Leftovers with Vanilla Cream by Michael

"Leftovers" seems like a rude title, but that's what these 1/2 square triangles are made up of.  Like me, Michael got a little carried away on his cutting of 1/2 square triangles.  Rather than let those go to waste, he made a smaller quilt top. 

Vanilla Cream is the name of the pantograph that he chose to quilt this with.  Reminds me of my swirl design from Circle Lord, but a little bit different.  This is the backing because the quilting really shows up on there.  Soon, I'll have the original quilt that these squares were destined for.

Funky Monkey strings

Oh dear, me and my collection of strings.  Here's another quilt in that collection, and I'm already piecing blocks for yet another one.  This one was supposed to give the effect of zig zags, but that doesn't seem to have worked.  Oh well, still keep someone warm.The name "Funky Monkey" comes from the title of the Pantograph that I used on this quilt.  Here's one of the monkeys.

And here they are playing in the palm trees.  Cotton batting, so it's already been shrunk up and ready to donate to the police.  I often wonder if their response is "Hey!  Look what we got!" when they find my quilts in the Sunshine Division barrel, or if it's more of a "Great.  That quilter is back again."  I surely hope it's the first.

Aunt Delia's Dresden Plate by Val

 I love antique quilt tops that finally become a finished project.

Val is a new customer to me, referred by a friend.

This is what happens when I rely on my memory.  I had originally posted some incorrect info, so here's what Val had to say that is correct! "I love the pictures on your page! One correction. Aunt Delia was my aunt, not my husband's. She was born in Plainville, Kansas in 1885. I had thought she was probably in her 80s when she made these blocks, and guess I was probably right". .  Based on the seemingly circa 1970's fabrics, that was probably the time of completion, but there are certainly fabrics that are much earlier than that in this quilt.

 Much of the piecing is done by hand, there is also machine work.  I wonder when she started working on this, and when she finished, and why some is hand work, and the rest machine.

The blocks are 16" finished, and the outer borders are 12", so quite a bit of space to fill.  In the background of each plate, I quilted a tight swirl to let the green center star design be the focus.  Each "slice" of the plate has a shepherd's hook quilted into it to simply hold them down.    I then repeated the swirl design in the background of each block.  Again, this allows the focus to be on the piecing, but also holds everything together.  In the outer border I quilted a large feather with tendrils that grew off from the sides.  With a border that large, trying to fill it with a plain feather would have been difficult at best.

 

In the sashing strip between each block, there is a feather band that "grows" in opposing directions.  That way there isn't a top or bottom to the feather.

All in all, I'm quite pleased, and I hope that Aunt Delia likes how we finished her lovely quilt top.

Ormeuti

 This one is for my darling niece, Maddie.  Maddie is 6'3" at the age of 18, and has loved giraffes for some time.  The name "Ormeuti" is from the Masai language for giraffe.    This was supposed to be a high school graduation gift that she was going to design, but that didn't happen.  She wanted a quilt of a giraffe, "looking up at stars".  We shopped for fabric one afternoon, but that was as far as she got.  I think she was overwhelmed at the idea of drawing a quilt for me.  I found the giraffe design online, and even better, found the giraffe fabric!  I initially thought that I was going to have to applique all of those spots onto the giraffe.  I opted for cotton backing to keep is less "puffy", and also because it's going to live in a college dorm, and this seemed an easier care fabric than the wool batt.

 I wish I had eyelashes like this!

 I had posted the quilt before the borders were attached to ask for suggestions on how to quilt it.  I got some great ideas from my friends, and ended up outlining each and every spot on the giraffe.  I love the texture that it gives it.

 This is the background fill in the night sky.  The fabric is dark blue, and matching thread.  However, there is light beige in the bobbin, so you see little dots of white on the dark blue.  I've decided that these are small galaxies beyond the stars.

The border quilting which really doesn't show much on the front.  I wanted the borders to be leaves and such, so  vine in the middle border, and wheat in the 1st border.  Feathers just seemed appropriate in the outer border.




 Here is the back of the quilt.  A pale yellow with tiny white polka dots.

I love how the quilting on the giraffe stands out on the back.

Terri's Log Cabin Star

 A much less elaborate quilt than her previous one, but still such a lovely quilt.  She chose and edge to edge design of trees going in opposing directions.  Perfect for this quilt since there is no obvious top or bottom. 

Peace on Earth by Terri

I surely hope that I get a better camera than my I-pod for Christmas, because these really aren't going to do this quilt justice.

The center panel and the birds at the top and bottom are all embroidered by hand.  Tiny little french knots to make the eyes.  The work in the lettering alone astounds me!

T

Terri and I discussed how she wanted it quilted, and trying to find something that wouldn't overwhelm her wonderful stitching, but still hold it all together and make this even more of a treasure was such fun.

 Terri signed off on doing a feathered wreath in the star blocks, but since they were so small, I was fearful that this would overwhelm them.  Curves to the rescue.

We had talked about continuous curves in the pinwheels, and in the checkerboard border, but when I got to the border and only did 1/2 of the curves, I like it so much that way that I left it.

 More modified continuous curves

Feathers in the outer border for the traditional quilting motif.  I can't wait to see what she'll bring another time!  She was so nonchalant about her beautiful hand work.  "Oh yeah.  I usually have something to work on." 

