Pull Up A Chair & Have Some Hot Cocoa

It's crazy how fast the weather can change.  From a perfectly pleasant summer evening, to chilly with a light jacket required night!  Sleeveless to sleeves.  Shorts to pants.  Lawn mower to leaf blower.  All in a blink of an eye!  Or so it seems.

I won't say it's quilt weather.  To me, every day is quilt time!!!!!  I seriously have a quilt by my side 365 days a year.  And I actually use them too!  What about you?  

I will say that I may choose the colors of a quilt depending on the weather.  Spring fever may bring on some lovely bright colors, summer some cool ocean blues.  Which brings me to a couple projects that I have finished to back that theory up!

51" x 72"

The dark chocolate brown paired with the woven stripes is one of my favorite combinations.  The colors become electrified against the dark background.  Kaffe Fasset woven stripes are pretty amazing! Most of the stripes in this quilt is older Kaffe, hard to find now.  I purchased a good bit of it a few years ago, but my stash is dwindling with each project...and I do use these a lot!  

Because the fabric is thinner, I always use spray starch.  Same with Shot Cotton.  I makes it a little more stable and easier to work with.  Unless I'm doing Improv piecing.

The back is Kona Cappuccino and the front is Kona Chocolate.  I machine stitched random wavy lines from top to bottom in a dark brown thread.  For some reason every time I make this quilt, I quilt horizontal wavy lines!  Not sure why.  But I do love it!

As with most of my quilts, I always have a few left over pieces, blocks or panels!  Many times I will add them to the back of the quilt.  If I don't, I tend to immediately make something else so they don't 'go to waste'!  Of course, that usually leads to having to make even more to finish the left-over project...such a viscous circle!

32" x 39"

A sweet little baby quilt was conceived (no pun intended) from those inevitable left overs. Again, chocolate and cappuccino on the front...

...and espresso on the back.  I used a woven stripe for the binding just for something different.  

What size binding does everyone use?  Me, I prefer 2 1/4".  I like it to be a little smaller.  I know 2 1/2" is pretty popular and I use to use that a lot.  Plus, if you use a jelly roll, well why would you cut it down?  Just sayin'!

You can see I machine quilted a geometric design for some of it and decided I had to try some free motion as well.

After finishing these, I wanted to get a couple more pillows put together.  I followed my pillow pattern from the Fresh Quilts feature.  Seriously, I cannot follow patterns...even my own!  Which makes me wonder why I could even think I could write a quilt pattern!!

18" x 18" Khaki

18" x 18" Off-White

Isn't that orchid gorgeous?!  My son got me that for my birthday!  Nothing like a beautiful photo prop and fantasic son!

After seeing all of these pieces together, it reminded me of cocoa!  Yummy, sweet and warm!  

Linking:

FABRIC FRENZY FRIDAY

CAN I GET A WHOOP WHOOP