June's Purple Rainbow Challenge: Sampler '12' Quilt Top

I have enjoyed June's Rainbow Challenge color, PURPLE! I have wanted to make a purple quilt for awhile and decided to make one using a pattern in my Strip Happy Quilting on a Roll book. Most likely I'll make all the quilts in this book because I love to buy and sew up jelly rolls.
I wasn't able to find a purple jelly roll, so I made one from my purple stash. The blocks in the pattern were 18"x18", but I made mine 16"x16" and sewed a purple 2 1/2" strip between each block. The outer border was solid in the picture. I made mine scrappy with varying lengths of purple 2 1/2" strips. I didn't care one of the 12 pattern blocks, the one laying under the book in the second picture. I replaced it with a 25 patch block. And I changed the house block. I gave it one window instead of two.
I'll piece a backing for this 54 1/2"x69 1/2" quilt and enjoy quilting it next month :D
I participate in a blog that host's Let Me See Your Jelly Roll!! You can find the Crocked Seams logo on my side bar. Megan has a nice blog, a good place to visit.

Weekend at Barber's AMA Races Continued

Two days of racing in sunny, HOT Birmingham, Alabama. Wow. 94 and 95 HUMID degrees both days. We watched three races Saturday afternoon and four races Sunday afternoon while we sat in our folding chairs under the trees on "the hill" beside the back stretch of the race track. We shared the hill with over a thousand people. It was a good place because we could see most of the track from there and the shade trees made the heat bearable.
We visited the pits Saturday morning and the Barber Vintage Motorsport Museum Sunday morning. The museum is the largest motorcycle museum in North America. Over 1300 motorcycles are in the collection. They displays 750 motorcycles and several racing cars at a time in main Museum and store the others in a large warehouse on the property.
Some of the old motorcycles from the collection are displayed at other locations in Birmingham. For example, a motorcycle from the collection was displayed in a glass case in the hotel lobby where we stayed. We were told that three "Barber Museum" motorcycles were on display in the large new Bass Pro Shop across the street from our hotel. Each motorcycle on display has a plate that describes the bike and the order of it's addition to the collection. BMS-956 would mean that the bike was the 956'th bike/racing car restored and added to Barber Motor Sports' collection. Good way to keep track of their inventory!
The museum was five floors, built with concrete, steel and glass and had a hydraulic elevator in the middle. A very interesting, beautiful building. Because it's right beside the race track, you can watch motorcycles or cars racing on the track from the upper floors of the museum. While we were looking at motorcycle displays in the museum, we would look through the glass walls of the museum and watch motorcycles running practice laps on the track below. How cool is that.
Motorcycles and old race cars were displayed on the floors, on the walls, hanging from the ceiling, and in other imaginative ways. There was a state of the art restoration area in the basement, a gift shop at the museum entrance and a nice sandwich shop on the second floor. It was a good place to spend Sunday morning and have lunch before the afternoon races as the museum was air conditioned!
I'll be home later today to get caught up on my email, blogging friends and sewing.

Weekend In Birmingham, Alabama at the AMA Races

This weekend I'm watching the American Motorcycle Association races at Barber Motorsport Park in Birmingham, Alabama. It's a beautiful track. Good grief, it is hot here in Alabama this weekend. Racing was great today. I'm standing in front of the Michael Jordan National Guard Suzuki pits. Tomorrow more races and a visit to the Barber Motorcycle Museum.

June's Purple Rainbow Challenge Continues

I love purple and have been collecting purple fabrics for a couple years. My plan ... to make some purple quilts. After cutting a homemade purple jelly roll, I pulled out Strip Happy Quilting on a Roll  by Donna Kinsey and started sewing blocks for the "Sampler '12' Quilt. Finished blocks are 18"x18". I'm making my blocks 16"x16" and will sash them with 2 1/2" strips of dark purple. The first 4 sampler blocks are in the first picture.

