233. Rosa

 Rosa is a quilt made with a fat quarter bundle I had had for quite a while--Rosa by Crystal Manning. When I saw that Riley Blake Designs was doing a block challenge, it seemed like a good fit--a block once a week using this beautiful line of fabric. 

It should be noted that I am notoriously unreliable when it comes to any kind of sew along. I rarely keep up, and sometimes I don't even begin the sew along until it has been completed for months. However, this time around I kept up weekly.

The fabric was so pretty and both colorways, the blue and pink, played very well together.

I added some cute selvages in a couple of places.

When it came time to do the setting blocks, I chose the layout using Irish chain blocks. I had a very pale pink solid in my stash and decided I liked the look of very subtle blocks, allowing all the pieced blocks to shine. 

For the backing I used Social Climber in pink, one of my favorite Anna Maria Horner prints.

It's a long quilt, and therefore, kind of hard to photograph. In retrospect, I might have left off the top and bottom rows. But no matter--I hope to find a pink lover and this will be a nice quilt to snuggle with.

Beautiful quilting:

Quilt: Rosa
Pattern by: Riley Blake Designs block challenge 2022

Pieced by: Cindy Wiens

Completed: 2022

Size: 70" x 90"

Quilted by: Darby Myers

Donated to MCC auction, purchased by Pam Penner for granddaughter Janae Penner

232. Lemon Crush, aka Colorbox 2.0

In 2011, I made blocks for a quilt called Colorbox. It was donated to MCC for the annual quilt auction, and sold for $5900! 

At the same time, Rachel Hauser of Stitched in Color was doing a sewalong called Bottled Windows. She was making "ticker tape" blocks, an idea originated by Amanda Jean Nyberg of Crazy Mom Quilts, where small pieces of fabric were sewed to a base. I cut scraps that had been used in the Colorbox quilt, using as many selvages as I could, made the blocks and laid them out in the same color orientation as the original Colorbox quilt.

I even have an autographed selvage by Jessica Jones of How About Orange, an extremely popular blogger during that time period.

The blocks had been sewn to a piece of batting and it took me years before I looked online and found out that I just needed to sew the blocks together like any other blocks, even though they had been sewn to batting. I finally laid them all out and loved how everything looked. In retrospect, I would have changed the orientation of the blocks, because the quilt is wider than longer. But I wanted to keep the same color order as the original Colorbox, and because of the selvages there was no other way to set them.

The backing is a favorite by Alexander Henry called Lemon Crush, thus the name of the quilt.

Having a quilt with the same fabrics as my most successful charity auction makes this one very special to me. 

Quilt: Lemon Crush

Pieced by: Cindy Wiens

Completed: 2022

Size: 80" x 64"

Quilted by: Darby Myers

231. My Granny Says Boo

 Back in 2012, when bee exchange groups were still very much a "thing" on Flickr, I was invited to fill a space in an established group, called the Stash Trad Bee, when someone had to drop out. I was thrilled! Some of my favorite blogging friends were in this group. It was interesting to go back to my photos on Flickr and see exactly who the members were in the group. 

Anyway, when it was my turn, I asked for granny blocks in a Halloween theme. For those who didn't have Halloween fabric, I narrowed the color palette to orange, purple, lime, gray and black. 

The original 11 blocks. 

Eleven blocks were clearly not enough, so I pulled out fabric to make some more granny blocks. In addition, I have always wanted to make some Ghost Town blocks by Dana Bolyard, so I made six of those to put in the center of the quilt, surrounded by the granny blocks.

I added sashing and used my favorite "smoke" fabric for the cornerstones.

My favorite granny blocks include this one autographed by Lizzy House (down in the lower right-hand corner).

This is a new one added and is my favorite overall--I just love the moody orange fabric.

The backing I used is probably a little too muted, given the brighter colors of the front. But I love the fabric and it was already in my stash.

The binding is supposed to glow in the dark, although I have not yet checked that out.

Darby did spiderweb quilting.

Although not a huge fan of Halloween, I really love this quilt. 

Quilt: My Granny Says Boo

Quilt Design: Granny blocks from the Stash Trad Bee, with additional granny blocks made by Cindy Wiens, and Ghost Town blocks designed by Dana Bolyard

Completed: 2022

Size: 54" x 68"

Quilted by: Darby Myers 

230. Rainbow Roundabout

 Dresden blocks were my choice when it was my turn to choose for the Mid Century Modern bee in 2015. This was the year when my Minnesota retreat friends had also decided to do a block exchange. There was some overlapping of members between the two groups, so I asked both groups to make Dresden blocks.

 Occasionally I would put them up on the design wall and admire them. Then I realized that they would somehow have to be appliqued to a background square. So back into the drawer they went. 

Again, in 2022, it was finally time to complete this quilt. I appliqued all the blocks onto the same background, a perfect fabric designed by Victoria Findlay Wolfe. And in a stroke of boldness (for me, at least), I decided to do a blanket stitch in black rather than an invisible stitch. I'm very happy with that choice.

I knew I needed a little separation between blocks so I chose a skinny black and white stripe. I thought black cornerstones would work, but because of the stripe, when the black cornerstone butted up against the black of the stripe, it just looked like I didn't know how to line things up.

Changing to a bright yellow for the cornerstone solved that problem and added a little pop.

For the backing I chose a print by Tula Pink that I had fallen in love with, some lush dripping roses.

Then it was ready for quilting. 

This is definitely one of my favorite finishes of the year. I love the bright and beautiful colors, made by my friends. All the colors meld together just perfectly.

Quilt: Rainbow Roundabout

Blocks by: Members of Mid Century Modern bee and Sew Sisters bee; pieced together by Cindy Wiens

Completed: 2022

Size: 55" x 69"

Quilted by: Darby Myers