Dad's quilt

Almost forgot this one that I made for my dad at Christmas time (2010).  Fishing was his passion, so I used all flannel fabrics with fishing/outdoors theme.  The pattern is pretty simple.

Cat's Cool Cats

At our guild's show last fall, I bought a really neat batik panel.  When I saw it, I immediately thought of my friend Linda, because she likes cats and she likes "quirky" things.  So, I turned it into a wall hanging for her.  I found some 2 inch African batik squares on Ebay (got one of the packages for a penny!) and used them to create the pieced border to look like a wrought iron window.  The outer border color was suggested by a clerk at a LQS -- I wouldn't ever have considered it, but I think it looks great.  Quilting is the focal point of this project -- all kinds/colors of threads on the picture.  My favorite is the metallic thread on the palm tree.  Then the outer border is a Leah Day design with wavy lined triangular areas.

(My friend really liked it... yea!)

Jungle Neighborhood quilt for Lucas

Another set of Ebay fabrics turned into a Jungle Neighborhood quilt for grandson Lucas.  The idea is to follow the path and visit all the jungle friends at their homes.  I quilted the path with a brick road pattern, then came up with a leaf motif for the jungle parts.  It's twin-bed sized (with plenty of overhang for sides and bottom.)  I used flannel for the backing.

Projects from jungle animal fabric

I certainly haven't been keeping my blog up to date -- I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted anything!  But, I have been busy. 

 Found this fabric on Ebay, and thought it would be good to use for one of the grandkids:

 But, it looks like the grandkids may never see it!  I used it to make myself a "bow tuck" bag, which I love -- it is just the right size for me:

Still had fabric left, and had been wanting to try a "One Block Wonder" quilt.  This was a challenge; not so much the creation of the blocks, but the fact that they are hexagonal, and the design they morphed into wasn't symmetrical.  I filled in with some solid colors to create a landscape, and then spent a lot of time figuring out how to put a border on it.  Again, not symmetrical, which was a real drain on my left-brained self!  Quilting was fun -- I used my walking foot to do six-leafed curves on each hexagon, did some leafy FMQ in the purple and green areas, tried one of Leah Day's designs in the sky, and stippled/meandered in the border.  That was my first attempt at stippling, and I was pleased with the result.  I found a suggestion somewhere to imagine a grid on your fabric, and try to enter each square only once.  Well, this border fabric had a grid built-in, with the giraffe-skin pattern, so I tried to enter each darker spot once, and no more than twice.  Worked great!

My first baby quilt

Some neighbors just had their 2nd child, so I thought I'd try a baby quilt for them.  I wanted to do something pretty quick, so I chose the Rail Fence pattern.  It was a boy, so I did it in shades of blue, with the dark blue print containing some cute little dogs.  I used a coordinating flannel print for the back.  I quilted it all on machine, not very close, so it would be nice and "loose".  Upon finishing this, I decided that the sign of a good quilt is that you do not want to give it away!  This one felt so nice and snuggly.  (But, I did give it up!)

Beginner's Luck

In the spring, I joined the Durham Orange Quilters (DOQ) guild.  The group held their bi-annual quilt show this past weekend in the old tobacco district of Durham NC.  The setting was fantastic; the old brick tobacco buildings have been incorporated into a convention center, athletic park and restaurant area.  Bay 7, where our quilts were displayed, is airy and open and sunny.  Unfortunately, the sunniness at times made it hard to get good pictures ... but that's a small price to pay!

I entered 2 quilts -- my log cabin sampler, in the bed, pieced category, and a wall hanging called POP - Pinwheels on Point.  Unbelievably, both got 1st place ribbons in their categories.  I'm still in shock.  Not bad for a newbie, eh?  Here are some pictures -- first, a picture of bay 7, and then my 2 quilts.  (Again, sorry for the sunshine on the POP photo).

 

Weird Halloween Quilt

I just finished this one. It's kinda weird, but I like it. It was not quite all "scraps", but a personal challenge I gave myself. Every month, our guild has some door prizes, and in September, I won one of these. It was about 1/2 yd of Halloween fabric. It had 16 pictures in various sizes, all pumpkins and black cats, etc. I would never have bought this myself, as I prefer geometric designs for blocks, rather than fussy cut kinds of things. Anyway, I challenged myself to make a quilt from it without purchasing anything new, using only scraps and leftovers that I already had.

I had been wanting to try a spider web design that I saw on the web, and decided that would be a good Halloween-ish thing to incorporate with the picture blocks. So, here's what I ended up with. I'm learning FMQ, so I quilted spider webs over all the main blocks, and a "radio static" pattern in the sashing. (These ideas came from Leah Day's web site).

I did manage to make it all with scraps from my stash, with the exception of thread; I bought some silvery grey thread for the spider web.

diamond string quilt

This one was pretty easy, and a lot of fun.  I love the colors.  I found the fabric used in the border on a trip to Florida (it's a Laurel Burch design).  Then, made the rest of the quilt to go with it.  I used silk batting, just to see how that would quilt.  My machine quilting was supposed to be smooth swirls, but it didn't come out all that smooth.  But it was good practice.

