Prayer Flag

About three years ago, my daughter Dana and I went to visit my sister in North Carolina.  We visited some quilt shops while there and I purchased some fabrics from the Prayer Flag by April Cornell for Moda line to make Dana a new quilt for her king-size bed.  I had these fabrics laid out recently and someone saw them and asked what I was making.  I told her it was a quilt for Dana.  She asked if it was going to be a surprise.  I said, probably.  She was with me when I bought the fabric, but that was almost 3 years ago and I'm sure she has completely forgotten about it by now. Sure enough, when I got the top together and showed it to her, she didn't remember the fabric at all, but she LOVED it!

I had a layer cake, a jelly roll, and a few other fabrics in various yardages.  I just made strip blocks from the jelly roll and alternated them with the layer cake squares.  Used the extra fabrics for borders.  It finishes at 105 x 105.  Still have to bind and hem but maybe it won't take as long to get around to that as making the top!!

Log Cabin

When I attended the Huntsville Heritage Quilters' Quilt Show in Huntsville, Alabama in October, I purchased a Log Cabin Trim Tool by Creative Grids from one of the vendors.  Starting with a 2-1/2" square in the middle, you can then add any size strips that are at least 1-1/2" wide up to......whatever.  You sew two light strips and two dark strips around the square, then using the tool and lining up one of the squares on the tool with the 2-1/2" middle square, you trim all four sides and end up with a 4-1/2" square consisting of the center square and four equal 1" (finished) strips all the way around.  Repeat that process two more times and the last cut will give you a finished 8" square.  I pulled strips from my boxes of strings, boxes of pre-cut 2" and 2-1/2" scrappy strips, and cut more from scraps.  When I finished, I had a total of 56 blocks.  Had no idea how I wanted to lay them out, but found a layout in one of my Quilter magazines that gave me this idea.  It took only 42 of the blocks, but I was able to sort them into enough blocks of each color to lay them out by rows of certain colors.  I still plan to add borders to this to make it queen size, but wanted to go ahead and get a picture while it still fits on my design wall.

Finally got some borders on this top with fabric from my stash.  Now to find just the right backing for it...........I will have to go shopping!

Sister's Choice

Just remembered that I had completed this scrappy quilt a few weeks ago and wanted to share it.  I had spent several days one week cutting all my scraps into 2-1/2" strips and ended up with about 700 strips. Since I had the strips cut, I went looking for a pattern that would use up quite a few.  I found this one in Bonnie Hunter's free patterns on Quiltville and paired up enough strips for 63 nine-patches.  Then I used a variety of greens for all the star points (eight folded corners per block....yikes!  thought I never would get all those finished).  But I persevered and am happy with the results.

Cats in the Moonlight

I have a "large and in charge" (as my daughter calls him) black cat named Oliver.  He is 13 years old.  He likes to help me with my quilts, as you can see from the picture below.  When I went to see my sister in June, she had a new wall hanging on her wall in honor of her black cat who had passed away.  I loved the pattern so she shared it with me.  Here is my version of black cats in the moonlight.  I showed it to Oliver when I finished it, but he wasn't all that impressed......he just grumbled because I had disturbed his nap.

Florabunda!

This is one of the many free quilt patterns on Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville site.  I had this very large print fabric that I wanted to cut into small pieces to just show the colors in the fabric rather than the overall design, so I chose this pattern.  It is really an easy pattern to do....HOWEVER, I made it one of the more difficult ones I have done by NOT thinking about what I was doing.  Without going into a lot of detail, just let me say that if you change machines in the middle of sewing units together for a project, BE SURE to adjust your 1/4" seam allowance to be exactly the same on both machines.  TRUST me, this is very important.  I had to make a lot of adjustments and re-adjustments to get the smaller units to fit together as well as they did, so please don't look too closely at the squares that aren't quite square and the seams that don't match exactly as I would have liked. Needless to say, I won't make this mistake again any time soon!

                                                                     

Lazy Sunday Mystery

Yay!!! I finally have my Lazy Sunday quilt top assembled.  Lots of pinning, pinning, pinning, to get all the borders to fit as they should, especially after I decided to make mine a queen size and added two extra borders, one between the two very busy pieced borders and one on the outside.  But I am very happy with the result.  I am showing  Bonnie's also so that you can see where the differences lie.  I used red where she used pink and an earthy green where she used lime green.

