Quilt 105

This quilt has been a finished quilt top for a few years - really can't remember when I took this class at the Quilt Asylum but I know it was a long time ago! Marie took the class with me and her top never got finished. I am so glad to have this finally in the finished pile. Still not very wild about my ability to quilt well but I just need to keep going - I assume I will get better with practice. At this point I am down to 3 finished tops that need quilting. My plan is to finish them up before starting any more projects! We'll see!

 

This is Judy Niemeyer's Deset Sky pattern. At the time I was amazed that I could make something like this but paper piecing really is pretty easy. Picking out the paper is a pain though!

 

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Quilt #104

I finished the quilt I'm giving to my son for Christmas. This will be his 3rd quilt - all lap size. He's my cold person so he uses them well! I enjoyed making this quilt - half square triangles are amazing. Love the way this turned out. The only difficult part was keeping it laid out so that I could sew the rows together correctly. The colored stripes are all from scraps. I quilted it by quilting two parallel lines on each side of the black stripes with black thread.

 

Marie and I went to Houston for the Quilt Festival which we didn't get to go to because of a wreck we were in the night before. I had to stop quickly because the car in front of me stopped quickly but the car behind me did not stop at all. We were fine but my car wasn't. Anyhow, my car is all fixed and back at home where it belongs which is a good thing! While we were there we went to a quilt shop in Old Town Spring and while we were wandering a classroom we happened upon some rings to use with a sit down midarm sewing machine like my Sweet Sixteen. I could tell they were something that I would love. So that night at Marie's I ordered them on line. And I was right. They make live much easier for me. They grip the fabric and have knobs to hold on to - much easier than just holding the fabric! I do have to stop and move the ring but I really think I was stopping with the same frequency just guiding the fabric with my hands. They just make moving the fabric under the needle much easier? Love them!

 

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Quilt #103

This year I decided to make a Christmas quilt for me. Marie and I were at the quilt shop and saw jelly rolls of Christmas fabric that we liked. I had never made a jelly roll race quilt so I decided that is what I would do. Now I can say I have done one and will never have to do another! Did not enjoy the process at all and I'm really not that fond of the finished product! But I have a Christmas quilt! I didn't realize that you needed to make the first strip shorter so most of my connections happen close to either side - maybe I would have liked it better if I had done it correctly! But I still wouldn't like the process. For the back I used some poinsettia fabric from the same line as the jelly roll. I quilted it with red thread in a big wobbly stipple. Still not very good at this quilting part!

 

 

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Andrew's stocking and Turkey placemat

Since my daughter and son-in-law decided that they needed a fourth child I had to get busy and make a stocking and a Thanksgiving turkey placemat since the other 3 kiddos already had them. So..here they are!

 

Glad to have them finished. I'm going to make 2 more turkey placemats because the othe 3 are all the same and this one is a little different. That way no one will be odd man out! Also need to make Santa placemats since the other 3 have those also

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Quilt #102

Helen needed another quilt for her boss's daughter - the older daughter this time having her first child - a boy. Baseball was the theme. Having made a quilt for Matthew (#44) that was a baseball attic window quilt, that is what I decided to go with. The baseball fabric I used for that quilt is no longer available, so I started hunting on line! Found some teddy bears playing baseball that would be perfect. And since this child's name is Theodore, whom they will call Teddy, it turned out to be better than perfect!

Since I put initials on the back of his cousins' quilts, I had to do the same thing with this one.

I'm still not good at my free motion quilting on my Sweet 16, guess I don't practice enough! Hopefully I will get better sometime!

 

 

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Quilt #101

This quilt is also for Helen's great-nephew, Leo. Courtney and Samantha, Helen's nieces, are coming up here at the end of the month with their sons, Everett and Leo, so I had to finish the quilt that I am making for Leo. Quilt 100 is the quilt I made for Helen to give to Leo when he was born. Quilts 90 and 93 are the quilts I made for Everett.

I tried something new in the quilting and I'm proud of the result. I really haven't practiced much on my Sweet Sixteen, so doing the loops in the orange border was definitely a step in the right direction.

Not sure I like the back - would be great for a Denver Broncos fan - but it is done.

