Snow Covered City Blocks: A Finish

Happy Friday, y'all! It's been a while, but I actually have a finish to share on a Friday! Like most of the east coast, I've been getting pulverized with snow today.

The view from my living room window earlier in the day. I wish I had stuck a ruler in the snow!

I've shoveled the patio and walk 3 or 4 times already today and it's still coming down out there. Thankfully, I didn't have to go into work today so I had time to put the finishing touches on City Blocks!

I even managed to hop outside and get a few pictures outside before it got dark! I didn't have much room to work (I shoveled and got the quilt outside, only to find that it was nearly covered again!) I tried to hang City Blocks on the fence, but ended up just putting it on the massive pile of snow I made. Elvis enjoyed running through it a little before I took these pictures. :)

 Dat quilting though! I wish I had a way to photograph it better, but this is as good as I could do!

And of course, I had to add a label! I thought about making something special, but in the end, I decided to just go simple.

So glad to have this one finished! This one is surprisingly liked around the house; it's already been cuddled with! Linking up with Finish It Up Friday over at Crazy Mom Quilts!

This is one of my goals for the 2016 Finish Along - First Quarter!

WIP Wednesday: It's The Quilting That Never Ends

Howdy y'all, happy Wednesday! I hope everybody is staying warm; if it's anything like my town, it has been absolutely freezing lately. We finally got our first 'real' snow of the season that stuck, with a crazy forecast for the weekend (18 inches of snow in KY? What is that madness?!). I've been splitting my evenings between huddling on the couch for warmth, mature adult leisure activities playing Lego Marvel Heroes with Mr. LBC, and quilting City Blocks. I have quilted. And quilted. And quilted. Oh, and quilted some more.

NEVER AGAIN.

If I ever start talking about pebbling large scale again, virtually smack the fire out of me and remind me of this. Remind me of how I've quilted for nearly a month and this SOB still isn't done. (If you haven't noticed, I might have been muttering bad words at this quilt for a while. Lol). And with such dense quilting, this most likely won't be a cuddler, but a hanger. So in that future sewing room that doesn't exist yet, I'll have to reserve some wall space for this because with all the time I've put in, it's going to be appreciated, dangit! :)

LBC just couldn't resist. :)

I've nearly finished quilting though! I've got one more teal section left to go, which is a walk in the park compared to the pebble sections. I wanted to finish it tonight, but I tweaked my back at work yesterday and it's been giving me fits. So it will have to sit for another night before the quilting is finally done!

Linking up with WIP Wednesday and NTT!

Throwback and Looking Forward

Howdy y'all, I've got a double post for you today! First up, I have an oldie but goodie to share for Throwback Thursday over at A Quarter Inch From the Edge. This is a continuation of 'quilts I made the kiddos for Christmas'. This one is the third I will have shared, called the Garrett quilt for my little cousin that received it. He is quite the pirate, so I knew right away that it had to involve pirates and all things ocean.

This one is quite busy also (this was before I learned about using neutrals and blenders to keep things calmed down), but it's just so fun! And I remember I loved doing this FMQ. I was shooting for ocean waves and I feel like this simple and quick design was spot on.

And I love this backing fabric! I randomly find bits of it in my scrap bins and it always makes me smile. :)

I've been a scrappy binder since the beginning! Those bits of red really pop!

After looking back, it only seems fitting to look forward now! I'm sure many of you are getting sick of reading everybody's goals and resolutions for the coming year, but I'm here to add another! (I'm actually one of those people who loves reading those posts, anybody else like that?) One thing I wanted to do this year was be more active with goal setting, so here's what I have planned for the next 3 months thanks to the Finish-A-Long link up, which you can see here!

My biggest goal is to get City Blocks completely finished - quilted, bound, and labeled! I've already started quilting it, so this one is on its way to being completed.

Next up is my Orange Peels! I just ordered some fabric for a backing thanks to a gift certificate I won on a linky party. I also snagged some Aurifil thread to try out, which excites me to no end! My plans for the Orange Peels is the same as City Blocks - completely finish her up!

My final goal was a bit harder because I wasn't totally sure where I wanted to go after these 2 WIP's, but I think I know what I want to do. I've got my Scrap Vortex blocks back up on the design wall and I want to do something fun with them. I don't want to make an entire quilt out of just scrappy blocks (not yet at least!), but I do want to make a quilt top out of the ones I have. So my goal is to get them pieced into a top, then finished up like all the rest!

I've made more since this picture was taken, but forgot to take a picture!

Three quilts in three months is quite ambitious for me, but I'm shooting for the moon since there isn't a penalty for not completing all my goals in the time limit. After all, if there is something left to do, there's always next quarter to wrap things up! :)

WIP Wednesday: If All Else Fails, Quilt the Crap Out of It

Happy Hump Day, y'all! Wednesday is upon us and I have a sneak peek at my current work in progress. If you have been around here much, you know that City Blocks has been nagging at my mind for a while. I had been throwing around quilting ideas for months with no success. Nothing seemed right. Then I ran across a pattern that has several names, though the two I like are 'boxy stipple' and (my personal favorite) 'the robot'. It works so well in those big sections of solid teal!

But how to quilt those improv areas? I sat at my machine for quite a while, swapping out thread colors repeatedly, lining things up, then balking because it just didn't feel right. I was so afraid of messing things up! Finally, I just had to give up the notion that I would find a perfect quilting pattern. Instead, I went on the flip side and decided to quilt the crap out of this thing. The only areas that won't be quilted are those little sections of color in the improv areas! I've been learning pebbles as I fill in the white areas with loooooooottttssssss of pebbles! It's fun and the texture is out of this world so far!

It's taking a while to get such dense quilting done, but I'm enjoying it. :) Hope y'all have an awesome day!

Linking up with WIP Wednesday!

Finish It Up Friday: City Blocks Top Complete!

Happy Friday, friends! Another week is coming to a close and I can't wait for a weekend off. I managed to get this little booger finished up this week! I'll be honest, I'm glad to see this one done. Though these blocks were fun, they were time consuming and started feeling finicky. When a project stops being fun, I know it's time to wrap things up because I quilt for fun, not because I have to.

I ended up picking a seam on one of the columns to change the layout from 4 squares high to 3 squares high. Rather than make a 3x4 quilt and have to make quite a few more of those blocks, I decided on a nine-patch layout that wouldn't need anymore blocks. And you know, I'm super glad I did. It's not as big as I wanted, but the square layout has its charms. I like the few odd bits of white in the sashing as well, that was a good idea on SewKatieDid's part!

I'm not sure when I'll have a backing for this one, so for now it's on the 'to-quilt' pile which will hopefully be joined by another top soon! Thanks for stoppin' by y'all, have an awesome weekend! Linking up with NTT and Finish it Up Friday!

WIP Wednesday: City Blocks Quilt Top Progress

Howdy y'all, hope your Wednesday is going well! I spent all day helping my Dad remodel a bathroom, so I'm worn out. But I do have some quick progress to share, even if it isn't as much as I'd like!

 I've got one column stitched together and almost have the second one ready to stitch together. I'm so close yet so far away from getting this top together. I've been piddling around with some other stuff as well, I'll be posting about it soon! I'm getting back to work on it after posting this, can't wait! Have a good one y'all!

Linking up with WIP Wednesday!