Warm Welcome: "Small Checks"

Whoa. It has been awhile! Frankly, not a lot of crafting has been happening here thus far this year. But I seem to have a backlog of finished projects from the end of 2015 that I haven't posted yet-- so let's just start with that.

This 42" square quilt is from the book, Warm Welcome: Cozy Quilts for Baby by Mary Hickey. The design is called, "Small Checks."

I started on this quilt last May, but found myself struggling with fabric choices. I'm still not thrilled (the checks are so washed out color-wise that the piecing is lost), but considering my decision to leave the check-framed blocks as-is (rather than re-do them), I think it turned out as well as could be expected. And towards the end of the year, I finally managed to finish up the project.

The quilting is inspired by an Angela Walters Craftsy class, "Dot-to-Dot Quilting." I am really happy with how the quilting worked out in this one. Yay!

All of the quilting was completed using Aurifil Mako 50/2 thread. I used two different colors: 2710 (Ice Blue) and 2130 (Pale Yellow).

The back is pieced from scraps. I actually like the back better than the front! (As I said, I struggled with fabric choices on this one.) There is no label on this one as it is destined for donation.

This week I have been busy taking pictures of other finished quilts to share. I am determined to get caught back up with my blogging!

It doesn't always work.

I like to think that I'm pretty good at putting colors/fabrics together. But not everything works the way I think it will. Case in point:

On a whim, I started pulling fabrics from my stash. The colors all worked together. But in this configuration? Not so much. Washed-out weirdness (in person, it is even worse).

Feeling lazy, rather than fixing the "real" problem of the grey/yellow pieced blocks, I decided to try and make them work by finding a new focus fabric.

Still not perfect, but soooo much better with some contrast in there. I think with some borders, this one is going to be okay. And at this point, okay is feeling pretty good to me.