Watermelon Stripper Quilt

Sundae, my smart & missed kitty

 Geez, time flies when you don't have internet to update a blog in a timely fashion. Celebrated Super Bowl, someone poisoned my cat that resulted in an emotional trip to the vet and Sundae died in her sleep, went on vacation to San Francisco for my 33rd birthday, and file my taxes.  My vet is so nice, they sent me Sundae's little paw prints and cremated her for free.  I still miss her.

Anyhow, I have a fat cat, Cinnamon, who is keeping me company, and she misses her playmate for hide'n'seek.

First, the new project.  This is a picture of my new quilt project that I'm working on during my sewing days with a super-duper BFF, inspired by Freckled Whimsy's geese posted on the Moda Bake Shop.  I've changed out a couple and added some more aquas.  I have to say, Kate Spain made some awesome fabric, too bad there is only the cobblestone print in the grey-brown color.  I'll manage to live without finding the color at the moment.  *sigh*

Done with the NEW update. . . onto the old project. 



When I lived in Bishop, CA, I was a member of the quilt guild.  It was something to do, get to know some awesome women, and learn how to quilt some things I normally would not think of.  I pulled this oldie but goodie: Watermelon Stripper Round Robin.

My watermelon strip to inspire the rest of the quilt.

How does it work?  First strip is X inches wide, put into an unused pizza box with at least two yards of fabrics.  The box is passed to the next person to make a strip any height to go with strip #1, but the strip has to be the same X width (or more to trim down).  This is passed to the next person until it circles back to the owner.  This particular group had 8 women, some of the members joined each group, there was 3 groups.  So each monthly quilt meeting was full of inspiration and "ohhhhh" and "ahhhhhh."

Strip #2

Strip #3

Strip #4

This was a fun project to see grow from my initial strip that I designed, watermelon hearts paper pieced with to-be-embroidered-later ants.

Strip #5

One of the most difficult part was trying to balance the dark with the lighter colored strips so it could look more balanced.

Strip #6

Strip #7

I added a cute watermelon fabric as the strip sashing that I bought later that happens to go with the project. I enjoy the little speck of ants.  I like using black so it seemed perfect.

Strips sewn together for border design

I surrounded the entire quilt with a thin, reflective black type of fabric.  It was a metallic silver sheen printed on top of black.  Then I used teddy bears with watermelons fabric in the pieced border to widen the quilt out so it is not as vertical. 

The blank blocks will have watermelon pieces ironed on from another fabric that I had.  Yes, I happen to buy cute, adorable watermelon fabric because I love it so much.  I have managed to see ugly ones, those I pretend do not exist.  :-)  I am stuck in the cutting out the watermelon pieces, thus, thought it would be grand to show my progress with hopes that it'll motivate me to do some more sewing.