FINISHED--Dream Weaver for Ted

 I finally am able to share this quilt that I finished before Christmas.  It is the fourth in a series of quilts that I am hoping to get made for my 5 brothers.  Before now,I had gifted one to John, Jim, and Jeff (sensing a theme here....I was the next child born, and I think that my name should have been JOY !)  Anyway, next on the list was my little brother, Ted, who turns 61 on February 24th of this year.  

He came by my house on Sunday, after me calling him to tell him that I had a quilt ready for him, but that I didn't trust putting it in the care of USPS at this time.  

His quilt is called Dream Weaver, and I drafted it up after seeing  a three-fabric quilt of this design on Fabric Cafe's YouTube channel.  I hoarded these batiks for months, thinking that I was going to make myself a quilt from them.  But eventually, I did give it up to him.

Each of these quilts so far have been about the size to fit on top of a twin-sized bed, and actually meant for napping in the recliner or on the couch.  

 I teased him that, with this backing fabric, he could throw the quilt into the bed of his work truck, let it get stained with grease, and no one would ever know the difference !   I surely hope he DOESN'T try that, though ! 

My friend finds this fabric atrocious, but I actually think that it's quite beautiful.  I guess it appeals to my quirky side.

And Marley just says that all of these quilts are just second-hand anyway, because SHE OWNED THEM FIRST !

Starts, but no finish......

  Since Christmas, I have pieced three new things, ALL SMALL.

 First, I decided to make a small quilt to put on top of my made-up bed, so that when the cats sleep on it, and shed, I won't have to wash the bigger bed quilt so often.

 

 Actually, I finished piecing the back on New Years Eve !  It's reversible.

Do ya think that Marley knows it's for HER  ?

 

I'm Big-Stitch hand-quilting it with embroidery floss in the pieced scrappy blocks, but I haven't decided what I will do on the cow-print alternate blocks.  And, of course, having made it reversible, the quilting decisions are even more difficult, especially since if I want to machine-quilt, and use white thread, the machine-quilting is going to REALLY SHOW on the solid-colored areas of the back-side.

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 Secondly, this little quilt is coming into being.  Before Christmas, I bought this white print that I have used here in the background.  I wanted to make a very light Christmas quilt wall-hanging/lap-quilt .  Most of my quilty Christmas things are strong red and green colors, so I felt the need for some relief.   Well, I never got around to choosing a pattern.  This white print was found at Walmart around Thanksgiving time.

Come end of December, Walmart took their coordinating 20-strip jelly rolls and one-yard cuts, and marked them down to $1.00 EACH ! ! ! ! !   Not knowing what I'd use them for, but unable to walk away, I bought 10 rolls, and 3 green plaid yards.  Then, browsing through some quilt photos that I keep for inspiration, I happened across a Rail Fence quilt where the maker had used a strong plaid in one of the rails.  That was my start !   Somehow, the tree idea came into being;  Finding the dark green print in the jelly mini-rolls, I guess that it would let the deer in the background  have some cover to run to if they needed it ! ! !  LOL

So, anyway, it is all pieced and basted, ready for quilting.  Don't know yet if it will be done on the machine or by hand.  I backed it with $2.97 per yard white muslin, also from Walmart, and it feels scrumptious.

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My third project came about when I decided to cut up some old newpapers into squares for string-piecing. I started playing around with some dark/light combos in blocks, and this top came to be.  (Before you worry, no, there was not any newsprint ink transfer to my hands or to the strings.  These papers have been aging, and didn't  BLEED.  Plus, I removed the papers after stay-stitching around 6 or so blocks at a batch.)  Right now, it's just a top that I finished only yesterday.

It may look like I accidentally laid it out wrong, cutting the light blocks in half instead of making them appear whole.  But I didn't.  I purposely avoided a traditional layout, wanting as much focus as I could get on the dark strips, even though I was aware that the light areas would come forward visually.

If you keep the quilt mounted this way, you get two full vertical rows of the dark 'diamonds'.Turned one time to the right, you get two full vertical rows of the light 'diamonds'.  So it's pretty equal.........until I made a border of mostly darks.