Tic Tac Rick Rack

Last weekened, I celebrated International Quilt Day with Alex Anderson, Ricky Tims and their many talented featured guest quilters while watching not just one episode but a whopping 14 episodes of The Quilt Show!!!  It was hard to decide which shows to watch first...as there were so many shows available.  Each episode provided great ideas and inspiration, but one in particular got me all motivated to go to my stash and start pulling out and cutting up fabrics.  Ricky Tims did an fun episode demonstrating his Kool Kaleidoscope Quilt technique which I just had to try!  Below is my first draft of fabric selection for my Kool Kaleidoscope quilt based off the inspiration fabric at the bottom.
Fun prints for my Kool Kaleidoscope quilt
I was so eager to start that I drew out the pattern/templates, cut up strips and even started to sew strip sets!  Yet, I showed amazing restraint as I revisited one of my UFO's...the Red Velvet Quilt started back in January.  
Fun and easy blocks to assemble
The blocks and quilt top went together so quickly, and then I started to add my own touches.  I thought the borders needed a pop of color and decided to add some red rick rack to break it up.
Rickrack attack!
Quilting the blocks with layered flowers and diagonal strips even went smoothly.
Quilted Flowers
And quilted diagonal lines


A whole lotta work went into this simple quilted border!
And then it was time to quilt the borders...which stumped me a bit.  So I would look for ideas, tape out a design and go to quilt and my sewing machine would act up causing great frustration and even a tiny hole!  So I put it away and tried again a few weeks later.  This time I had a fun new quilt design, taped it all up and once again Bennie acted up!  I was sooo frustrated...and just put it away before I destroyed the quilt or Bennie!  And this time, my sewing machine was cooperative but I decided it was best to keep the border simple with a series of straight lines and more rick rack.

After all that madness--I'm happy with the end result!
Now I just gotta make my quilt label and send it out!

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