WIP Wednesday

I'm starting this WIP post with an update, a completed WIP which I had absolutely nothing to do with. You might remember this picture from two weeks ago:

I would like to introduce Gabriel Joshua, 9 pounds and 11 ounces.

He is completely adorable.

Lots of dark hair, just like his siblings.

The happy family:

And totally smitten Grandma:

Okay, let's be honest. Every other WIP in this post is going to pale in comparison to Gabriel. But let's forge ahead.

Because I worked ahead (whew--that was a good decision!), I was still able to do my Farmer's Wife Friday post.

Last night I started working on a king-sized quilt that will be donated to the MCC quilt auction next April, with funds going to Third World relief. You will be seeing a lot more of this quilt. Let's just start by saying that last night three rooms in my house looked like "scrap vomit" (did anyone do I'm a Ginger Monkey's "scrap vomit" quiltalong--very cool quilts, and the name always makes me chuckle).  But instead, let's call it a "color explosion."

I have wanted to do the blocks in this quilt for over ten years, from a now-defunct magazine called Foundation Piecer. It  will also require some advice along the way as I'm doing 16 blocks but only have the patterns for 12. The basic color structure is  based on Stitched in Color's Bottled Rainbows, which never saw much progress in my sewing room, other than getting the borders sewn on the blocks. But it was the jumping off point for this quilt.

In an ideal quilting world, I would simultaneously complete at least get started on Bottled Rainbows, too.But how many of us really live in an "ideal quilting world."

Each block is
based on a single color. The blocks will be 16" without the solid color border, each block paper pieced in four quadrants, and each block will feature a block different design. With me so far?

Each quadrant will have a segment that is kind of a crazy quilt of scraps.

Here is the first block, called Crazy Whirligig. The four quadrants aren't sewn together yet, because I'm tossing one out (upper right quadrant). It takes me a while to get into the groove of paper piecing if I haven't done it for awhile. The first one has some major errors (toner ink on some of the Kona snow because I forgot it can transfer to your fabric when you press unless you are really careful, and some of the segments have little pleats. oops).

I'd love to say that this is going to be a stash-buster quilt. But alas, you just use little scraps, so the stash isn't going to experience a significant busting.

I had to set up an additional table with my cutting/ironing board because there was no way I was going to go back and forth to my office (where my ironing board lives) after each seam. Although the exercise would be good for me.

And Mark was kind enough to point out the serger sitting on the table, the serger that I "had to have" last December but I haven't used yet. Thanks, honey, for pointing that out...

I'm excited about this project. And now I'm off to see some some other WIPs. As always, thanks, Lee, for hosting this weekly event. It keeps me motivated.