WIP & NewFO - It's a Hawaiian Dragonfly Party!

Besides my ever-present Baby Janes, I have two WIPs this week.

The main WIP right now is Dragonfly Party #1. This is a very special project because a beloved cousin and I were quilty best-buds, working on our own version of BOMs for each other, when she died. It was devastating, and I couldn't bear working on the project for quite a while. I finished all the feature blocks for both twins maybe 5 months ago and had to put it away to focus my attention on preparing our house for the market. Now this project is finally up on center stage!  At least the first of the twins is.  ;D  

Just about finished assembling the center. I don't know what malicious muse made me think I wanted 1/4" sashing, but there it is. Such a pain! 

Slow work gets good results, though. They're matching up nicely and staying even. I'll soon be on to the border work.  :D 

After months of abstinence due to house-readying and moving across the country, I finally get to participate in Barbara's NewFO fun for July - just squeezing in a new project today!

I've been wanting to try making a Hawaiian quilt for some time now, especially since a high school classmate thought of my love of history and quilting while her family was in Hawaii last year and she couldn't resist ordering a book for me that she saw. I think that deserves a wall-hanging of her own in the style, don't you?

So this morning I printed a freebie pattern from online, except that it won't fit on normal paper. 
Problem-solving: tape several sheets together, draw the square as big as I want it, fold it in eighths in the traditional designing process, and trace the design. My light box came in real handy for that part. 

My box isn't big enough to hold the entire 18" square, so when I wanted to trace the design onto the back of my fabric, I used the good ol' fashioned method of taping everything up on my window. I'm sure the folks in our apartment complex were wondering what the heck I was up to! (and how did I forget to get a snapshot of that stage?)

Once I had the design on the back of my background fabric (I'm a back-basting needle-turner fan, for sure!!), I layered the fabrics face down and pinned like crazy. I've never back-basted anything so large, and wanted to be able to handle it with confidence that nothing would slip. 
So far I've basted the outer frame line. 


This one will be fun and cheery to work on. It'll move pretty slowly for a couple more weeks as I catch up the backlog of my Baby Janes, but ought to pick up after that. 

When I'm finished, it'll look like a simplified version of this:

Only, in this batik:   











In addition to being my first Hawaiian quilt, this will be my first hand-quilting when I get to that stage, so I'm looking forward to the work on this small quilt!

Now head on over to Lee's and take in all the eye candy of what lots of folks are working on.