Family Reunion Quilt

My son-in-law's family had a family reunion during the summer. My daughter asked if I would help put together a quilt to be given to her in-laws for Christmas.  She showed me their family T-shirt, which was navy blue with yellow and white writing. I suggested she buy some white and some yellow fabric and cut it into 12 1/2 inch squares, then use blue fabric paint for each of the family members to print their hands on a square. (Actually, the hand prints were her original idea. I just told her how.)  My friend, Carol, from Just Let Me Quilt, embroidered a block that said, "Mom and Dad - With love from all of us".

I bought navy blue fabric to be used as sashing and the border and a funky fabric for the backing that matched the yellow, hand print blue and and navy blue. I quilted around each hand print, then meandered in the rest of the block. I did a continuous heart pattern for the borders.

Here's how it turned out.

Just spent a fun week with my amazing three grandsons, ages 5, 9, and 11. The highlight of the week for them was going to the Washington County Fair. The theme of the fair was "Superheroes" and they had people dressed up as the Avengers!  Our 5 year old's favorite superhero is Captain America, so he was super-excited to meet him!

Meanwhile, I entered two quilts in the exhibits. The first one was the one I made last year in memory of my Mom, called "Circle of Life".  It won First Place in the bed-sized category, and also won the grand Sweepstakes ribbon. You've seen this quilt earlier.

The second quilt was one I just finished. It's called "Hen Party" and I made it from a class I took at the Panquitch Quilt Festival in June. I thought it was appropriate for a county fair.  I always think of homespun exhibits, farm produce, etc when I think of county fairs. Anyway, I quilted it with what looked like a chicken wire pattern. It turned out really cute. I won First Place in the wall-hanging category for this one!  Boy, was I surprised!! Haha!

I sewed little black buttons on the chicken for eyes. Don't they look cute?

I love the way the quilting turned out. I tried a more squared off chicken pattern, but it was too difficult. My husband helped me come up with this design that looks more like chain link fence, but it works.

 Here's my ribbon attached to the picture above.

The backing was pretty, too.

Below are the ribbons.

I just finished making a quilt for my granddaughter, Lizzie. The pattern is called "Sparkle" and Lizzie definitely sparkles.  The pattern was relatively easy. One small block that when put together with three more like it, makes the bigger colored block. The white blocks are made the same way, just turn the white edge to the inside of the block. Simple!!

I love the vibrant colors in this quilt!

One more picture of the front...

I used a lime green thread to quilt it. You would be surprised how lime green thread blends into the other colors and leaves the blocks to be the focal point.

The backing fabric was a real find! It has every color from the front in it and is modern and full of energy.

I was just a little short of the backing fabric, so I made a 4 inch stripe of all the colors from the front. 

I worked out well and gives the back a little pizazz!

I love how it looks!

One last shot of the front!  Now I can move on to my next project...a chicken quilt. I know strange but cute.

Winter Berries Quilt from fabric I adored...

I have a real love for trees...especially trees that have lost their leaves and look so bare.  If they have berries on them that's even better.  I love bare trees and branches in artwork, home decor, fabric...just about in anything.  I was shopping a few months ago and I saw some fabric that I fell in love with.  I looked at it several times over the next few visits to that shop and I finally broke down and bought a few yards of it.  I brought it home and showed my husband and he immediately declared, "Of course, you love it. It is a bunch of dead trees."  He doesn't quite have the same fascination as me. (Wink).  Anyway, I didn't want to make anything fancy out of it. I just wanted to be able to see the branches every time I looked at it, so I decided to just make a simple snowball quilt.  I later found a fabric that matches it with birds on tree branches.  Birds are okay, just not as cool as trees, but I decided to get it for the backing.  So here's a few pictures of what I decided to call "Winter Berries".  I washed it to make it nice and quilty feeling and now it's my favorite quilt to snuggle under.

This one shows the quilting in the sashing and the individual squares.  I decided to use a leaf pattern in the squares, but also added a diamond to coordinate with the diamond pattern in the sashing.

Here's the leaf pattern in the border.  I don't know if you can see it well enough, but the brown fabric looks kind of like tree bark.

