Six by Six Back

I used the "leftovers" from making the Six by Six quilt top to piece the column that's floating in all that green. Not a great picture, I didn't smooth it all out and pin it up correctly. The green is not the same exact solid green as I used in making the quilt top but it's close enough on the back. The strip of print along the top of this backing is going to mostly not make it into the back. But it's the same print as the one used in the quilt top with the blue background, Quite a different look to the fabric with that red-purple instead of the blue. I was considering using it for the quilt binding, but no decisions on that.

Now for the hard part...layering and pin basting. Or maybe I'll do the fusible spray method. I have to see which quilt batts I have to chose from.
 

Free Wheeling Fabric

 

At the recent BAMQ meeting, there were some super interesting printed canvas pieces of fabric available on the Free Table. I resisted at first, but then they were kind of left behind, sitting there all alone. So I felt sorry for them. Not really, but kinda, and it helped make my mind up to take them home.The bird one just cracks me up and I love purple and red together. It's only a FQ plus a bit, so it might work as a good feature pocket on a bag? The other print was so beautiful, by one of my fave designers, with a grellow/yellow background so it will go with some of my other canvas pieces that I have. Hey, it's Anna Maria Horner, I didn't know she was doing canvas designs. 

Updating my 2026 fabric tracker with these additions and also subtracting for recent finishes:

 Net Total Fabric for 2026 so far this year is: -12.85 yards 

Six by Six Top Complete

 

The last parts of the assembly of Six by Six went pretty quickly.

I love the little orange triangle in the seam line.

And there it is! Now to get the backing ready, sandwich it and start the quilting.

6x6 is Mostly 4x4

Got a lot more of the Six by Six piece together, now most of the pairs of blocks are sewn together in four block chunks. It will be very tempting to play around with these four block chunks and move things around like they're the original smaller quilt blocks. Or maybe I should just go with this arrangement and carry on trying to get this done by Sew Day.

I'm starting to consider how I will quilt this. I have a great big spool of orange thread that would work well. I don't think I'll do free-motion quilting and just do a walking foot grid sort of stitching. The question is, do I use something cool and/or boring on the backing?

 Every time I walk in my work room, I have a Woah!sort of reaction.This quilt is A Lot.

Now Six by Six

 

I've now moved onto working on my BAMQ UFO Challenge for the month, my #6 which is the 5x5 class quilt. I started this in a BAMQ online class with Carole Lyles Shaw in 2022. Right on schedule. 

I made three more blocks to fill in the left side column. This quilt was initially titled 5x5, and it is now 6x6. This is how it looks in black and white.

I think this is the final form. I've started sewing together two blocks at a time. Will I be able to get this quilted and finished by Sew Day? We shall see...

Ocean Effect Finish

 

As promised, here is a finally really finished just-in-time picture of my latest quilt finish, Ocean Effect. It is now all turned in and ready to display in the Bay Area Modern Quilting group exhibition: Modern Art to Modern Quilt at the San Mateo County Fair - June 5-14th.

Quilted Books at the Library

Bay Area Modern Quilting is having an exhibition at the main downtown branch of the Redwood City Library of small quilts made representing children's books. It will be shown in the top floor exhibit space starting in June. Here are the majority of them informally laid out during our meeting today when we turned them in to the exhibit organizers. We all got to choose our favorite books to illustrate, as you can see there is quite a range all the way from Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to The Secret Garden. Such a great variety of techniques and range of books represented. I love our group's creativity!

Here's the quilt that I made, it is 12" square and I'm using several of the fabrics that were released based on the original book illustrations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, along with some other prints and one of my hand-dyes (the green at the top). I used many of my machine embroidery stitches, and I particularly like the one that I chose for the "yellow brick road."

And here is Erin getting the very best photo to use for our group's social media postings.