Salt Air Quilt is Finished

The front is a Salt Air Jelly Roll sewed together like a "jelly roll race quilt". Pieces of Salt Air Red were used between the Salt Air Jelly Roll strips and for the quilt's inner border. The outer border is 2 colors of Salt Air Waves and the backing is pieced with 5 colors of Salt Air Waves. Some Salt Air charms were cut in half and sewed together to make a colorful 2 1/2" strip sewed into the backing. My good friend, Sharon Vrooman, gave me some Salt Air charms she had left over from a project. Lucky me. The pieced strip using those charms in the backing looks great. Made the back of the quilt more interesting. Thank you, Sharon.
The scrappy binding was pieced using different lengths of Salt Air Waves.
Salt Air Quilt finished at 62"x72"

Rainbow Challenge June Purple House and Pot Holder

Finished another house and pot holder, this time in purple. This is the second house block I've made using Bonnie Hunter's "Happy House" pattern from her Quiltville website. I like this pattern :D
I continue to make superhero and Star Wars pillowcases for grands.
Finished the Salt Air quilt top. I'm currently piecing the backing and hope to start quilting it Sunday or Monday.
The library sent me a text. The latest True Blood series book is waiting for me to collect. I haven't finished Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter yet. It's on the table beside my bed along with an Amelia Peabody Mystery that I've almost finished.
Vampires and mummies. There maybe more reading than sewing this week.

Slice "DICED" Apples for QAL Finished

My Sliced Apples QAL quilt is finished. I renamed it, Sliced Diced Apples, because the batik fabrics I used reminded me of apples. The batiks used in the backing made me think of citrus. Fruit salad would also be a good name for this quilt, but I've been calling it Sliced Diced Apples for so long I'm going to keep that name.
All the batiks for this quilt came from my batik stash. They were either bought on sale or with coupons. I had enough of the light green batik fabric to make the inner border in the quilt top and the outer border in the quilt backing. I had enough of the batik used to make the lighter diagonals in the center quilt top to also bind the quilt.
When I quilted Sliced Diced Apples, I extended the lines of the "stitch in the ditch" quilting method of the center blocks and diagonals on into the outer border. The quilt looked nice after I finished sewing on the binding, but after a good washing to remove the basting spray and drying in the clothes dryer, this quilt really came to life. The "stitch in the ditch" red diagonals popped.
Sliced Diced Apples finished at about 50 1/2" x 61 1/2".

Rainbow Challenge June Purple Blocks and Strips

For some reason, my three year old camera can't seem to capture the color purple correctly.
This makes 18 rainbow blocks and numerous WOF rainbow strips set aside to assemble in December. I am enjoying this rainbow challenge.
After learning Wanda Hanson's colorwash techniques on Monday, I think I want try making a 16 patch rainbow colorwash block for each month of this rainbow challenge. Um..

Practicing Skills Learned in Wanda's Intuitive Color Class

Before I left Wanda's class Monday, I bought a baggie containing a starter set of 100 lovely batik squares. When I got home I arranged the new squares in the color order of the color wheel as I did with the practice squares in class. The new batik squares are shown in the first picture. Then I created a second colorwash shown in the second picture.
During the last three days I arranged and rearranged the squares in the colorwash using the classroom squares and the colorwash using the purchased batik squares. When I happened to walk by them, I would move squares around if I though I saw a better arrangement.
Today I practiced sewing the classroom set of squares together and that practice colorwash is shown in the third picture.
Wanda encouraged us to feel free to substitute some of the classroom squares with some squares from our own stash as the classroom set of squares were chosen to challenge us as we learned about the color wheel, textures, contrasts and color values. I decided to sew my classroom squares together without squares from my stash to keep as a memento of the class. I plan to use the purchased starter set of batik squares as just that, the first in my collection of batik squares.

Intuitive Color Class with Wanda Hanson

My sewing buddy, Cathy, and I spent the morning in Charlotte, NC, with Wanda Hanson.
We learned about the color wheel, warm and cool colors, textures, contrasts and color values.
Wanda talked to us about her lovely quilts displayed in the gallery. I love to look at pictures of Wanda's quilts on her blog exuberantcolor. But Wanda's quilts are even more beautiful, vibrant and colorful when they are viewed in person.
Our last class exercise was to create a colorwash project with the 100 squares we had played with all morning. It was challenging and FUN. Wanda is an excellent teacher.
Before I left, I bought a beautiful quilted cobblestone mug rug, created by Wanda, and a bag of 100 yummy, beautiful batik squares.
It was a great class! I had a blast! Thank you, Wanda.

Rainbow Challenge June Purple 16 patch blocks

I love purple! Let the fun begin.