The end of summer

 Hi everyone. I hope you are all doing well. I kind of fell off the grid a bit, didn't I? We have been having a family crisis, so I haven't had much time to stitch lately, especially on top of classes starting, but I did want to pop in and show off the last of the quilts I finished this summer. I have been able to escape from the drama just a bit and stitch a few things, and I finally finished the binding on this cutie:

 

 

Well, I'm pretty down right now, but seeing this quilt finished is definitely cheery!  All along while I was quilting it and finishing it, I thought of it as "the end of summer quilt," but its real name is Synergy, a pattern from our friend Preeti at Sew Preeti Quilts.It's a fun and easy pattern, and you can get it right HERE.

I quilted this on my quilty "playdate" with a Baltimore friend, and I used a panto called Seamless from Urban Elementz to finish it off. This panto is really easy and a lot of fun to quilt. It's very swoopy and swirly. I love the texture that it makes, and the exercise I got while quilting it. It's a real arm workout!

For the backing, I used a nice quiet gray with white polka dots. The front has so much color that I couldn't see using something bright on the back as well. The binding was done by machine and is the same fabric as the pink background. I think it looks good! If you have sharp eyes, you'll also notice that I added a small border all around the quilt, mainly to keep all the seams from popping. It helped a lot when quilting it.

If you look at the background of the pictures, you'll see a bunch of fallen leaves already on the ground. Yikes! I think it's been such a hot and wet summer that the trees around here are stressed and losing their leaves already. There isn't a bunch of color yet, but a lot of the trees are starting to turn. Doesn't that seem pretty early to you? I could do with some cooler weather, but all these leaves are falling waaaay too early for me.

So, there is another cheerful quilt to wind up the summer. It's Labor Day weekend here in the US, so everybody take some time to hug your family and maybe have a barbecue or something, okay? I will be doing the same!

Sharing at Finished or not Friday, Brag About Your Beauties, and the Patchwork and Quilts linkup at Quilting Patchwork Applique.

Bold choices for the Synergy Blog Hop

 Hi everyone! How has your week been? I've had a very busy, action-packed week. Okay, the action was really just a bunch of grading and reading and stuff, but it felt like action in my head. I also managed to sneak in a few stitches and finish up something pretty and bold and not really like my usual at all. I hope you are in the mood for some color today, because I have something really colorful to show off. 

Are you ready? Here she is:

 

I told you it was not my usual thing at all! This is a quilt top made for my friend Preeti's Synergy Blog Hop. If you recall, back in January, Preeti showed off her Synergy quilt, which she published in Make Modern magazine. Well, Synergy is now a stand alone pattern, and you can get it in her Etsy shop right HERE. Bonus-- it is 25% off until April 27th!

When Preeti asked me to join the blog hop, I thought I would make a rainbow quilt, but then I was looking at her blog post about Synergy and I saw her quilt in teals with a yellow background. What if I didn't make a rainbow quilt, but used a bold print as a background instead? As you can see, it was a short hop to the lively pink print, with blues and golds to complement the flowers and leaves in the print.

This quilt was super-easy to make and went really fast. The pattern is easy to understand, and everything is really well explained. I followed the pattern exactly-- which you know I never do, but I needed to do it to test the pattern-- and everything came together really quickly. Even I could not mess it up. The great color graphics helped. Really, the hardest part for me was choosing the colors from my scrap stash. Even the cutting went really fast.

I actually considered making this quilt in just two colors, the pink and a pale green. I was making this for the blog hop, though, so I abandoned that idea, but there isn't a colorway that wouldn't look good in the pattern. Imagine it in green and white, or gray and yellow, or maybe red, white, and blue . . .

So there is my take on the Synergy pattern! I would absolutely make this quilt again, and I'm not really "modern." Bigger pieces, easy piecing, minimal seam matching, and it looks great in any color. What's not to love about it?

As I said above, this is a blog hop, and here is the schedule for the hop:

 Mari of Academic Quilter - Thursday, April 21, 2022-- YOU ARE HERE!

Alycia of Alycia Quilts - Friday, April 22, 2022

Wendy of Pieceful Thoughts - Saturday, April 23, 2022

Bonnie of Institches with Bonnie - Sunday, April 24, 2022

Roseanne of Home Sewn By Us - Monday, April 25, 2022

 

Since this is a hop for the pattern release, you have the opportunity to win a Synergy pattern of your very own. Leave a comment on this post, and just for fun, let us all know what colors you might use for the quilt. Pop over to Preeti's post today if you need some more inspiration, and be sure to visit everyone in the hop, because we all have a pattern to give away. I'll pull the winner using a random number magic thingy on Tuesday, April 26th. IMPORTANT: If you are no-reply, remember to leave your email address so that I have a way to contact you!

This giveaway is now closed! Congratulations to Rochelle, and thanks to all for reading along!

Of course, if you just can't wait, hop over to Preeti's shop to get the pattern and get started on a fabulous quilt of your own right away!

Thanks for stopping by, and everyone have a grand weekend!