Diane's quilt

 This quilt is made from 2 jelly rolls and assorted strips from Lisa and Rachel's stash.  Jelly rolls are these really sweet rolls of fabric from a collection that are cut into 2.5" wide strips.  Then the manufacturer rolls them up to look like a jelly roll, and we quilters can't seem to get enough of them.  Confession time.  I have several in my closet looking pretty on the shelf, not actually being used.  Bravo to L&R for actually using theirs!

The backing fabric is a wonderful soft, grey flannel, and they used wool batting.  This quilt will be lovely to look at from the top and backing, and so warm and soft to the touch on a cold winter's night. 

I believe that the quilting design is called "Florentine", but it's relatively new to me, and I can't be sure.  Perfect on the jewel tones of the quilt.

"Morning Coffee" by Me!

 I love doing Block of the Month (BOM) quilts.  Each month for a year, you make a quilt blocks or two, so it's not as overwhelming as starting a huge quilt and saying "I can't work on anything else until this is done."  Instead, you make you block, then put it away for a month.  Next month you start another block or two. 
This one started because I had gone to Corvallis, OR for a service call on a longarm machine.  I can't get all the way to Corvallis, and not check out the local quilt shop, so off I go.  Oh look!  They are just starting their BOM program for the year!  Since the shop is about 2 hours away from me by car, Quiltwork Patches was kind enough to mail me my fabric and directions each month.
A year of making 2 blocks each month goes by, and now I have all my blocks ready to go.  I set them as suggested with narrow sashing strips and cornerstones, then added my own borders. 
Since this was my quilt to play with, I really wanted the quilting to shine.  I used wool batting, which gives it extra loft, then a tight background fill in the cream behind each star.

 The stars are quilted with feathers, and each block has continuous curves in each piece.

 Below is a photo of the back of the quilt, showing the quilting.  My only regret is that I didn't take a photo before washing.  Since the batting shrunk up when it was washed, I've lost the crispness and detail of the quilting that was there before washing.  Live and learn.

 The outer border is quilted with a fern leaf pattern to represent the leaves of the coffee bean plant.

The quilt is twin sized, and available for purchase.  I haven't listed it on my quilts for sale site yet because I want to get better photos with a real camera as opposed to my Ipod.  At least I know how to get the photos online from the Ipod, even if they aren't that great.

Better by the Dozen by Sharyle

 You know, sometimes you have to have the right reason to finish a project.  In Sharyle's case, it was her daughter's wedding.

Goodness, how many years ago did we piece these tops at Heart to Hand?  All of us made the same 12 blocks, one per month, but then set them differently according to our choices from the options in the book.  Also we got to choose our own fabrics.  Sharyle did hers in batiks, and the rainbow effect is really lovely.

Sharyle chose a wool batting for this quilt, so very warm, but very light weight when it's on top of you.  Wonderful to work with, and machine wash and dry.  The thread is called "Colorburst", and it's perfect on this quilt, especially on the black border.  Quilted with an edge to edge design called "Sunburst", and you can see one of the sun designs in the border below.

Best wishes to your daughter and her husband.

T-shirts for Shauri

 A few weeks ago, I was out on a bike ride with my brother when my phone rang.  I knew that I would never be able to get it out and answered before it went to voice mail, so I didn't even try.  When we stopped for a snack break, I listened to this distraught woman telling me that she wanted to make a quilt out her daughter's t-shirts, but was overwhelmed at the prospect.  So here we are, outside the Whiskey River Store (I have no idea how to get there, but we go past it often on bike rides outside of Canby), and I am trying to tell Shauri how to prep her shirts to get them ready for me, and make an appt. to meet up.  A few days later, Shauri arrived at my studio with a bag of shirts that had been cut to size and mostly fused to the interfacing to make them stable or piecing and quilting.  You can tell that she is much relieved to pass this project off to me, but still somewhat anxious about how it's really going to work.
We had many different sizes of shirts to work with but they all had to finish at 15" because of the sushi restaurant shirt.  Got to have the city where it's from, that's where her daughter went to college.  Shauri went off to get some extra fabric to add to build up the blocks as needed, also sashing strips and backing fabric.  We did a sample layout, but she told me "I trust you." to make it work.  After I had all the shirts built out to size, I sent her a photo from my phone, but she couldn't really see it well because of the angle.  I use my guest room bed as my "design wall", and can't suspend myself from the ceiling to get a good shot of the quilts when they are on the bed.  Thankfully, Shauri was able to come and preview the quilt top and gave her approval for my layout.  Great because I'm excited to get this going further for her.
So now it is finished and ready for her to pick up, wrap and place under the tree.  Since her daughter gave her the shirts, it's not really a surprise, but I still think that she'll be surprised and pleased to have those memories to wrap up in.

Christmas quilt and sham by Shannon

 No pressure here, but this is the first quilt that Shannon has had someone else do her quilting for her.  She usually quilts her own on her domestic sewing machine, but this was just a little too big for her to cope with.

 Lovely Christmas prints in traditional red and green, and a modified Drunkards Path pattern without the curved piecing.  Good thinking! 

 Quilted with "Alabaster" thread on top and a sage green in the bobbin.  Difficult to tell in this photos, but the backing is actually a natural muslin color, so the green thread really shows up.  The pattern is called "Tannenbaum".  Perfect on this quilt because the trees go both up and down, so no "right side up".  I hope that Shannon will bring me more quilts in the future, this was really fun to do.  Many compliments on it while it was still on my machine and other customers would come to drop off their quilts.