Here is the finished top before quilting:

After quilting:

After quilting:  

The back:

I gave this quilt to one of my brothers, who has a place at the beach.  I think it looks quite happy there:

Erin's quilt

Goddaughter Erin graduated from high school last week.  Hard to believe she's past that milestone already! I made this dragonfly/butterfly quilt for her to commemorate the occasion.  It took me about 3 weeks to decide on the basic fabrics.  After several trials with different materials, I finally found this dragonfly print that I could fussy-cut a dragonfly for each center square.  The quilt pattern is Tennessee Waltz, which is great for Erin as her mom went to school in Nashville and she and Erin often go back there to visit friends.

Lessons learned from this quilt:

• don't use white-on-white type fabric where the top layer isn't woven in... almost looks like it's painted on.  This fabric was not very forgiving; when you take stitches out, they still show in the "painted" part.
• I actually CAN do picture-type machine quilting!  I did dragonflies and butterflies in most of the white squares, and even did Erin's monogram in 4 corner white squares
• DO NOT leave an unfinished quilt sitting out in the workroom ... well, at least MY workroom.  I was almost done with the quilting, and a mouse decided it liked my quilt. It chewed a hole in the backing and shredded a section of batting. Fortunately, it didn't break thru to the front.  I stuck another piece of batting in, and patched the backing.  Once it was quilted over, it wasn't that noticeable.

Log Cabin Sampler

I've named this king-size quilt "Log Cabin Sampler" because it has

1. several ways to arrange log cabin blocks to create different patterns
2. many machine quilting techniques -- there is straightline stitching and stitch-in-the-ditch with a walking foot, free motion stippling, and a free motion pattern.  While I was in the process of making the log cabin squares, I took a free-motion class, and used the black sections of the quilt to try out different patterns.  They're all  angular (squares or triangles) to match the quilt ... and because I'm not too comfortable with curves yet!
3. quilt-as-you-go (the large sections are quilted separately, and then connected using sashing) as well as traditional block assembly (inside the large sections.)

Here's another view that shows how I did the corners: 

If you're interested in the details .......

                                                                                  

It took 186 of these log cabin squares.  These were combined with plain black sections to create 2 white diamond sections, 3 black diamond sections, 4 windmill sections, and 9 vee sections for the zig-zag around the edges

                                                    

Then I quilted each section.  I did straight-line quilting or stich-in-the-ditch for the log cabin blocks, because they are already busy enough, and I wasn't quite ready to try free-motion going over all those seams.  I practiced my stippling on the black sections.  Here's one example -- I used black thread on the black fabric, because I really did not want the quilting to be the focal point of the whole quilt.  The design created by the log cabin blocks was really my focus.  Anyway, I tried to get a picture of some of this stippling, but the black-on-black was kinda hard to photograph .... it looks a lot better in real life!

Finally, I came up with a free-motion pattern for the blocks in the corners, and also for the 3 "header" sections at the top of the quilt.  This pattern was actually a doodle that my grandfather's 2nd wife,  Mabel, taught me when I was a kid.  I didn't really know her that well or spend much time with her, but I do remember sitting with her and learning this doodle.  Funny the things we remember. 

Stephanie, the quilting class instructor, had suggested using red thread for quilting on the black fabric, but I was  (at that time!) a little bit afraid of doing anything that would stand out and show all my mistakes!  By the time I had done all the large blocks, however, I was ready to give it a try, so these header blocks are for Stephanie!  They came out great, although they have almost an Oriental style that doesn't really match the rest of the quilt.  But I like them anyway.  I used a programmed stitch on my machine to do the extra border inside each section.

Another project complete! On a recent trip thru WV, we ran onto a small quilt shop, where I found a package of 5" squares by Moda, called "Figgy Pudding". Bought 'em, but had no idea what I'd do with them. (But, the best thing about this stop, was that the shop had just installed a long arm quilting machine, and they let me try it out! That was really fun. I guess they were planning to start offering a quilting service to their customers.)

So, the package of squares -- I guess they're called charms -- was a challenge. Each square was different, but in coordinating colors and styles. I found a pattern called panache on the web, and thought it would be a good way to use the charms. Hardest thing was picking out the additional fabrics I needed for the backgrounds and "setting" squares. But, after a couple of hours at Jo-Anns, I settled on a pine green material that has little colored spots that look like Christmas tree bulbs, a subtle red print, a deeper red with spots for the binding, and muslin for the setting squares and the backing.

After I got started, I realized I had gotten almost twice as much fabric as I needed : the original pattern was for 10" squares, while mine were 5". So, I cut all the amounts in half. But, a 5" square is 1/4 of a 10" square ... duh. The overall dimensions end up being about 1/2 of the original, tho. ANYWAY, I had fabric left over, as well as a bunch of half-square trianges from the setting squares of the main quilt, so I came up with a couple of pillow designs. I had been wanting to try prairie points, so I did those around the edges of the pillow. Not sure I like it, but it was fun trying it out. It's a little too "fussy" for my tastes.

I was quite pleased with the machine quilting on this. The back thread is green and red, and its almost as interesting as the front!