And here's a picture showing the overall quilt (or at least most of it).  This was taken inside, whereas the one above was taken outside, so the colors look a little different.

And now I am anxiously awaiting fabric requirements for Bonnie's mystery quilt that we will be doing starting "Black Friday" (the day after Thanksgiving) and going through the first of the year.

Colter's Quilt

My granddaughter asked me a few months ago if I would make a quilt for her boyfriend.  I asked her what kind of quilt she wanted me to make.  She said Florida State.  I said, "WHAT?!"  We are a family of Crimson Tide fans.  But he likes Florida State......so okay, I guess I'll do it.  Here it is!  As my granddaughter said, "At least it's not Auburn." :-)!

Sarah Emily's Chevron Quilt

My granddaughter (beautiful Sarah Emily in the picture below) requested that I make her a chevron quilt.  I intended to take a picture before I gave it to her, but forgot.  But here's the one she posted on Facebook, along with her sweet comment.

 

My new chevron quilt! My grandmother is the best! Thank you Marsha!

It looks perfect in my room :)

More Youth Quilts

Youth Quilts

I've been quite busy since my last post.  I have gotten involved in a project that is spearheaded by the wife of the Governor of Alabama.  She is a quilter and they also have two adopted children.  It has long been a dream of hers to do something for the foster children in Alabama and she has started a project to provide quilts to the teen-age foster children who live in youth homes in Alabama.  So I have been busy using up scraps and stash fabrics that I have had on hand for several years.  To date, I have sent 13 quilts and have 5 more ready to quilt.  Here are a few samples.

I am having so much  fun trying new patterns, making up patterns, using up scraps and cleaning out my stash.

Lazy Sunday Part 2

Have finished the blocks for Lazy Sunday Part 2.  I am using red fabrics in place of pink,  and my greens are not limey like Bonnie's, but a more earthy green.  I changed these two colors only because these are what I already had in my stash.  For this part, we had to complete 24 of the 9-1/2" block; 96 of the quarter-square triangle block; 92 of the red half-square triangle blocks and 4 of the green half-square triangle blocks.

Looking forward now to Part 3!!

String Stars

Back in January I made a bunch  of 5-1/2" string blocks and then decided to use them as the center square for a star block.  Here is a photo of the completed queen size String Star quilt.  The star points in each block is from a different scrap of fabric.

I had enough blocks left to also make a smaller quilt. It is shown in my "Scraps & Leftovers" post.

Scraps & Leftovers

I've been trying to use up fabrics in my stash.......some large scraps and some strings......the "Girly" quilts shown below were made from fabrics left from a quilt I made for my granddaughter for Christmas a couple of years ago, and I don't think I'm ever going to finish up with it.  Every time I pull these fabrics out and piece a quilt top, I still have more left over.  The backings for these two quilts are made up of leftover blocks and pieces from previous quilts also.

The star quilt shown here is made from star blocks left over after making a queen-size String Star quilt.

 



For the following quilt, I got out my box of 2" strips that I had cut from scraps and sewed together strip sets of 5 fabrics, beginning with a dark fabric and ending with a light fabric.  Thought I might make a Rail Fence quilt top, but decided instead to alternate the strip blocks with solid squares. Since I was using scraps, my strip sets all finished at different lengths, so after cutting my 8" squares from them, I had leftovers.  That is what I used for the middle scrappy border. 

I think my next scrappy project will be from 8" string pieced blocks.  Haven't even started the blocks yet, but that's what I have in mind.  Will keep you posted.

Split Decision

Found a new pattern called Split Decision that uses a jelly roll for the blocks.  I had one on hand called Audra's Iris Garden, so decided to go with it.  Prints are a little busy and some blocks don't have quite enough contrast, but it turned out okay.  Was very quick and easy to put together.

Treva's Sampler

I recently went with a friend to look at a Gracie Quilting Frame and Janome 1600 that a lady had for sale.  Treva had purchased it several years ago, with the intention of quilting her own quilt tops but because of health problems of her parents and herself, she was never able to use it.  While we were there and finding out that I have a Gammill longarm, she asked me if I would quilt one of her tops for her.  She pulled out this pretty sampler that she had put together in 2003.  It was so much fun to quilt it and look at all the beautiful blocks she had put together when she was still able to do it.  Here is a picture of Treva's quilt and close-ups of a couple of the blocks:

 

Thank you, Treva, for giving me the opportunity to quilt this for you!!

