Scrappy Collection and Liberty Aerial Grove Quilts.

Something about the New Year has had a positive influence on getting some WIPs back into rotation. My Scrappy Collection and Liberty Aerial Grove quilts are two of my favorites. Both of these are totally personal projects, meaning they have no deadline and no intended purpose other than for my own pure enjoyment.

First up is my scrappy collection quilt that I started shortly after this most recent Spring Market in May 2015. (See blog posts here and here.) As predicted in the last post, it had to go into hibernation while I worked on the carkai and fall pattern release. But as soon as all of that and some end-of-year madness was over, my scrappy collection quilt was one of the very first personal projects that I pulled back out. In fact, this is what my New Year’s Day in the studio looked like.

It was a fun day of pull-everything-out-and-throw-it-on-the-floor to decide what to use for borders and what to use for backing. I decided to add enough borders to make it bed sized. To do that, I used more printed fabric from my stash as well as a print from carkai to surround the assembled blocks.

As for the back, I initially hoped my new Widescreen fabrics would be in. The light blue seemed like it’d be perfect for the back. But alas, they weren’t and I didn’t want to wait. With personal projects, it is best to strike when the iron is hot, because you never know what will be needing your attention later. What I ended up with felt pretty exciting. I scrapped it up with some carkai, some doe and a big piece of Kona highlight.

While making my first Collection quilt, I initially felt the urge to hand quilt it…entirely. Unfortunately timing didn’t allow for that, so it became a hybrid of hand and machine quilting, which I was happy with in the end. With this one, I’ve always figured that I’d hand quilt it, but now that I’ve started, I can’t stop thinking about throwing in some machine work too. We’ll see. I’m open to basing all decisions on what feels right as I go.

Next up is my Liberty Aerial Grove. Also a favorite, and also one that’s been sitting on the shelf. (See previous updates here, here, here and here.)

This one was started over a year ago. It’s one of the projects in Savor Each Stitch, and something I teach fairly often. In fact, I totally got the idea for this version after one of my students brought Liberty to work on in class. I LOVED the idea, because it seemed like an amazing way to use these beautiful fabrics. Liberty can be an indulgence to partake of at the fabric store, which is why a project that uses small amounts of it can be smart and economical. Plus, the many beautiful small-scale prints work so well in a project like this. Depending on what you decide to do with the background or layout, you will show them right off.

My backgrounds are a textured mix of chambrays, Essex linen, railroad denims and my printed quilting cottons (architextures, doe). I like how the rich blues set off the pretty prints.

Originally, I was just going to do as many rows as the project in the book has, but after collecting bits I ended up with enough to make a couple of extra rows. There are 6 rows photographed here, but I just finished appliquéing a 7th. While I wouldn’t be upset about cutting out fabrics for an 8th row, I think it’s time to call this guy done and move on to the borders to finish up the top.