Piper's Baby quilt

Leslie contacted m about finishing a quilt for her grand-daughter.  At the baby shower, guests were asked to decorate a quilt block for the baby.  Most used pens and I love the variety of artistic skills.  Quilted with So Fine! thread, and a pantograph called "Caring Hands"  Difficult to see the quilting, but on this quilt, the blocks are much more important. 

Some are simple.

Some have written messages.

Some people used art work and lettering

Sampler strings

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Sampler strings.  I seem to be in a string mode.  Using up all those pieces that are too large to throw away, but too small to bother with saving.  I keep collecting them in a large bin, currently in my guest room.  I use these as "starter/ender" pieces when I am piecing a quilt.  Keeps the thread tails to a minimum, as well as the "thread throw up/birds nests" from my machine.

I call this a Sampler String because when I was quilting it I opted to just play with different quilting designs.  I would at least attempt to start with a section that I would plan on filling.  Sometimes this area got larger because I would overshoot where I had planned to end.  I tracked down all of my books of quilting ideas for borders and sashings and just took the time to practice different designs.  I used a thread from Auaril that I received with my machine, so I don't even know what it's called.  Fun and variegated though. This quilt will go to the Portland Police, and ti's about twin bed sized.

Brunner T-shirt quilt

Congratulations to this graduate who will be going to Oregon State University in the fall and play baseball for them.  I've never made a quilt using baseball jerseys before, and they were a bit of a challenge.  Extra fabric that folded over to make a facing down the front got a little bulky at times.  Still fun though, because if you really wanted to, you could unbutton the shirt, at least a little bit.

This quilt was also fun because mom didn't want everything "all matchy", so I intentionally left shirts off set from one another.  Then used extra bits of the shirts to fill the distance at the top and bottom.  As usual, a few small pieces were appliqued onto the fronts of other shirts since they were too small to make a full block, but too important to leave off.