5 from Mary Beth

There are 2 new babies coming into Mary Beth's life, and they are going to have more quilts than they know what to do with! 

This is Mountains for Zeke.  Quilted with a mountain motif in each block.

Kiernan gets "Ocean" above and below.  Love the Interstellar quilting design she chose for this one.

This is called "Pink Whales and is also for Kiernan  I love the Celtic knot design.And finally for Kiernan, "Birds and Fish"  Hard to see the Wax On" panto, but it's really cool.

One more for Zeke, he gets the "Baby Animals" complete with chicken wire quilting design.  Too perfect!

Watch this space, Zeke has one more quilt coming.
 

T-shirts for Rich

This is the first time I've had a color coordinated T-shirt quilt.  You only get one guess to know what Rich in involved in

This block is made up of small chest and sleeve logos that were too small to made an entire block on their own, but worked well as a set

 

"Celestial" by Masha

I love all these starry fabrics in blues and golds. I'm not sure who this is for, but they had better appreciate it!  Quilted with Spiral Stars panto and gold thread.  Nicely done.

 

A donation quilt by me

This is what happens when you've got a class to teach on your machine, and therefore can't load a customer quilt because you can't teach someone how to user their machine by quilting on a customer's quilt.  So, you throw on a donation quilt, use leftover batting and whip it out.

I remember that the 6-patch rectangles were leftovers from a mystery quilt, but not clue as to which one.  Then add random bits of red fabric from the stash to make it remotely cohesive.

Head to the sewing room to give it a press and find something for a backing.  Thinking you've got piles of large pieces that will be perfect for it, and find nothing wide enough.  Too lazy to take the time piece a backing, but look!  2 yards of fun vintage pattern fabric from friend Darcy!  One quick seam to make it slightly bigger and down to quilt again!  Ready to go to the police.
 

"Elephant" by Robin

When I asked Robin what she had brought for quilting her response was "Well I made an elephant".  Boy was I excited to see this!  Okay, truth time, first thought was panic about how am I going to quilt this?!, but after some internet research, I found some great ideas.

The pattern design is by Violet Craft, and I'm so thrilled that Robin made this as I've always admired her work, but there was no way I was going to paper piece any of these incredibly complex designs.

Each piece was quilted with ruler work, and a few freehand.  Thread colors to match the fabric, so LOTS of thread changes

Two shots of the back trying to show the quilting.  The backing is actually a deep purple with a bit of black to create a design, but shows as red below. Wow.

 

A t-shirt quilt for Erika

Erika brought me shirts from a friend to make a quilt out of earlier in the year, as well as one that she had started during the pandemic of her own shirts.  She got started, then I think got overwhelmed, and quit.  So, I picked it up in the middle of the project.  Some shirts were whole, some had been cut down, but not interface, others also interfaced with some type of interfacing that did not agree with my sewing machine, and even a few already stitched together.

I started by taking everything apart, added better interfacing to the ones that had some already, and tried to cut the remaining shirts to a consistent size.  However, since Erika had already cut a great many of them down, I felt like I was attempting to assemble a jigsaw puzzle without a photo to start with.

I ended up creating rows that were roughly the same width, then as needed adding khaki fabric as filler in between the rows to make the top as square as possible.  I also removed most of the paper from her remaining interfacing, but may have missed one or two.  So, the quilt has a bit of a crinkly sound to it.

All in all, I hope that she'll be pleased with the end results.

 

Stars and Stripes for Kelli's mom in law

Shh. This may be a gift, so no telling.  This lovely one is made by Kelli for her mom in law.  Not a fan of orange myself, but it really works in this quilt.  I love the background checkerboard design of the stripes as well.

Quilted with the design "Adena", so flowers and swirls.  Very pretty..

 

Two from Donna

We have here "Trees and Stars" quilted with a great design of leaves and swirls.  Really works on this quilt.

Also "Modern Triangles and Circles".  This one amazes me because she has pieced all of the circles.  Not being a fan of curved piecing, I am quite impressed with her skills.

 And  a modern circle design for quilting.  Fun!

Animals in Black and White by Pat

There is a new baby arriving in Pat's world, so time for a baby quilt.  I love this idea, of just taking some fun prints and slicing them up with narrow bits of sashing fabric.  Very effective, and I would imagine, very quick to make.

 Since these are all animals, they needed something to eat, so quilted with the tea leaves panto in a soft green that matches well.  

Another stunner from Pat.

"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.