Allietare with Serenity (and a link party)

Finishes and good progress, great kick off of the year!!

The Ongoing Project List:

1. Play with Me QAL - worked on finishing Feb board
2. Jane T - 4 more blocks done (see below)
3. Block Swap Adventure -  no progress
4. Charity Quilts for DC General Homeless Shelter project - finished a new top (Allietare)
5. Americana QAL - no progress
6. Allietare QAL - finished the top!! (see below)
7. Pantone Color of the Year 2016 - finished and pattern ready for others to enjoy (see below)
8. The SK project - no progress

The EverythingElse List:

1. the 31000 Xs project - no progress
2. Spirit cross stitch project - no progress
3. Mirror Mirror Afghan - no progress
4. Alice in Wonderland quilt - no progress
5. As You Wish -  no progress
6. Crazy optical illusion - no progress
7. Memory quilt 2 - no progress

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Pantone's Color of the Year for 2016 are actually two colors.
Serenity (light blue) and Rose Quartz.
They wanted to make a statement about gender blur, balance, tranquil tones.
I heard/read all kind of "negative" comments about those colors (like they are too "baby", dated, etc...) and even if I don't particularly like them either, they spoke to me in some way and I was able to finish my traditional wall hanging before the year even started!

Let me introduce you "Serenity"

Serenity - 17'' x 17''

Pattern available in my shop

This is inspired by the Firefly ship (Serenity) and a quote in the movie "I am a leaf on the wind - watch how I soar." I appliqued the word Serenity as in the movie posters (I hope it's right, if it's not, please don't tell me ;) ) and I appliqued a leaf, surrounded by a echo of its shape done by quilting. It reminds me of ripples in the water, which is a good match with the color and the theme, I think!

I bound it with the same color as the background, with some pink accents. I never used the same color for the binding and while I think it worked here, I don't particularly like it. I think my eyes prefer to see a definite border around a quilt!

And, just for fun, here is the line up of all my past Color of the Year wall hangings!!

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The sixth and final clue of Bonnie Hunter's Mystery QAL is out. I decided to follow along, but I made 1/4 of the units because I don't need a big quilt and I was not sure if I liked the design :)

Now that I see the overall quilt, my thought is: I am happy I followed along! I like the design!!!

I decided to go with brighter colors: cyan/aqua/teal (instead of red) and bright yellow (instead of gold). I will donate this quilt to charity as a baby quilt, so I want it to be fun and colorful!

I was so worried about not following the instructions in term of scrappyness: I didn't have a constant grey, I didn't have sets, I went scrappy all the way. And I am super happy I did!!

If you check the layout, you may see "sets" because I had about 5/6 fabrics for all the units so repeats happened and I used them to make few blocks less scrappy. I really like how it turned out, bright and cheerful as hoped. The scrappyness of the greys and black adds interest when you look at the quilt close by, without distracting too much from the overall design from far away!
This is my first design on point, and it was quite confusing, but I pulled it off.
The most difficult thing was to try to convince my sewing helper not to run on the units as I was trying to figure out where each piece should go :)

Sixth clue of Bonnie's mystery QAL... 

Linking up at the Monday Link-up party!

ETA: I added a piano border!

Size: 46'' x 60''

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I said that once my Xmas presents were done, I could start working on my Jane T, and so I did!

I decided to draft all the pattern myself for two reasons: 1. I am sewing everything by machine, but I want to honor the "slowness" of the original Dear Jane... so by drafting myself all the patterns from pictures, I can add the slow attention to the blocks, while sewing them up fast on the machine. 2. while I found patterns online for the blocks, they use up a lot of paper as each pattern is separate. Drafting several block at once, I can optimize their placement in Inkscape and save paper!

So this is my progress 

The purple one is a Farmer's Wife block. I don't know the name of the block and I won't call it with its name, because I read super-weird stories about copyright battles from the author of that book with people sharing information for QALs and such. IMHO this is very discouraging since they are all pretty simple designs and I think if people sharing QALs where linking to her book, she could have been happy for the endorsement and free advertisement. Apparently that's not the case... 

I am drafting my own patterns I don't want to get in troubles :)

I am not sharing neither the patterns nor cutting directions, 

but from now on I will call them the WoaF blocks :)

Progress on the entire quilt. 9 blocks!

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And last, but not least, I want to remind you that I am working on charity quilts,
and I would love your help!! 

Quilts are for a quilt drive to help the kids in the DC General Homeless Shelter. 

And you can help me by donating orphan blocks, partial blocks, or fabric (scraps, strips, leftover, uglies, whatever). 

If you are willing to mail them to me, I could use them to make more quilts for these kids!!! 

If you are up for a loving donation, please send me an email at tweloq[_at_]gmail[dot_com] or leave a comment here with your email address so I could give you my mailing address. I promise that your donation will be used to make some kids happy and feel more loved!! 

This week, I will count the Allietare quilt as progress. I will probably add a top/bottom border to make it a toddler size,  but for now I count it as a great progress for the week!!! :)

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How about you? What are YOU up to?

Link it here and share it with me!!

An InLinkz Link-up