"Sparkle and Shine" by Doana

Isn't this pretty!  I love medallion quilts.  Okay, I guess I love quilts, period  Doana is new to me customer, but I hope that we'll get to work together again soon.  Her piecing was lovely, the quilt rolled up like a dream with perfectly straight edges. 

 Out of my comfort zone in that she asked me to choose a "simple edge to edge" design.  I opted for Curly Swirly as it is something that just holds the quilt top together and doesn't detract from the beautiful piecing.  Bound and ready for snuggling on the sofa, and on a snowy day like today, that sounds like a perfect plan.

"Village Green"

This is another pattern from the Quilter's World magazine.  As always, I had fun playing in my stash and pulling fabrics.  Sometimes though, I get  little carried away.

I thought it would be fun to have sunflowers in the windows.  But, viewed from a distance, it appears to be large eyes looking out at you. 

 

2 Memory quilts for Carrie's family

Carrie, and her darling daughter Karen, had reached out to me about making 6 quilts for their family members.  Carrie is a long time seamstress who is moving to a smaller home, and just doesn't have room for all of her sewing anymore.  The two of them brought me 2 large totes of fabrics, one with just wovens and the other flannels.  All of these had been used to make various garments for family members throughout the years.  I decided to just take the woven fabrics for the tops, and then saved the flannels for the backings.  

Before we met, we had discussed a basic pattern and approximate size for the quilts.  Here are the first 2.  All made from 4" unfinished squares of fabric, then chosen at random.  My only "rule" was that I wouldn't piece 2 of the same fabrics next to one another in a row.  Sometimes the rows ended up with the same fabrics together.  You can see so many memories in these two.  Holiday fabrics, garment linings, potentially some home dec fabrics.

This one has a border of soccer fabric, and then I found the same fabric in flannel for the backing.  All will be bound with the same green Christmas print to keep them consistent.  I'm having so much fun working on these!  All are quilted with the Highfield design and thin white thread.

 

2 from Stephanie

I am calling this one 5" squares because that is what it started as.  Quilted with the "Ginger Flower" design.  I've been using this design a lot.

And "Then Came June", which may be the name of the pattern or the name of the designer.  Sadly I don't know which.  Quilted with "Hearts and Loops"  So pretty.

 

Several from Sue

Bless Sue, she had brought me these quilts before Christmas, and then the "Christmas Rush" began.  I asked her if these were gifts, or if she was okay with a delay, and she kindly agreed to a delay.  The above is called "Cork Stars" because the fabric in the star blocks and backing resembles cork.

A panel of chickens by Loralie Designs.  Quilted with what else, but Chicken Wire

And a panel of dogs by Loralie.  Quilted with the "woof" design.  Dog bones and hearts

This represents what our sweet boy Sam looks like when I come home

And when his "dad" Randall comes home. 

 

"Rodeo" by Prsicilla

Gotta love Rail Fence blocks, there is something rhythmic about them.

This one is done all in western prints, then quilted with a design called Rodeo with bucking horses, saddles and lariat loops.

 

3 more police quilts

None of these are anything special.  This one "Animals", is what happens when you go scrappy for a mystery quilt and then decide that you've got a bit overboard on the scrappy, and these just look silly.  So, cut some more settings squares and poof!  Donation quilt!

I was on my way to get my Covid vaccine and decided to treat myself to a stop at a quilt shop on the way.  Came home with a panel of these blocks.  Plan A was to quilt each line in red thread.  Then that was too much, so I'll only do some of the lines.  Well, what if I'm not exactly on the line?  Finally ended up doing some of the lines in white on each basket and some flowers.  Then a wreath in the settings blocks.  Used leftover wool batt, so a nice loft to it.

I had purchased the magazine Quilter's World on a whim, and then found about 5 patterns in that issue that I wanted to make.  This is the first, and while my favorite pattern, no my favorite skill set.  Paper piecing, applique, two of my least favorites.  Learned a LOT!  Like orientation is important on paper piecing to make sure that the angles all come out correctly.  If you look close, you'll notice that all the barns except the middle one have an extra bit of "roof" on the right side.   There was also supposed to be some grey roof trim that didn't get included on my version because I had cut them all backwards.  Dang!

