The Garbage Quilt

I am posting this just to show that I don't cherrypick which quilts I post.  Not every quilt is a success story...we all have some quilt fails, and I'll be the first to point out that this is one of mine.

I call this one The Garbage Quilt.  Why?  I was going for a scrappy Thin Mint look, but it got way out of hand and very quickly started looking like literal garbage.

Guess who endorses this quilt?

So it started out just fine with the pattern.  I chose Farfalle by Villa Rosa Designs.  And, I decided to go with dark brown scraps with bright/light green scraps.  Thin Minty.  Or so I thought.  The first block wasn't too bad. 

Things escalated quickly from there,  But for whatever god awful reason I persevered against my better judgment.

And then it was done.  And it was this.

Too much pattern, too much variety in tone, too much going on and the pattern got swallowed up and sort of lost in places.

If I were to do this again?  I would probably only use scraps for one of the two colors, and use a solid for the other.  Or, if my heart was set on scraps, I would be a little pickier about pattern and I would try to keep the tones of all the fabrics for each color more consistent. Coulda, woulda, shoulda.

Like my Dad says, "If 'Ifs' and 'Buts' were candies and nuts, we'd all have a merry [flippin] Christmas."  Too late now!  This quilt just stands as one of my quilt fails...ya can't win 'em all!

Woodpecker Quilt

So...there's a story here.  When my folks lived in their first house here in town, it was a two story house with wood siding.  On the side of the house where their bedroom was, there were a bunch of trees really close by - several feet, tops.  So there were a bunch of woodpeckers that would go into those trees, and a few of them decided to become the bane of Dad's existence and start pecking on the wood siding.  While I still lived at home, I lived downstairs and I remember hearing Dad wheeling out from his office, walking into the bedroom and then he'd run downstairs with this Red Ryder BB gun.  His goal was to scare them off and he's pop off a few BBs and that would be that.  He'd go back upstairs, but not too much longer later they'd be tapping on the siding again.

The woodpeckers were Dad's Bumpus hounds.

So we got this Woodpecker fabric in and of course I had to make a quilt for him.  My folks recently moved to a different house, so the woodpeckers are a thing of the past, but they live on in quilted form.

I quilted it up on my Janome with a large scale, loose wood grain pattern.  I wish it showed up better here, but it looked pretty cool with the wool batting.
  

"Finished" Quilt: Fern Gully

This gorgeous fern fabric has been sitting around forever and I just don't know why.

Monaco by Dena Designs (Free Spirit)

What's not to like?  I guess for some the seafoam and lime green color combo could be off-putting I suppose.  Or maybe the large scale print is difficult to decide what to do with?  It reminds me of the the movie Fern Gully.  Probably because it's giant ferns, and you know, FERN Gully...but whatever.

The original Avatar.  

 

And obviously Batty was the best. This still cracks me up.  Yes, I am actually, literally "lol-ing" at this.  Still.

Aaaaanyway....I digress.  Thank god for the Villa Rosa $2 postcard patterns.  I love those little things!  Mom may be addicted to the mini charms, but I love these little patterns.  The quilts range in size, the instructions are clear and concise and they are perfect for scraps and large scale prints alike. 

So I did one.  

I just got it back from Frances (quilter) and I'll be on binding duty soon.