working on....

 No big news here, at least not the kind of announcement that I am waiting to make regarding the arrival of my grandson!  As you can see in this picture, Brita is nearing her delivery date!  We were at the Timberwolves game with B and B this night.

about 36 weeks

The picture below shows a new-ish project that I have been working on.  It is made from felted wool sweaters that I have been collecting from a local used clothing store.  I finally have enough of a coordinated theme to put together a decent sized lap quilt or couch quilt.  This has been kind of fun.

chopped up felted wool sweaters

I washed them twice on hot water/cold rinse and dried in a hot dryer.  You never can tell for sure how they will turn out, but 5 of the 6 that I worked with shrank up nicely.  They have to be 100% wool, but even if the tag says that, there is no guarantee that they will shrink down like I want them to be.  Not sure what to do with the other one, probably put it with my stuff to go to the donation center!  They will be able to collect twice from that one!  

Anyway, I cut all the sweaters open at the seams, so I had flat fronts, backs and sleeves to work with.  I decided to work on a grid of multiples of 3", so I cut chunks that were 15 1/2", 12 1/2", 9 1/2", etc.  Mostly squares, but some strips to fill in as needed.  I ended up drawing it out on graph paper to make everything fit into rows that could be assembled and then joined together.  I wanted to keep this simple, without a backing or binding.  So I just overlapped the edges of the pieces by about 1/4" (not very accurately in some spots!) and top-stitched with a wavy stitch.  I used the walking foot on my machine, it would have been really hard to keep things feeding through evenly without that.  When it all came together, I did one more round of topstitching all around the outside edge and called it good.  I think I want to do more of this as I can find sweaters that are appropriate.  

Up on my design wall--

La France by Villa Rosa

I cannot believe that I have those 2 turquoise blocks at the bottom nearly on top of each other!  I did not even see that until I looked at the picture, and I had been consciously working to keep the colors scattered evenly throughout!   I think the seam ripper has to come out for this one.  This is a pattern that uses 5" pre-cut squares plus 1 yard additional fabric.

I finished a quilt for a customer, all flannels--

Customer's flannel quilt

And started another quilt that I introduced to you before--

Lover's Lane by Villa Rosa

This looks like Easter eggs to me!  I will be able to finish quilting this one tonight since I am home alone and can do whatever I please!  

The 2 Villa Rosa quilts that I have shown here will be displayed at Bear Patch, where the patterns and kits will be available.

I'm thinking that supper will be a bowl of popcorn!