 Best part?  I got to give them to an officer on Christmas Eve.  I hope that he  was able to share them with some people who will need them in our current snow festival.

"Grandpa's shirts (and jeans) for Lindsey's grandmother"

 

Hard to believe, but it's a good thing when you make your customer cry when they pick up their quilt.  Lindsey's maternal grandmother had saved these shirts and pieces of jeans from her husband's clothes after he passed away.  She had even started to make quilt blocks, and that's where the design that I ended up with started.  She had made the rail fence blocks with shirt fabric and denim, and cut out the red and blue squares.    In order to make it large enough, I pieced the two plaid center rows.

Quilted with a design called 'I love you this much".  Finished just in time for Christmas, and I hope many many memories for their familiy.

Several police quilts from me.

This one is called "Soul Mates", and is from the website "Mystery Quilts Anonymous".  This is a quilt that she (Debi) designed to celebrate having 5000 people following her facebook group.  Of course, I went with scrappy, but I still think it really works

This one is also from Mystery Quilts Anonymous (MQA). and is called "Crossroads"  Again, scrappy, but it will help to keep someone warm

Finally from the website "Wedding Dress Blue" this is officially called "Growing up Odd"

However, I have chosen to call mine "My Favorite Color is NOT Orange"  

This quilt started for me by doing an internet search for quilts using 2" squares.  We all have those bits that are too big to throw away, but too small to keep.  So, when I find scraps, I cut them to 2" and throw them into my shoebox storage system.  Then I used the piecing of this as a "Beginner/Ender" quilt.  There are 2425 squares in this quilt, and since my favorite color is not orange, that's what I chose to use for the sashing.    The name further comes from my darling nephew Jackson who was about 6 years old and learning to ski.  I made all of the family ski sweaters, and asked Jackson what colors he would like.  He responded "My favorite color is orange Auntie Beth!"  My thought, horror of horrors, I have to knit an orange sweater!  Well it was blue with orange and green accents.

 The rest of the funny part is that as the kids grew, and grew, those sweaters no longer fit.  So, I made "grown up" sized ones.  Jackson ended up being 6'7" tall, so his "grown up" sweater probably doesn't fit.  While at a family gathering recently, our newest nephew in law arrived in a sweater that looked so familiar to me.  We finally figured out that it was Jackson's grown up sweater.  Cody, the new nephew is about 5'7", and it fits him quite well.  And it made me so happy to see how well the sweater had held up after all these years.

3 from Kathy Y.

There seems to be a baby in Kathy's future.  She brought me this sweet baby quilt to finish, and then  chose this fun giraffe face design for quilting.

I call this one "Bikes at the Beach" because of the obvious beach panel, but also the bike at the top of the design.

And finally "Beach Scenes" with a chain block to set it off.  Quilted with "Seashells", which couldn't be more perfect on this quilt!

 

The last of this year's Christmas quilts by Mary Beth

I think that Mary Beth made 10 quilts for her family members. Mostly for the grandkids.  She's going to let the kids choose which one they want, but when she made them, she had an idea of which one was for which kiddo.  The one above is called "Desert Rose" simply because that is the name of the quilting design she chose for this quilt.

These 3 are the same quilt, called "Geckos and Locks" because of the fabrics in the quilt.  The geckos are hard to see, but they are there

The geckos

The locks

 And a lovely log cabin.  One of my favorite blocks.

"Layer Cake" by Ann

 I believe that this started out as a layer cake. (A collection of fabrics cut at 10" squares by the manufacturer".

Ann sent me an email stating "You might remember me."  We used to meet up with a biking group, so that's where I met her initially.  This quilt is for her mother for Christmas as the current quilt on mom's bed has been well loved.  I'm sure that there will be many more years of love in this quilt as well.

"Improvisationally pieced houses" by Carol

Actually, I have no idea if that is the name that Carol called her quilt, that's just what I'm calling it.  The top photo colors are wrong, bottom is much closer.  I don't think that this is foundation pieced, but will ask Carol when she gets her quilt.