Turkish Delight

The Turkish mystery quilt from Heart to Hand. Custom quilted with wool batting. Yummy!

Welcome Home

This quilt is the 2011 Block of the Month that my friends and I are doing. I got mine done early so that people could see it. I've wanted to make a blue and white quilt for some time, and finally did! Heirloom quilted, and using wool batting.

Seashells by the Seashore

Here's a quilt that I made as a mystery quilt through Heart to Hand. Sadly, I've forgotten which mystery it was by now. I've called it "Seashells by the Seashore" since the yellow focus fabric has small shells printed on it, and I've quilted it with a seashell pantograph.

Scrappy blocks

Laverna has done it again. and made a gorgeous scrappy quilt. When I was quilting the quilt, it was nice, but nothing special. Then when I hung it up to take the photo of it, Wow! I don't know the name of the blocks, but it's just lovely. Quilted with the feather pantograph in white thread.

Danish Modern by Grace

This quilt was huge! So big that when I tried to hang it up to get a photo, my clips couldn't support it. Sorry, but the best I could do was to lay it over my machine, and try to get some decent shots that way.

I believe that Grace made this quilt as a gift, and these are not her colors or design. I love how the swirls quilting design really made it come to life though. Lucky Grace, now she gets to ship it to Europe.

Modern by Sharyle

Sorry, I don't know the actual name of this quilt, but it's sure fun. Oranges and pinks and circles and rectangles! Quilted with the Maze board makes it really fun. Sharyle even found the perfect thread color that matched all the colors in the quilt top.

Log Cabin

Isn't this a great log cabin quilt? It has inspired me to make one myself, but I can't talk about that any more just yet.

I believe this layout is called "Fields and Furrows", and she made 2 pillow shams to match as well. Quilted with my well loved Baptist Fans

Hawaiin quilt #2

Here are some additional photos of the Hawaiian quilt. It's difficult to see, but if you really look, and know what to look for, you might be able to see the dragon in the top right photo. The bottom photo shows the gingko leaves in the border. We used wool batting so it's got great loft, and is so light and warm.

Hawaiin Quilt

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I believe this is to be a wedding quilt for some really lucky couple. The quilt top was a group effort with people piecing the top, and another friend doing the Hawaiian style appliques by hand. The body of the quilt is quilted with the Asian dragon pantograph, and the borders use the ginko leaves panto, plus echo quilting around the applique. Gorgeous!

Friendship Chain

I've got to say, you meet the nicest people at Weight Watcher meetings. My friend Matthew was one of the few men in my meeting, and we'd talk after meetings sometimes. He is going to grad school right now, and because of this, moved to Boston. He sent me an e-mail one day asking if I'd like a box of quilting supplies that he had that he couldn't take with him. Sure! was my thought. When I went to pick them up, the box turned out to be 4 boxes and a couple of large trash bags, and full of wonderful goodies! I went through the boxes and sorted out what I wanted to keep, then invited people over to take what they wanted, and donated the remainders. In all, Matthew's generosity helped more people than he could probably imagine. Matthew had watched me work on my Traveling Stars quilt for some time, and this is how he knew that I liked to quilt. He also commented that we had some of the same fabrics in our stashes. After digging through this wonderful treasure, I knew that I had to make a quilt out of some of his fabrics. He has a desire to go and study in, or eventually live in Ireland, so when I found an Irish Chain pattern, I knew that this was "his" quilt. Most of the fabrics in the chain and stars are from him, with a few from my own stash thrown in to fill things out as needed. Quilted with a pantograph called "Feathers" in white. Even my darling husband Randall called it "very nice" and left me a note on the quilt when I had it hanging up.

Sometime, in the distant future, look for a "beginning end ending" quilt. When I was cutting the fabrics for this quilt, I used a friends AccuQuilt cutter. It cut the fabrics so quickly and easily, that I ended up cutting WAY too many small squares of the white and orange fabrics. I've been using them as I piece other blocks as a beginner and ender for chain piecing. Someday, they'll get made into a quilt, but for now they are mostly 4-patch and 9-patch blocks that are slowly piling up.

Swedish Mystery

Here is Sharyle's version of the Swedish mystery quilt. I love log cabin quilts, and especially the barn raising design that Sharyle has done here. Quilted with the swirls design gives it lots of movement.

Traveling Stars

Here's a quilt of my own that I am going to keep for me! It's an extra long twin, since I'm so tall. Hand pieced and hand quilted. 3 years in the making, but worth it! So much fun to have it done and be able to enjoy snuggling underneath it. The pattern is actually called Grandmother's Stars, but I've taken it so many places with me, that it needed to be called Traveling Stars. It's been to Roseburg, Oregon for the family campout, to Des Moines, Iowa for the APQS rep rally at least twice. I've taken it to more Weight Watcher meetings than I could possibly begin to count but everyone has seen it grow from small pieces to the completed quilt. I used 1930's reproduction fabrics for the stars, and muslin for the background. The batting is wool, my new favorite! Quilts by hand like a hot knife going through butter, is so light, yet so warm, and washes and dries beautifully.

I should have taken a "before" photo of the backing, but I thought there was lots of time. During the spring of 2010, I was riding my bike to a Weight Watchers meetings. I got caught in an absolute deluge at the beginning of my 30 mile trip. I called my darling husband asking him to come and get me several times, but just kept leaving him messages. With each phone call, I was getting colder, and more frustrated that he wasn't answering either the home phone or his cell. I'd ride a little farther and call him to let him know where I was when he arrived to come and get me. I finally ended up at a tire store waiting room, dripping like a drowned rat, and oh so close to tears of frustration. He came and got me, and I came home to dry out. After I had him take me to my meeting so that I could weigh in! A few days later I got my quilt out to show my mother in law and to work on, and I found a large orange-ish stain on the back of my quilt. Seems that the rain had soaked through my quilt bag that had been strapped to the back of my bike, and leeched color from the wooden quilting hoop onto the white backing of my quilt. My initial thought, that lasted for about 2 seconds, was to toss the project, it was ruined by this stain. Remembering that I'd been working on it for 2 years at this point reminded me that it probably wasn't ruined after all. I'd go ahead and finish the quilt, and hope that the stain came out when I washed it the first time. If not, the stain added to the authentic 1930's look to the quilt. I don't know if it was simply washing, or the "Grandma's Secret Stain Remover" that did the trick, but the stain is gone!

Since I discovered that stain, I went out to the fabric store and purchased myself a piece of gore-tex waterproof fabric. I made a quilt bag cover that has an elastic cord around the edges so that I can have my project on the bike without fear of additional water soaking into it. While the old tried and trues of cotton quilting fabrics and batting are great, you've got to love the new technology and the fabric that it creates too.

College Life, Library Stacks

The amazing ladies at Needle and Thread Memories have been at it again. Here is Library Stacks from their College Life series. Can't you just see the books at the library? They've told me what college these colors represent, but I simply can't remember them all. Sorry.