Serendipitously finished

I had been wanting to make something with words a la Tonya Ricucci, so I decided the Serendipity direction meant I should do just that.  The phrase "What could happen?" is sort of a family motto and/or running joke for my family and it seemed to go with the whole liberated challenge.  I made the words then didn't like the way it was going together with the rest of it.  So I took off the sawtooth border and moved it to the top and added the lime green swoosh at the bottom to balance it out.  Then I added the green stripe border and machine quilted it.  The quilting is far from perfect, but I still love it!
It is 24 x 18 1/2 inches.

Serendipity - Hmmmm?

What pulls it all together and makes it finished?  I thinkg with all the mixture of colors and techniques, both of mine needed a little grounding.  The blue was a great starter and I like how they have finished.  The squarer quilt is 18 x 18.5 and the rectangle is 18 x 22.5.  I have to finish sewing the binding on the larger one and completely sew down the binding on the squarer one.  With trips coming up, these will go along to be finished when it is just too hot to sit outside and I have finished napping.

Serendipity in progress

I've had these blocks on my wall for over a week now, waiting to take a good picture.  Wish I had better light in my livingroom!

Anyway, I've made progress toward finishing the quilt top.  I need to trim these blocks and determine how many more I need to make, then sew them together.  I won't make the deadline for Finishing the quilt, but I will finish it.  I like it!

Step 4 is complete!

I loved the idea of serendipity as the 4th step in this round robbin.  Hmmmm...how to capture serendipity in this crazy little quilt top.  Then it came to me - the wonky trees I had previously made and were unable to incorporate in the design suddenly seemed to work.  How serendipitious is that?  One of the trees had an owl in the trunk, so I added a few more of the owls to the upper left corner.  Oh, and I changed the red pickup sticks to orange and added another purple. 

So here is my finished top in my garden:

It's about 26" square without the binding, which I think will be quite narrow.  I haven't come up with a name for it yet.  Let me know if a fitting name comes to your mind - I'm open to suggestions!  Otherwise it may be named after my youngest grandson's favorite expression "it's crazy everywhere". 

Thanks for the opportunity to participate in this wonderful round robbin.  I have really enjoyed watching everyone's work grow and change.  I'll post a photo when I finish this little quilt.

Olympic Gold For Wales x

Serendipity in my case was used as thus....

Seren  - Welsh for Star

Meaning - taken for the Oxford Theasaurus, I used alternative words to create the meaning for me, Luck, fluke or accident.

Lucky Dip - This is a time honoured traditional game used in Village Fete's and Fayre's throughout the UK during summer time, pay a penny or two, dip your hand in whatever we are using as a medium to hold either little items or raffle tickets.

Ity? - A word to add to the end to create the finished meaning, that follows Dip! ;-)

A crumble mess of Dresden plate parts ready at the off...

 The Dresden plate template itself, just  checking pre-race entrants for Liberation and Random-ness, all appears good at the start line, no drug testing necessary, these are clearly full of some colour 

 Not a single plate template in sight! The final furlong has shown the clearest entrant so far, heads above the rest, keeping in tradition with the Queens Jubilee ready with a China Cup of Tea....

 The back of the pack of leaders, bringing up the rear with a thick and sturdy batting 9oz, 

 Oh My Goodness, they didn't anticipate this one to push through the ranks, a near new winner has appeared, do we have a new winner on our hands?

 

From out of no-where comes the late entry... up the Final Furlong.... wobbly and a little battered around the edges.... not certain where the end is, but knowing its not too far away, and pleased with the race progress thus far, 

Stay here to see the final winner, the entrant on the podium is.......................................................................

 Seren's Lucky Dip'ity...

