August ~ And July Project Show and Tell

Hi everyone! Welcome August! High summer....

The angle of the sun has changed, did you notice that?  The light is more golden. Days are now uniformly hot, blue, and breezy. Sunset comes a little sooner each day. I have graduated to floating in the pool with a Styrofoam ''noodle'' each afternoon. NO swimming, but just to float and relax is a joy.
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I was surprised when I gathered the pix for this post, I did more than I realized! But doesn't Fourth of July seem like it was just eons ago? A long but short/ fast July~
Here is what Mo and I worked on during July.
The ever present Summertime, only six more rosettes to go. OMG, the hours spent on this project, yeesh. I will be thrilled when this is done and folded away in the closet, yay!

In my bin of blue fabrics I found a perfect backing for Sand Pails and Starfish.

I was going for use a Beacon [looks like a lighthouse] feedsack but decided this is too perfect to pass up. It will get miniature Baptist Fan quilting.

 I finished the last of Fall Festival's applique blocks. This is  the banner that goes across the top of the quilt.

I have to make 40-50 Flying Geese and set them into the sashing, sew the whole thing together, add borders---maybe in January unless we get a rainy Fall.

I made some changes as always. A white crow. Oak leaves.

I wish my Jack o'Lantern was smiling, have to figure out what's wrong with his smile!He looks appalled.

Beginning Bitty. [Bitty's Quilt, from Minick and Simpson]. My friend Sue is making Bitty also.. Here is her background, very  pretty
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And mine, rumpled as always.

This is the big blown up full size pattern.

 I don't have a light box so I had to use my window. It wasn't easy to do, standing there trying to trace and mark the designs. But something to experiment with.

This very simple design has a lot of things ''tucked under'' or layered. My hope was that tracing the design would make that work easier/ better. We shall see.

For the beach, I prepped the applique squares of Jan Patek's Midnight Clear.

I'll need a day to sew some of the white star blocks so that I can work out how to put only the bottom fifth of the quilt together, borders and all!, so I can continue the applique.

And my other Patek quilt, Pumpkins and Pinwheels.

I'm not happy with this at all. I think the big issue is that the entire project is very mingy and small? Looks like a full sized quilt in its photo but is only 49" square. I almost feel like Patek's original was bigger and the directions are for a reduced wall hanging version or throw.

Here are the little Pumpkin blocks also sewed at the beach, fine. BUT the pinwheel blocks come out bigger than the  little pumpkin blocks, which I stupidly cut to exact size. The little pumpkins are very wishy-washy small ovals, no bigger than my Dotty circles. And the stems should be green.

Look at the awful left side of this poor Pumpkin! The wind was howling. I picked out the stitches when I saw what I had done,lol.

So a complete do over? Or a set aside? Probably I will recut the Pumpkin squares larger, and redraw them so they're cuter. I am grateful and slightly in awe of the Half square triangle method Patek describes in the directions though. Two squares, face to face. Sew around the perimeter, then cut on both diagonals, and. voila`! ---you have four perfect equal half square triangles to form your Pinwheels. Easy peasy, and wonderful. The edges are then on the bias but they butt up to straight grain spacer blocks so may be will be okay.

I hate to just discard this project. I love the white pumpkins; I love the fabrics I have gathered for the quilt [yes, same palette as Fall Festival, but different fabrics], and Pinwheels is one of my very fave traditional blocks. Quandary. My feeling is to enlarge the design, to 150%, that would make it a 75" square quilt. 7.5 or 8" blocks instead of 5" blocks? Even 6" blocks would be an improvement, I think.
I'll work on Bitty for awhile and think about that. What do you guys think?

Mo says Hi!

love

lizzy  

gone to the beach....

PS oooh, I forgot to say I knitted half a mitten too! Mo lets me knit now, he only ''ate'' one ball of yarn.