"Precious Memories of Cycle Oregon" by me

Another amazing design from Debi at Mystery Quilts Anonymous.  Xande and I were on a bike ride to investigate local quilt shops, and found the background fabric.  The remainder is pulled from my stash.
Donated as a fund raiser and raffled off at the Cycle Oregon Kick Off Party.  I took in $119 in cash, but need to count the total number of tickets sold.  The winner bought $50 worth of tickets.  She REALLY wanted it.  She's one one in the past, but was gracious and gave it to her children.  She's keeping this one for herself.

Cross stitched squares

This is just a preview of a quilt that's coming.  I wanted to take a "before" photo.  Still on my girl machine, Pearly, but we are having so much fun working on it!  I can't wait to show it to you.

"Hydrangeas" by Dorothy

 Another huge quilt!  This one was quilted as an edge to edge, so faster than others, but still several days on my girl.  I love the hydrangea print, and warned Dorothy that since I was in the midst of a "large print" mystery quilt of my own, and these would be perfect in my quilt, she shouldn't be surprised to find large holes in her quilt when I returned it to her. 

Here is proof that I left Dorothy's fabric in her quilt.

"Pretty Ladies" by Cindy's grandmother.

 Another amazing hand pieced, hand appliqued, hand embroidered quilt by Grandma. 

 Feathers in the sashing strips and continuous curves in the cornerstones.

Tight background fill of peacock feather meander to let their skirts puff up.  I think this is my favorite dress fabric because it reminds me oh so vaugely of a doll dress that my grandmother Esther Turner made for my aunt Helen Turner, and which I have been able to inherit.

Double Wedding Ring by Pat

I am truly honored.  Pat contacted me via email after seeing my website, and asked me to quilt this drop dead gorgeous quilt for her.  She lives in WA state, and we've never met, only communicated via email.  While I am so grateful for her to trust me with this, I'm not sure that I'm that trusting of strangers!

Pat wanted wool batting, and after several emails back and forth, she sent me a link to a feather design that she liked.  I was having such fun quilting this quilt, that I was pretty sad to see that last row of quilt come up.  Feeling a time crunch to get the next one up, but still sad to finish this.

The bottom portion of this photo is not quilted because it is the bottom of the quilt, and Pat will be trimming that off and leaving the edges of the quilt scalloped.

Although it appears almost peach colored in this photo, the backing is actually white.  I love how the quilting shows.  Pat told me that this is a Quilt Smart pattern, and I may be willing to take this design on.  Piecing a DWR is on my "someday" list.  It may be moving closer to the top.

Dresden Fan by Dee.

 My darling mother in law, Delores Stearns Durand, passed away in Jan. 2015.  She had hand pieced these lovely Dresden Plate blocks in approx. 2011, and after her passing, I inherited them with the intent to make them into a quilt top to give to her sister Joy Gay. 

The quilt finally made it to the top of the quilting queue, and it is now ready to go on to Hawaii where Joy lives.  I hope that it will provide some comfort to her to be wrapped up in a warm hug from her sister.

 

Shivery by Sharyle

This is a quilt that we made as a block of the month quilt at Heart to Hand.  Each month, you made an applique block with a theme for that month, and two pieced blocks.  One large, and one small.

I tried to do a different background fill in each of the different applique blocks.

Here is the July block with the snowman dressed as Uncle Sam.  Stars for the background.

April Showers bring May Flowers!  Supposed to be rain falling in the background.

 "L's and E's" in the border.

Thimbleberries by Linda

I wish I knew how many Thimbleberries quilts Linda has made.  I'm not even sure that she knows.  This is her most recent delivery to me.  Quilted with the Log Cabin panto.

Carpenter's Star by Jillianne

Here's a portion of the outer border, all done in piano keys., but pieced with different fabrics from the quilt.  The outer border is about 10" wide.

Oh wow.  Here's a beauty.  The photo above shows as much of the whole quilt as  I could get to show.  I think our eyes naturally stop at the white border.

 A narrow cream border filled with feathers that wind between the seams, then a feather that goes out on both sides in the pieced border.  Leaves on a vine in the red border.

The center star with feathers that radiate out from the center.  All of the above is done with Glide Military Gold thread.

For the background fill, a Peacock Feather meander in Glide Cream

Trying to get a shot of the backing with the center star.  Squint.  You can see it.

Here's a better shot of the back of the quilt.  Love all that texture! 

 Jillianne chose Hobbs wool batting, and I love the loft that it gives to the quilt.  Also very light.  Lovely work Jillianne.

Skiing at Altenmarkt by me.

Oh so many years ago when I was in high school, I was lucky enough to meet and become friends with Ursula.  She was an exchange student from Modling, Austria who was staying with another family that we were very close to.  At the time, I knew how to knit only the most basic, unattractive slippers in two colors.  It was the 1970's, so you can imagine how bad they were.  Ursi and I were taking a weaving class, and she decided to knit a sweater for her brother at home, Georg.  I wanted to learn to do that!   Hence my love of knitting was born, even before it was cool.

