Simple panel projects

Panels are hard to resist when I see them in the shops, even though I haven't been very quick to actually use them in a quilt.  A panel sometimes contains just the perfect artwork a person wants to see. And this one spoke to me. I loved the colors and the subject matter.  I decided that I really just wanted to frame this in a simple manner, so I didn't even use everything that came in the kit with the panel.  Oops - that leaves fabric in my stash, doesn't it? 

This was a new panel, but in recent months I've been playing with panels purchased in the past.  And I've been exploring some other ideas for panels I have still in the stash. 

 

Three of the finished ones are pictured here.  The bright one with the tree is a lap quilt that has a pieced border. It's all quilted and ready to be gifted.

 

 

This cute ABC panel has one simple striped border added.  It still needs to be quilted but will probably wait until I need it as a gift.

 

The Crazy Cats panel was cut into sections and reassembled with strip sets and 9-patch blocks. I love this one. Granddaughter Olivia chose this one as part of her recent birthday gift. 



Turning a PIG into a WIP

My reward for finishing a UFO is to start a new project. Perfectly logical, right?  Well, my choice this time is to pull out a PIG (project in grocery sack) from the many waiting for attention.

 

 

I have a small drawer full of random fabric panels, with no actual plan for any of them. Some have squares or rectangles that could be cut into sections and others have one large picture. 

 

This panel has a black tree silhouette over a beautiful bright and colorful background. The colors are what I couldn't resist when I bought this.  I'm using the pattern Spotlight II to turn this panel into a quilt top highlighting those colors. It has a couple of simple borders, plus some additional pieced sections. Border 1 is on and I'm ready to work on the next one.

 

In the past year I've used 2 of those panels I've collected for children's quilts. The Crazy Cat quilt was done by adding strips as sashing and 9-patch cornerstones to the rectangles on the panel. Very quick - in fact I think I posted about it being a 3 hour project. It has been quilted and bound, so it's ready to gift to some child as needed.  And it was all from my stash! I know I'm going to use this pattern again.

 

 

This alphabet panel had squares that could be cut apart, but I decided to just put 1 border on and call it good.  So I chose a bold stripe from the stash that had lots of the colors from the panel. This one still needs to be quilted and bound.

 

Snow day sewing

We are having a winter snow storm and schools are closed all around us. And since my workday yesterday stretched from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm, I decided to enjoy my "gift of time". I finished framing the 16 golfing lady blocks. Since they are all different sizes I'm still not sure how I want to put them together, but it is nice to have them one step further along.

This afternoon after a Webinar for work I went back to my sewing room. I put the binding on a UFO from fall and sewed 6 strip sets and 2 blocks for my Trip Around the World quilt. All in all a productive day.