and they are an astounding 4 inches across. And that is the smallest size unit that I have to handle when putting together the squares and triangles. Plus, as an added benefit, the triangles nestle into each other, and then the square units' seams nestle. So yes, lots of seams, but no tiny pieces. And lots of seam cuddling.

And if you're into scrap cuddling, I recommend a visit to Oh Scrap!

I-spy Quarter Finals

It's the quarter final for the I-spy quilt top front--that is, I have assembled the blocks to the point that I have four hunks for the front of the quilt.  I still need to assemble the back using 99 more blocks.

For the next step, I will layer this top to batting. Then I will machine quilt on the outside of each block forming a grid on the batting. After that, I can layer the back to the batting following the grid.

Here's a close-up look at six of the blocks.