Finished: Dragons Quilt

I've been trying to figure out what to call this, and I just can't come up with anything clever. So Dragons Quilt it is.

I made this for my 9 year old niece, who is a big dragon fan. My sister suggested "pinks, purples, and dragon-y greens." I ended up with purplish pinks and I like it. I tried to choose fabrics that reminded me of castles (brick fabric from Kate Spain's Central Park line) or dragon scales. 

 This is a big quilt. It's 68" by 96". I was originally planning on no sashing and a green border, but when I had it all laid out it was way too pink. Putting the green in between the blocks made a big difference. However, that made the quilt bigger than expected. I was still planning to add a border, but it would have been WAY too big for a twin size bed, so I just left it off. I'm not a huge fan of sewing borders on, so that was fine with me.

The blocks are from Don't Call me Betsy's Weathervane Block tutorial. They alternate with plain squares that I quilted dragons into. More info on the dragons can be found here in my previous post.

 I quilted flames and curling smoke coming out of the dragons' mouths. I love how this turned out.

The pink fabric to the left of this pieced block is the one that looks most like dragon scales to me--it has geometric hearts on it, and they look so much like scales! I was really happy to find that one.
I hope my niece loves it! I've been working on this off and on for over 4 months, and it feels so good to have it done.
I'm linking up today to Finish it Up Friday and Link a Finish Friday.

WiP: Quilted Dragons

I FINALLY got my niece's quilt all quilted this week. She loves dragons, and has for a long time, so I put dragons in all of the plain squares. My sister (her mom) is an amazing artist, and designed this motif for me. She's looking into selling PDF's of her designs.

 I did freehand flames and curling smoke coming out of the dragons' mouths over the pieced blocks. I love how it turned out!

I finished the quilting yesterday, and now all I have to do is bind it and this will be DONE! More pictures soon! I set aside the x-strings for a bit as I have some other deadlines right now, but I'm close to the quilting stage for that one too.

Linking up to Work in Progress Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

WiP: Removing Paper /How Should I Quilt This?

I haven't done much paper piecing in the past but chose to have members of my local Salt Lake MQG bee make paper-pieced x-strings blocks for me last year. There were six of us who participated so we each made two blocks each month, and it went for six months. I was just waiting on one more block so I could put this together. The block I was waiting on was... MINE! I only made one block when I made the instructions to hand out, and finally made the other one a couple of days ago. My month was April, so it has been a long time. It feels good to be making progress on this again!

I got all twelve blocks sewn together and now I'm removing the paper from the center blocks. I'm leaving it around the edges until I get a border on. Some of the people removed the paper, which stretched the edges a little bit. It was tricky to get the edges to match up in a few places as a result, but it turned out okay despite one or two small tucks.

 I am LOVING this. I'm really looking forward to getting it done.

I'm planning to add a narrow white border around the outside, then a super-wide border of this matching print around that. It will be about 18 inches wide. The large border will make it into a twin-size quilt. I'm adding the wide borders for a few reasons:
1. At 6'3" with a 6'7" husband, lap quilts only cover our laps. Small quilts don't cut it around here.
2. We need more spare twin-size quilts for the kids' beds in case of illness or whatever else might call for an emergency quilt.
3. I bought 5 yards of this print on a mega-good sale a year ago intending to use it as a backing, so I have plenty of fabric to do it.
I'm hoping that it "works" as a finished design.

 Now I'm debating how to quilt it? Should I custom quilt the blocks, or just do a quick allover design to get it done fast? I'm considering wavy lines, or possibly something geometric.

I'm also making a lot of progress on my niece's Christmas quilt. I know, it's February now, but it's getting there. I got all of the blocks sewn together along with sashing. I need to add one more border to the outside and then it's ready for quilting too. It was a bit windy outside when we tried to get a photo.

I also made two new pairs of pajama pants, so I've been really productive! It feels good to get so much done. I still don't have a lot of time, but I've been using more of the time that I have and feeling much better about things.

Linking up today to Work in Progress Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.