Brittany's Quilt

Brittany, the 15-year old niece of a friend wanted me to help her piece a quilt.  So we went shopping and she picked out her fabrics.  Using the Turning Twenty pattern, I helped with the cutting, then she matched fabrics for her blocks and did a GREAT job sewing them together.  She was a little uncertain about trying to add borders, so I did that for her, quilted it and hemmed it for her.  Made some valances out of one of the coordinating fabrics and she was able to re-decorate her bedroom.  She was so excited!  Here's  Brittany and her quilt:

 





GREAT JOB, BRITTANY!!

Lazy Sunday Mystery

Have finished the pieces for Part 1 of Bonnie Hunter's Lazy Sunday mystery:  48 Red & Cream 4-patches; 24 red & purple 4-patches; 96 large green/cream half-square triangle units; 148 small green/cream half-square triangle units; and only 8 purple/cream half-square triangle units.  I used my new Easy Angle ruler for the half-square triangle units and was very pleased with that technique......

Now I just have to wait another month for the next issue of Quiltmaker and Part 2 of  the mystery.

Easy Street Finished

Finally got the border on, got it quilted and just finished hemming it. Ready to take for Show and Tell at our Guild meeting tomorrow evening.  Now I can get started on Lazy Sunday, Bonnie's mystery quilt in "Quiltmaker" magazine.

 

 

 

Grand-dogs!

I have company this weekend so I haven't been spending much time in my sewing room.  My two daughters, granddaughter and some friends are spending the weekend in Destin, Florida, in a huge, gorgeous, amazing condo right on the beach, which belongs to my youngest daughter's boss (and she gets to use it for FREE!!).  Anyway, my granddaughter turned 18 last week and this has been a weekend of celebration for her with some of her friends.  She has a dog, Braylee, and my youngest daughter has two dogs, Abby and Nilla.........they all love to come to Marsha's house.......so I was the dogsitter for the celebration weekend.  For those of you who have dogs, isn't it amazing how much like children they can be?  They have followed my every footstep.......laid under my cutting table, if I was there; under my ironing board, under my sewing machine table, under my Gammill table, etc. etc.  I finally decided that it was a good weekend to get some hemming done, which is something I tend to procrastinate, so I relaxed in my recliner (with Braylee on the foot rest, Nilla laying next to me and the other two resting on the floor), found a good TV movie, and finished hemming a quilt.  Oops!  Something just caught my attention...Braylee and Ginger furiously pulling all the stuffing and noisemakers out of one of the toys.....they have it scattered all over my den!

"Princess" Braylee Grace

Abby

Nilla (top) and Ginger (my baby)



 

And lest I forget, here's Oliver.........he spends most of his day in the sewing room with me, laying on top of a chest of drawers, unless, of course, he sees me working on something that he has to "check out."  He was patiently waiting for me to finish unpacking a box, so he could get in it.  He usually goes next door to stay with my nephew and family when I have my grand-dogs........he and Ginger get along very well, but he's not too fond of that big black lab and others!

Enough about all the animals in my life.......I'm going to relax with them this afternoon and join Bonnie Hunter on her quilt cam, if they are still here.  They may be going home soon after lunch, though.

String Stars

Okay.....remember those 5-1/2" string blocks I told ya'll I had pieced.  Well, here's what I'm doing with them.  Making star blocks.  I am using a different fabric from my scraps stash in each block for the star points .... something that coordinates with most of the fabrics in each string-y center square.  Am using a variety of neutrals from my stash for the background fabrics.   So far, so good, I think.  Still have quite a few to go.

Enough posts for today.......guess I'd better get back to my sewing room....I have some longarming to do.

Wild Horses

I had a request from a gentleman to make a quilt with horses on it for his Anniversary/Valentine's Day gift to his wife, as she "loves" horses.  Found the Wild Horses panels and coordinating fabrics from Exclusively Quilters at quiltshops.com and made this large throw.  Still have to bind it.  Hope she will be pleasantly surprised.

Emily's T-Shirt Quilt

I've been helping a friend construct a T-shirt quilt for a young lady who is graduating high school this year and has played softball since she was a very little girl.  She had tons of shirts and uniforms and she and her mother picked out 55 that they wanted in the quilt.  So we just used small parts of some of them, combined them into blocks, and got them all into this full-size quilt.  I finished the quilting yesterday and my "assistant" took it home to bind and hem.  I think Emily and her Mom will be really pleased and excited about the way it turned out.