Two down, three to go!

I have finally finished my second quilt in Peg's challenge. It's a Chaos Crumb quilt in pastels, to show how good this block looks in restricted colours (for those who find scrappy just too scarey!).

It's a very dull and wet day here, so the photo looks a bit dull too, but you can just see the flowers quilted on the white spaces. It's a cot quilt (I've just found out that one of my colleagues is pregnant with her first baby! Congratulations Katharine and Mike!) as I seem to be needing quite a few of these this year!

I've also put the borders on quilt number 3. These houses were the result of a block swap. You made up a block, put it in a bag with the pattern, and then passed it round the group. When the bag gets back to you, you've had the chance to make 10 blocks you might not have tried before, and got enough blocks for a quilt. I loved these houses, but they have been languishing in my UFO box for several years! I orginally put the green border all the way round, but felt it was too heavy, so added blue at the top. I'm not sure it's working completely - maybe I need something to soften the transition. Any ideas? I'll try and get it layered today (we won't be doing much in this current weather!) and can easily add any improvements then.

One down, four to go!

I have finished the first of my challenge quilts! OK, it was a cheat really, as most of the quilting was done, it only had to be finished off, the border quilted and binding put on, but at least it's now finished and not languishing in my UFO box (where it has been since the end of 2006!).

The blocks were made by the members of a quilting group I belong to called 'Flutterwheels' and are from Margaret Miller's fabulous book 'Strips that Sizzle'. Everyone made six blocks and then we had great fun playing with them, and trying out different arrangements and combinations. At the end of the meeting they were raffled, and I won! This is one quilt I will definitely be keeping!

The quilting posed a bit of a problem, as I wanted to keep the sizzle and the colour changes obvious. In the end I meander quilted it with four different colours - light blue, dark blue, yellow and gold, to enhance the colors rather than mask them.

The borders were filled with my all-time favourite - feathers! I love doing these, as they are easy, very forgiving and look great.

A left over block became the label, and it's all done. Hooray!Now I have an apology to make. For some reason I thought it was Jacquie who had set this challenge, but it wasn't - it was Peg. I'm really sorry for that blunder and still amazed not only that I have accepted this challenge, but that there are 65 other people who have too! have a look at their progress by following the links on Peg's blog.