 

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Quilt #100

This quilt is for my neighbor to give to her niece, Courtney, who is having a little boy in July. Since I'm an honorary Bear (Helen's family name), I had to make a nice quilt for her 2nd grand-nephew. I love the elephants - it is really cute. There is a huge error that I did not discover until I was quilting! One of the pieced borders is on backwards. I'm sure if someone studied the quilt closely they may think something is not right BUT I don't think anyone will notice! And since it is from Helen and for an Aggie, one of the elephants had to be in Aggie material!

 

I put an extra elephant on the back and the baby's name, Leo. I also put Love, Aunt Helen but it is in the lime green thread and hard to see.

 

All in all, I am happy with the quilt. Because of the quilting the back looks a little strange, but it is the back!

 

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Quilt #99

My friend, Scherry, asked me if I would make a quilt for her to give to her friend, Chris. Wouldn't do that for just anyone, but Scherry is a good friend! She had seen this site that had national park quilt squares and thought that they would make a good quilt for Chris who is a big muckity-muck in the park service. She has been a park ranger at the Everglades, Zion and Rocky Mountain before advancing to the massive bureaucracy that is our federal government! She will be moving to DC this summer. Shortly after receiving the blocks Scherry had picked out, I came across a quilt in a magazine called Bird's Eye View that framed parts of a panel and set them in a checkerboard quilt with finished 1 1/2 inch squares! Sounded like a good idea! Well, it was a not the easiest thing I've done to make everything fit! There are a few places where it didn't fit together well but over all I am pleased with it. Still having some issues with tension with my sweet sixteen. Had to pick some quilting out, but overall the diagonal quilting worked. For the back, I used a batik that had been in my stash for a while.

 

 

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Quilt #98

This quilt has been finished for quite a while - I've just been lazy about picture taking and blogging. The quilt top has been finished for more than a year. Marie and Jo,her friend from Philadelphia, and Ann and I all decided to have a challenge to make an illusion quilt. Jo and Ann and I all finished ours pretty quickly - Marie, who actually decided we should do the challenge, didn't start hers til all of ours were done (at least until the flimsy was done in my case)! I had a fat quarter bundle of Fossil Fern fabric that I used for the squares but I think the shadow fabric was a definite miss. For the back I used some black and white floral that had been in my stash forever, for whoever knows what reason, and the rest of the fossil fern fabric. I discovered with the weather quilt that quilting the whole quilt was not easy for me, so on this one I meandered in each square, I like the way it turned out.

 

 

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Easter Table Runner

It was time to replace the Valentine's table runner which was really only out for a couple of weeks with the next Holliday - Easter. I guess my daughter will need something to replace the Easter table runner in a couple of months - I just haven't decided on what yet. Still in the works are patriotic and flip flop for the summer. Guess I will have to make something springy. Then maybes school days one for backtoschool time. We'll see. She might need a Thanksgiving one those these days we kind of go straight from Halloween to Christmas! But that should do it for year round coverage!

 

 

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Easter Table Runner

I'm making regress in making a table runner for all occasions got Jenny's coffee table. After Valentine's Day is Easter. Finished it last Friday and toolkit over to Jen so that she can replace the table runner after her birthday which happens to be Valentine's Day. She is my best Valentine present ever!

 

The bunnies are really cute!

 

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Valentine's Table Runner

My daughter has decided she would like a table runner for her coffee table for all the holidays and since Valentine's Day is coming up I made a Valentine table runner. Especially since my daughter is my Valentine - having been born 41 years ago on Valentine's Day - this table runner was a must!

 

 

And here is the WIP that I had to take a break from in order to make the table runner. Hopefully, I can get this put together before I start on the Easter table runner.

There wasn't room on my design wall so I moved to the dining room table but really there isn't room there either. Think I will start sewing together the rows that are finished. I'm thinking of sewing them together in four patches and then sew the four patches together to make 2 rows at a time.

 

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Quilt # 97

When I saw the idea of a temperature quilt on line a couple of years ago, I knew that I had to make one in honor of my late husband. It is his quilt. He was much more interested in rainfall than temperature, so I had to include rainfall on the quilt. This is the daily temperature and rainfall for 2013. In stead of keeping the records for the year, I just went back and looked up the temperatures for the previous year. And, since I still keep the rainfall records like my husband did for years, I had the rainfall amount sandals. I quilted it on my Sweet Sixteen and I am still having tension issues. I even picked out a bunch of it, but there is still plenty I am not happy with. Glad this quilt is for me. Hopefully, I will get better at using the Sweet Sixteen. Seems to work better quilting individual squares in stead of long stretches.

 

 

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