"Animals crumb quilt" by Carol

Carol is a friend who either pulled these fabrics from her own stash, or was gifted them, or a combo of the two.  All of these are 6" finished blocks and most of the blocks have a theme that ties them together.  The theme of the entire quilt is "Animals", so each block has different types of animals.

Okay, sometimes you don't have enough squirrel fabric, so you add other things, like horses to it.  it all works in the end!

Cats

Bugs

Dogs

 

Fish to name a few.  There's even a sloth in here, but when I tried to find it after quilting, he was hiding from the camera.

Carol provided flannel fabric in place of batting and will donate the completed quilt to Friendly House.

Two baby quilts from Xande for extra special little girls.

I am so lucky to have recently welcomed "Juniper Lee" my first great-niece into our family.  As an "honorary Auntie", Xande graciously made this AMAZING quilt for her.  All paper pieced which blows my mind, but also designed by Xande!! 

Since we jokingly refer to our group of biking friends as "the flock" for our tendency to wear flamingo tights, this little girl has flamingos in her dress.  Her mother, Katie's favorite color is purple, and she loves fairies, so the background took care of that design.  (And they glow in the dark!)  Simply stunning!  Quilted with a free hand edge to edge design of mostly feathers (for the flock), but also swirls in her hair since we all have such curly hair.

Then Xande's daughter Fiona announced that she was going to have a baby too!  "Grandma Xande" dove into action to make this one that represents to many favorite childhood books of Fiona's.  While I've never met her in person, I know that the girl in the quilt represents Fiona as a child, engrossed in a book while all of the characters swirl above her head.  Again, all paper pieced and designed by Xande.  I quilted primarily a swirling leaf design to represent the trees that result in paper for books.

Max, from "Where the Wild Things Are"

Paddington Bear, complete with suitcase and tag that reads "Please take care of this bear."

Dr. Seuss and his "Sam I am" from "Greens Eggs and Ham".  The green bits in the quilt are the eggs and ham.  

Cheshire Cat from "Alice In Wonderland"

Clearly a dragon, but I'm not sure what book it represents.  I'm guessing Lord of the Rings and those are the other characters from the Tolkein series. (I have to point out, even though you can't see it, I quilted flames coming from the dragon's mouth)
 

And "Calvin and Hobbs" my personal favorite!

"Vinatge" from Jean

Another quilt with a story!  

Jean reached out to me about helping her finish a quilt that that had been in her family for a while.  Seems that her "Aunt Loretta" had made this quilt top, but never got it finished.  Probably circa 1940's or so.  Mostly machine pieced, and a few seams that needed some reinforcement before quilting.  (Frankly, when I'm the same age as this quilt, things will probably be falling apart on me as well.)

Quilted with and edge to edge design called Rainbow hearts, and machine bound with the same white muslin as the backing and cotton fabric.  I hope that Aunt Loretta is pleased with how it turned out.

 

Hexies

 There is a long story to this quilt, so we will start at the beginning.

Perusing facebook one day, I found a post from a lady named Marci who lives in Michigan.  The following is from the letter that she included with the incomplete quilt top.

"Every Quilt has a Story...

The UFO Story of Grandmothers Flower Garden

Southwood Quilters Club of Grand Rapids MI

Marcia K started the quilt in the late 1990's when the class was taught.  She couldn't hand piece anymore so... Marcia K gave the top to Elaine 'to finish it.'

Elaine put it in her sewing stuff to 'get to later."  Elaine found it again in March 2023 while cleaning out the swing room.  Elaine gave it to Rose to finish.

Rose doesn't hand piece, so she brought the UFO to Club March 30, 2023.  She gave it to Marcia H. who said she would look at it.

Marcia H. doesn't hand pieced, but thought to finish it by machine.  However, arthritic hands and nerve damage limits taking on anymore projects than what's already in the house.  She posted it to the (Mystery Quilts Anonymous FB) UFO challenge 2023 page in hopes that someone would take on the challange.

Beth Durand of Oregon stepped up to take on the challenge.  That is how Beth came into possession of this UFO.  She said she will machine finish it and donate."

That's is Marcia's part of the story.  My part is that I saw the incomplete quilt top on FB and thinking that it was made by English paper piecing, I agreed to take it on.   The box left Michigan on April 4, 2023.  When it arrived in Portland OR, I pulled it, took a look and ordered some paper pieces that would fit this much larger size.  Then continued to work on whatever hand project I had at that time.

Finished that hand project, ready to pull this out.  What!?  It's hand pieced?  And some machine piecing?  "Y" seams!  Oh horror!  I tried by machine, nope, that's not gonna work.  Did some sad attempts to hand finish the blocks that were partially complete in the quilt top, then decided it was ready to quilt.  During summer of 2022, I had stopped at a garage sale from a quilter.  Found a package of batting and brought it home where it lived under my longarm for a year.  When this was ready for quilting, I pulled that out.  It''ll be perfect!  Right size, right price!  Oh my.  It's circa 1980's, so extra thick "comforter thickness" batting.  Oh well, donation quilt!

Quilted the whole thing with continuous curves from point to point and then decided that the best way to finish those edges was to cut them off straight and lose 1/2 of several flowers.  I wasn't willing to take on trying to do bias binding around all those corners with that thick batting.  Brought it to the sewing room where it sat for several weeks during the heat of summer and too hot to be up here with an iron on.  Finally, pulled it and did machine binding on both sides of the binding and have added it to the current pile of "police quilts".    Next stop for this quilt is probably the Washington County Sheriffs office for donation.

Meanwhile, Marcia also included LOTS of extra hexies in the box with the quilt top.  Currently, I am taking those and making large flowers, same basic design as in this quilt.  I've added white background from my stash and when I get it completed will quilt it up as well.  Watch this space for more info on that quilt, but don't hold your breath.  I've got about 3 of the 12 flowers completed, and there will be some accent triangles as well.