When I saw this quilt pattern, I knew that I had to make it, but didn't know where it would end up.  I just saved the pattern for a while.  Meanwhile, Ursi writes to share that she's going to be a grandma!  This was the perfect excuse to make this quilt.  When Ursi was pregnant with her oldest son, I knitted a little blanket and sleep sack for him.  Now I'm just continuing the tradition.

Quilted with an edge to edge design called "Tangles" which is what my yarn would do when knitting with multiple yarns until I learned Fair Isle knitting.  Much better!
This quilt is approx. twin sized, really too big for a "baby quilt", but I hope that it's something they'll use as the baby grows.

Because every child needs a little blankie, and because I had so many extra 2.5" squares cut from the quilt, I put them together to make this random small quilt.  It's maybe 30" square, and quilted edge to edge with continuous curves.  

I will admit the "Humility block" in the larger quilt, and have fun looking for it.  I was finishing the quilting on the last row of the quilt when I happened to look at it from another angle and realized that something was out of place.  Drat!  At least when I hung up the quilt to photograph it took me a while to find it again, so maybe it's not as bad as I thought.  Besides, only God is perfect, so I've included a mistake in my quilt.  (Like I have to purposefully make a mistake!)

Hexagons by Jewelie

I love to English Paper Piece hexagons, and when Jewelie contacted me about quilting her hexagon quilt, I figured that was the technique she had used.  No, she pieced all these little guys together.    Wow.  If you look carefully, and I mean carefully!  You'll be able to see that there is a seam down the center of each on.  Even those lovely dragon blocks are pieced in the middle. 

 Talk about precision piecing!  I don't know how she managed to get the designs to line up so well on these two blocks.  There are other dragons, but these are my favorites.

Quilted with "Vanilla Cream" panto.  I found a couple of amazing dragon pantos online for her daughter to look at and choose from, but she decided on Vanilla Cream after all.  Drat!  I really wanted an excuse to get those!  Quick!  Someone make another dragon quilt!

Double Wedding Ring by Pat

 Oh my!  I dream of "someday" piecing a DWR (double wedding ring) quilt, but I haven't yet.  I so admire people who take on these amazing challenges.  Pat told me that this quilt is for "a non-traditional couple, but they want a traditional quilt."  We chose traditional quilting designs for this pattern with lots of feathers and stitching in the ditch.  I love that this quilt is even included in the pre-nup agreement.  If the relationship ends in under 5 years, the quilt reverts to Pat.  Great idea!  After all the work that she put into this, I can't believe that she's giving it away.

 Each block has been SID around all the seams, then I added feather quilting in just the cream triangle shapes.  This allows the rest of the parts of the block to pop up.  The quilt will live in Wisconsin, so a chilly climate.  Pat chose wool batting, and the higher loft of the batt really allows the quilting to show. 
When Pat and I met for her to drop off her quilt, we talked about quilting designs so that she would know what her quilt was going to look like when I was finished.  I found myself quilting along, sticking to the described plan, but then thinking "It needs something else here."  So I'd add a little bit.  "Oh!  I like that."  Quilt some more in a different section and realize that it needed more quilting in that area too.  I must admit, that I had one vision, and started to quilt it that way, but it was quickly removed.  It just didn't work.  I'm very pleased with how this turned out, and I surely hope that Pat loves it too.

 I call this block, above, a "ghost block"  Pat left several open spaces on the border of the quilt that are the same size as the pieced blocks.  I quilted these the same as the pieced blocks, but they only show the texture of the quilting since there is no piecing.  Way fun!  Except for marking where the quilting would go.  I don't like to mark quilts because then I have to get those marks out.  Sometimes though, you just have to bite the bullet and mark up someone else's handwork.  Gives me the shivers.

 These two blocks above show the traditional quilting design for this pattern.  They are frequently quilted with feathers in the center squares and the "football" shapes.  I also cross hatched the background to emphasize the angular designs in the pieced blocks.

 Here's the back of the quilt.  The fabric is actually a pretty deep burgundy, but the camera read it as red and then orange.  I was trying to show the lovely quilting though.

This shows the "ghost quilting" along the border.

Burgoyne Surrounded by Terri

After seeing this quilt finished, I think that I may have to add making one of these to my list of quilt tops. I love scrappy quilts, but also the consistent tones that Terri has used here.

Quilted with So Fine! #402, cream, and the Swirls board.  So pretty!

Snails Trail by Sara

This quilt will be going to Florida for the parents on the new baby who received the baby animals applique quilt that Sara made. 

We seem to be having a run on So Fine! #402 thread.

All done in seashell fabrics.  Creams, pale blues and greens.  So soft and relaxing.  I quilted a Pond Water meander design as an edge to edge, and that made it that much more relaxing to look at.

All those lovely snails trail blocks, and all those triangle pieces that have to be matched up.  Well done Sara!