You can see the winter birds on the backing.  Cute, but not as impressive as the branches with berries. (Smile)

Block 2 of Pat Sloan's 2015 Vacation Time Mystery Quilt

Ok, so I'm running a little behind for last month. I just finished February's Block of the Month for the Pal Sloan 2015 Vacation Time Mystery Quilt.  She has already posted the instructions for block 3. Anyway, here's my Block 2.  Can't wait to see the finished quilt!!

House Warming Quilt for a Friend Finished

I finally finished the quilt I was working on for my friend.  It's a house warming gift for her. Did I mentioned she loves dragonflies? Oh, yeah, I did.  Well, I decided to quilt it with a dragonfly motif.  The thread has a nice sheen to it and the color is a little lighter than the brown fabric, so it stands out nicely on the quilt.  I think it turned out great!

Here's what the quilting looks like.

The backing is a green dot flannel.  That should make it really cozy for her.  I hope she likes it!

Working on a quilt for a friend

I'm working on a quilt for a friend for a housewarming gift. She's been living in a rental apartment and just recently purchased a house.  I had some 2 1/2" strips that I bought a long time ago.  I thought it was a full jelly roll, but realized later that it only had 25 strips in the roll.  Most quilts require more than that, so I haven't used them.

As I was looking through my stash, I found them and noticed that a few of the strips had tiny, little dragonflies on them. My friend is obsessed with dragonflies.  How perfect is that!!  So another friend wanted to go in on the fabric for the quilt and gift, so we purchased a dark brown background fabric and a really cute brown fabric with little dragonflies on it for the binding.  I love how striking the colors are with the dark brown background. It is outstanding, if I have to say so myself!!  Here's a few of the blocks that I've finished so far.  Don't you agree?  I can't wait to finish it.

Stacked Border

Okay. This is the last post for today. I promise, and mostly because I don't have any other projects that I could possibly finish today. This is the second border we were supposed to do for the Border of the Month for the Zion Piecemakers Quilt Guild. It's called a Stacked border in The Border Workbook.  I've also heard it called a piano-key border. Very simple and very fast. It took all of about 30 minutes from cutting to finishing.

I've never been much for purple fabric but someone gave me a bunch of it and I thought I better use it up.  Hope you all are making some headway on your projects today, too. Have a great day!!

Self-Binding Baby Blanket

Wow!  I can't believe how much I'm getting done today.  I have so much energy and I'm actually channeling it into finishing things.  This is a self-binding baby blanket that I made for a friend that is having a baby soon, like this week, maybe. I tried out a decorative flower stitch around the border.  It didn't quite show up as much as I hoped it would, but it still looks nice.

 Here's a closeup on the decorative stitching.

This is a picture of the whole blanket.  I like the little bird fabric.

Easy Braid Border

Just finished the Easy Braid border from The Border Workbook by Janet Kime.  I used some green scraps that I've had for quite a while. The sewing was really easy and went quickly. The hard part was trimming it down to size when finished.  It was to be trimmed 1 3/4 inches from the center line.  Finding the center line was the difficult part. It took me a few minutes to figure it out, but once I did it was easy to trim.  Here's a picture of the finished product. I made the border about 45 inches long. The finished size is 3 1/2 inches wide.

Block 1 of Pat Sloan's 2015 Vacation Time Mystery Quilt

Okay, I am sooo bad at this blog thing. I haven't posted anything since November.  I just don't think about it.  I will try to do better this year. Last Thursday I joined a guild in Hurricane, UT called the Zion Piecemakers.  I really enjoyed going to the meeting. We had dinner, handled all the news, and had show and tell by members who had finished quilts since the last meeting.  They are going to do a Border of the Month and a Block of the Month.

 For the Border of the Month, several of us purchased "The Border Workbook" by Janet Kime.  We have been assigned to make two borders this month, the Easy Braid and the Stacked border. The instructor had made twelve borders up in advance and sewing them together in rows with sashing between each row.  Then she bordered the whole thing with a cute Paw Prints border. I am working on my two borders now. I'll have pictures later.

For the Block of the Month, we are doing Pat Sloan's 2015 Vacation Time Mystery Quilt.  She used I decided to use my own fabrics and selected cream, orange, green and brown batiks.  Here's my January block of the month.

One thing accomplished so far this month.  I still have to do the two borders, quilt a top I have loaded on my longarm, Libby, make a baby blanket for a friend, and sew a quilt as a house warming gift for a friend who just bought a new home.  Yikes, I better get busy!