"Sea Otter" by Ashley

Ashley is a newish quilter, this is her 4th quilt.  And yet, she's already graduated to paper piecing.  See the shells and the fish blocks in the corners.

She chose heirloom quilting and wool batting as it's a gift for her husband.  Quilted with waves in the body of the quilt, seaweed in the border, and fur in the otter.  Also about 5 different thread colors to match the fabrics.  Love it!

 

Photo dump #1 of Michaels

Right before I left on my bike trip, Michael dropped off about 6 quilts. Here are a few.  Van Gogh's "starry night"

Quilted with an edge to edge freehand design of spirals to mimic the swirls in the painting.

"Lord of the Rings"  I read the Hobbit as a kid, just never fell in love with the rest of the story. 

I can still recognize a couple of characters at least.

"Farm Fresh", and I was just talking to a friend about 2 color quilts.  Here's a great example!

Michael and his amazing paper piecing are at it again.  This beautiful lion, quilted with free hand flames.

And the Gladiator which received an art deco design.

 

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.