Project Round-Up for #MDSI

I had a fairly productive weekend and was able to finish several projects.  First up, two charity quilts:

This is a donation for Quilts of Valor.  It measures around 60 x 72″, and the pattern is from the book “More Loose Change“.  I did mess up the rotation of the four patches, but given the scrappiness of it, it’s difficult to peg exactly where the mistakes are.  Regardless, it still looks good and it was a good way to use up more of the 5” squares from my stash. I think I’m going to wait to submit for donation until I know for sure if I’ll have another QoV donation done fairly soon, as there’s a chance that multiple quilts can go to the same location (and save a little on postage!).

This quilt is called “Half Notes”, named for the musical fabric that’s opposite the solid brown in the HSTs.  It’s around 60″ square, and will be donated through one of my guilds to the local child protective services organization around the holidays. My job right now is to try to keep the cat hair off of it until donation time comes!

I also spent time working on two smaller projects that I’ve been meaning to get to for a while.

This iron caddy is a pattern from Sisters’ Common Thread; the pattern comes with a piece of the silver backed ironing-board fabric, and I also added a layer of Insul-Bright and a layer of regular batting.  I went with a cupcake fabric that I like but don’t know what else to do with (I already have two aprons, and that feels like decadent overkill, so while it lends itself to kitchen-y projects, an iron tote is as close as I can get!).

Please note, this project will fit approximately one (1) cat, size large to extra-large:

And finally, I finished my Sew Together bag.  This one has been floating around the internet for a little bit now; the pattern is from Sew Demented and was available from Craftsy, but I think it got removed temporarily because of a copyright dispute that’s ongoing with another designer that produced a very similar pattern. Sigh. You can buy it direct from the designer’s website, though.

I’d been putting off making it since I had heard that the pattern was a bit tricky and lacked pictures, and I’d agree with the lack-of-pictures assessment.  Also, some of the pieces have similar names, so I was constantly going back and forth between the cut list and the instructions to make sure I was sewing the proper pieces together.

I only had to get my seam ripper out twice, though, so it wasn’t too bad!

I used a lot of different bright colors, focusing on aqua/teal 2″ squares to piece the outside piece.  Although I pieced that, I didn’t use quilt batting or fusible fleece and just stuck with the standard interfacing to back it since I didn’t want to sew through a lot of crazy layers (well, anymore than I had to, anyway!).

I’m going to wait to fill it up with notion-y goodness until I show it off at my guild meetings this week so I can pass it around for other people to look at.