 Signature and Name plate

 Final item, with the gentle old lady I made her with... one of my trusted Elna 68's

The edges aren't picture perfect, infact they are very tardy, but what you all have to bear in mind is... I have never done this before, ever, this is my first time at creating a mini-quilt and indeed any type of quilt.   I took the challenge on to prove something to myself... despite my total lack of knowledge in this area, and being very out of my comfort zone, I did it.

from Zero to Hero, as we say, it was a long distance race for me, only a race against old mother time, but one nonetheless.  I am over the moon with the final item too. Yes some of the edge sewing hasn't quite gone into the ditch on the other side, but that is the beauty of this item, nothing is perfect, maybe with the exception of the name plate. Even the concept wasn't perfect, I have several blocks on the go for this Round Robin Event. If I had only one, I don't think I would have finished it. By having so many I was able to pick and chose as I went along which one would be shown on each stage, by having so many, I also took some of the pressure off. By having so many I managed to finish the item with slightly less colour than I had imagined, but love the colours that are in the block. All the rainbow colours are here, muted and some very small, but they are there, so in my mind, this block reaches out to all the conditions applied to it and is brilliant for any room.

Thank you Liberated Quilters of Yahoo fame for allowing me in, and letting me loose on the project x

70 West 100 North

My Liberated Round Robin piece is now complete.

For now it hangs above the fireplace.  My living room needs a little brightening for the summer months and it will stay there until I can get a quilt completed for the big wall where the stairs are.

Reporting on the serendipity of this quilt which would be to say that
Serendipity is the gift of finding valuable or agreeable things. 

I found some new skills while working on this quilt.  I paid attention to some posting on the Liberated Quilting Yahoo Group about invisible thread and decided I'd try my hand at using some.  I had some missteps and tension things to work out, but I'm sure I'll use this kind of thread again.  I also machine stitched the binding using the invisible thread and I liked how it works for that.  I have a hard time with hand stitching, so this could be a blessing for me!  It doesn't show up as much as using cotton thread for that finishing step.  The finished quilt measures 42 x 36 inches.

I also used some quilting ideas I'd not tried before:

I did a pebble stitch and some lines and on the dark blue small border I did a Greek motif to practice square corners.



  Serendipity happens each time I try something new!  I am glad it is completed though!  Now off to some other quilting project...

True Serendipity

Webster's defines serendipity as "The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way: "a fortunate stroke of serendipity."

Just call me the finder of serendipity.  When I finished the last round of this RR, I looked at my two pieces and really didn't have any idea where I'd go next.  I didn't even like them all that much. But I'm not one to give up, so I just set them aside and waited for something to strike my fancy.  Then the "directions" came out for the next step - "Serendipity."  Huh?  I had no idea what that meant as far as quilting went - until yesterday.

I was pretty tired after doing some water aerobics, and decided to quit sewing for a bit and take a nap. As I was cleaning up and putting some things aside, I had to pick up a stack of little wonky stars that I'd made several months ago as leaders and enders.  Then about 15 minutes later, just as I was dropping off to sleep, it hit me.  "Use those stars!"  I'd been wondering what I'd do with them, and I realized I could use a bunch of them on these liberated pieces. I put them on the sides only - I think I'll start going rectangular on these instead of square.

Mary's Librr2 - Post Updated

We're heading for vacation in the USA for 5 weeks so I've been hustling right along to complete my project before we leave June1. It is finished except for hand-stitching the binding on the back side and adding a label.

But folks, I can't begin to say that I like this quilt -- such a silly design starting with the postcards that I rejected once and tossed in the scrap pile. I don't like them any better in their new home on this quilt.

Then, just to be doing, I used circular stencils (which I've had for years and never used) to cut my crumb fabric into a gazillion dots with no thought to what I might do with them. They are definitely weird!

I do like my crumb borders. I actually cut the outer one while squaring up a string-pieced project -- a bit of Serendipity. And I like the FMQ vines in the turquoise Added Color border And there is a bit more Serendipity in using the piece as an opportunity to practice meander stitching and other FMQ on something I wasn't stressing about messing up!! I suppose I'll hang this one in my sewing area -- at least until I can make something to replace it!