"There's No Place Like Home", or "Oz" by Michael

I"m sure I won't have to give anyone a reference to this quilt pattern.  Michael says that he started is a year ago, as the blocks were only released a few at a time.  This would defeat me right there.  

Quilted with an edge to edge design of Deco Clam Glam in a pale green thread.  Perfect!

The flying monkeys scared me as a child, so I never saw the whole thing then. 

After Michael dropped this off, I then had to ask a friend why there was a balloon.  She reminded me that the Wizard leaves in a balloon at the end.

I really think that the Cowardly Lion is my favorite block.  I LOVE his topnot!

The crows on the shoulders of the scare crow are too cute.  Then using plaid fabrics as "patches" on his clothes.

Gosh I'm slow.  Been quilting this much of the day, and it has taken me until now to realize that the wicked witch is "Melting!"

Emerald City and the Yellow Brick road

Glenda

Should require no explaination.

The Tin Man made out of metallic fabric!

Poppies, tornadoes, hearts and emeralds around the border.
 This is the back of the quilt. A block that Michael designed himself.  He said that there were "stickers" that you can collect, and had hoped that this would be a block, but no so.  I love that he used his own creativity to design this one.

"T shirt quilt for Judd, made by Mom"

This quilt clearly has a story, and I only know a portion of it.  Paige contacted me about quilting a 2 sided t-shirt quilt in April 2023, and sent me photos.  Just by seeing the backing I could tell that this was not something I was willing to take on and offered other places to check with.  Sadly, no one was willing to take on the 2 sided t-shirts, so Paige reached out again to ask about completing the shirt with a traditional fabric backing, and that I was willing to take on.

The following show portions of the quilt while it was loaded on my machine as I had told Paige I'd send her some.  Usually, when making a t-shirt quilt, you fuse them shirts with interfacing to make them stable, and then stitch them like traditional quilt blocks.  Judd's mom seems to have started by cutting parts of the shirts and then hand appliqueing them to pieces of batik fabrics.  In addition, there were numerous souvenir patches from travels.  These are very thick. to thick for my machine to go over, so I just had to avoid those parts of the quilt. 

  The finished "blocks" were then appliqued to a piece of muslin, and batik fabrics were added as borders.

Since the shirts weren't interfaced, there was a lot of "wiggle room" in the shirts, and a few folds and wrinkles had to be incorporated, or flat out left in the final quilt.

It seems that someone spilled their drink when they were piecing.  There's a large brown stain on the muslin underlay.

You can see above that many of the fabrics were left intake, not trimmed to size.  Oh well!

There was interfacing, but I'm not sure it was fused to the shirts, or if it is a sew in interfacing.

 Some how, this phrase reminds me so much of my brothers and our friends from college

"Dino panel" by Susan

I'm always struck by the creativity of Susan's piecing, and these borders are no exception.  Pull some coordinating fabrics from the stash, and lay them out in a pleasing manner, and now you've got an adorable quilt!

Quilted with "Dino Bones" quilting design. and silver grey thread.

 

"Purple Star" by Cara

Cara says that I have her quilt turned 180 degrees, that she has the large focus star at bottom right.  Oops.

She made this lovely quilt for her daughter in law, and the purple colors are accurate in all the photos except the above. 

 

Continuous curves in the yellow and pinwheel, echo quilting in the yellow stars and a background fill throughout.

 

"Hanky Panky" by me.

I have truly wonderful neighbors!  Received a group text that Julia's "due date is May 31st."  Julia lives literally right next door to me, so you'd think I'd have noticed a pregnant lady, but no!  My first response was "Gotta make a quilt!".  Since they are expecting a girl, I went with a pink theme.  The pattern is something I found in my closet, and  I do love 1930's prints, so just pulled a bunch of fat quarters from the stash.

 The first time I met Pete, Julia's husband and dad to be was when he was riding past and stopped to look at the for sale sign on what became their house.  Since I'm nosy, I promptly went over and suggested that they buy the house so we could have nice neighbors.  Anyone on a bike must be nice.  When they moved in, there were about 6 bikes for 2 people, so clearly the quilting design needed to be bikes.  Can't wait to meet this new sweet neighbor.

"miscalculation #2 by me

I wanted to throw something on a machine, and the backing was prepped for this, so here it is, ready for an officer.  I don't even recall where the leftover 1/2 square triangles came from, but now it's a quilt and ready for someone to use.  All leftovers, including the batting which is bits of wool from former projects stitched together.    The white background came from my scrap bin.

 

"Turtle" by Michael

As always, Michael amazes me with his paper piecing. Since it's not something that I enjoy, I am astounded as his work on these

Trying to get a close up on the eyes to show how many tiny little pieces are in this small section.

 Quilted with free hand wavy lines across the quilt to mimic waves that the turtle is swimming through.

"House Sampler" by Sue

I love the cheeirness of this quilt.  All the same house block, but with a different block in the main portion of each house.  Quilted with Baptist fans, a perfect compliment for them all.

 

"Disappearing 9 Patch" by Gerry H

Gerry's comment to me on how to quilt this quilt was "Use your imagination" and he gave me my choice of thread .  I opted for a gold, and then started playing on the quilt top.

"Espresso Bean" in the sashing, then a couple of different rulers in the blocks.  Both curves and straight.  Then feathers in the white background.

This is for Gerry's grandson who is in the military.  The piecing reminded me of propellers.

 

Duvet cover by Kathy

 This will be a duvet cover for Kathy's son.  So, a log cabin quilt top pieced and then quilted with just a backing, no batting.

"Stars in a Crown"

A sad quilt.  Made for the family of a fallen police officer.  I chose black for the background to represents his uniform, and the police fabric is an obvious choice.  I made the star points from various batiks that are either in the police fabric, or representative of other departments uniforms.

We thank him and his family for his service, and are sorry for this loss.

 

"Sprout's First Quilt" by me

My first great niece is due to arrive June 26.  Her in-utero name is "Sprout", hence the title of the quilt.  This quilt shows a lot of different things that are important in her family.

Mom to be Katie, likes to bike with us, so the monsters on bicycles was my jumping off point.  Since "Visible from Space" is our clothing line, clearly neon green and orange were also needed. 

The backing represents her father, lover of gnomes and owner of a goat "Pearl".  Quilted with flamingos, although difficult to see because we refer to our biking group as "The flock".  One last family representation is the mushroom fabric for the binding for dad who grows them.  Last time I was at their house, the mushrooms were growing in the future nursery.  Hopefully that will move at some point.

 

Space Unicorns and Unicorn Barf from Melissa

Let me start with these names are ones that Melissa gave to me.   3 fun quilts though.  Above is Space Unicorn #1  Quilted with "Karlee's Circle #22"

It took me some time to understand the unicorn reference, but I finally found this fabric with the unicorn in the quilts.Space Unicorns #2 is the same, but the borders and quilting design are different.
 

"Unicorn Barf" is probably self explanatory in it's title.

Quilted with Oriental Clouds

A wedding quilt from Zoe

Zoe has friends who will celebrate their marriage this summer, so here is their wedding quilt.  The background is a lovely blue, but not quite navy.  Also, not the weird grey that shows in the closeup.  Quilted with Baptist Fans, and oh so pretty.