Quilt Time!

A Few of My Favorite Quilts - So Far!

 

This quilt, proudly displayed by Callie, was one of the first quilts I made. I designed it entirely by myself, including the half square framing and the purple flange. And yes, that is a loose flange, not a small border. I'm very proud of this quilt. It's one of the best reflections of my taste in color and design.

 

 

These two quilts are sister quilts. Again, I designed this pattern myself using the Lost Ships block. The top quilt is finished and belongs to me. The bottom quilt is on my UFO To Do list for 2012 (Finished in 2013!). Since I could not decide on which focal fabric to use (I loved both the red and the blue), I made two quilts using the same coordinating fabrics but with different focal fabrics and different outer borders. I love both of them. 

  

Tessie's quilt. She claimed this quilt while I was trying to machine quilt it. She slept on it while I sewed stitch-in-the-ditch -- sew eight inches, push the sleeping cat, sew eight inches, push the sleeping cat, sew eight inches, pull quilt with sleeping cat back and start new row. Repeat.

 

See those claws? This is why this quilt never leaves the house. It belongs to Tessie! Quite literally. It resides on the top of one of my quilt towers where she sleeps.

 

I took this photo before Tessie had her own quilt. Now all of this stuff has been moved to a bottom shelf, and Tessie's quilt (and Tessie) live at the top of the tower.

 

My sister asked me to make a twin sized quilt for her daughter, who loves red. This is the quilt I designed. It includes a pillow topper, which you can see under pillows in the bottom picture (with my Mom's dog, Weasel). This was the first quilt where I used a combination of fabrics for the binding. This is one of my top five favorite quilts that I've made. When I look at the top picture, I see the blue triangles pointing in. When I look at the bottom picture, I see the red triangles pointing out. What fun!

My sister's older son needed an over-sized twin quilt for boarding school. I gave him a selection of fabrics (in photos) to choose from, and this was the photo he selected. I added a couple more colors to liven it up some. By the way, the blue is actually a dark batik blue that blends in with the other dark colors. I have no idea why it photographs as a bright blue.  I tried a variety of settings before my husband finally chose one for me.

 

Here is the final quilt. I tried a new border design and let it begin on one end and wrap around a long side. Then I began on the next end and wrapped it around the other side. Honestly? It just seemed easier than trying to do the math. He's a teenage boy. Trust me, he doesn't care. I do love the final quilt though.

Because he's a teenage boy, he can always turn the quilt over and show the plain back.

 

 

I finished this quilt in 2013. The top photo was when I was trying to design a border. The quilt itself was acutely ugly, but the border helped tame it down and tie in the fabrics. Actually, I received many, many compliments on it when it hung in our 2013 Q.U.I.L.T. bi-annual quilt show. The border really showed off the rich colors and helped tone down the busy center. Several women asked me how I designed the border because they wanted to try it themselves. : )

 

These two quilts are the same Turning Twenty design with different border treatments. This pattern was our mystery quilt in 2009. I wanted to see how different the pattern would look in two different colors/styles of fabrics. I ended up with a rich Harvest Gold quilt and a sweet Pink Roses quilt. VERY different!

 

The top photo is the front and the middle photo is the back of the baby's quilt that I made for my grand niece, Josie. The bottom photo is a close up of one of the alphabet blocks on the back. I used a multicolored binding on this quilt as well. As I understand it, Josie's big brother Charlie laid claim to this blanket as well as his own.
 

This "Fiesta" quilt is also on my UFO To Do list for 2012 (and still for 2013!). The center is complete; all it needs is finished borders. This is another of my own designs. The border is bright yellow with lozenge shapes of the red, green, purple and blue.

This Tonga Batik quilt is the first kit BOM quilt that I have made. I did, however, change the fabrics. I didn't want my quilt to look like everyone else's, so I stashed the warm batiks I got with each month's pattern an substituted my own fabrics.

Front view

 Back view

Close up

 

Christmas quilt 2012

 



 Christmas quilt 2012

 

Applique practice. This wall hanging is my first attempt at applique. Thankfully, I got to learn on a pattern that I loved - African masks surrounded by squares of African fabrics.

 

Small quilt made with left over HSTs from Red Seq quilt.

This is just a small wall hanging I designed for an ugly fabric challenge for Dogwood. Although I finished the wall hanging, it currently works as one of Callie's bed blankets.

This  is my most recent finished quilt. I began this quilt about three years ago. I love butterfly fabric and collect a LOT of it. I fell in love with this fabric from Hobby Lobby. I searched my stash until I found just the right colors to go with my butterflies. It actually took me over a year to get the right fabrics since the colors were rather difficult to match. I didn't want it to look like an Irish Chain, so I arranged the chains to go in different directions. I guess I just love the look of chaos. This quilt is on my full sized guest bed.  

This is the top part of my Falling Into Winter quilt. I need to look for a photo of the entire quilt. The bottom right hand side shows the leaves falling completely off of the quilt. This is one of my favorite quilts; I designed it myself building on a traditional Maple Leaf pattern.

Here's that photo I wanted. Those falling leave actually make this quilt look like it's leaning, don't they? I gave this quilt to my nephew (my sister's son). He keeps waking up with glitter on his face from all of those silver leaves in the border. I told him that girls like glitter, so he might as well leave it on his face and see if it gets him any attention.  

Okay, ignore the dirty floor. The block for this quilt is one that I found in a Fons and Porter magazine. The borders were added mostly to increase the size from a queen to a king bedspread sized quilt.

Baby quilt made from the leftovers. Poor quality photos. Sorry.   

This is the sister quilt to the quilt above. Believe it or not, the star block is identical, but in negative. The top quilt has sashing, and the bottom quilt is not. I love the heart border on this quilt.

Another view, this time showing the outside border. The top looks odd because it has been tucked under the pillow.

This quilt started as a border for another quilt. The reverse flying geese were an experiment that fascinated me so much that it became its own entity. If you look at the left and right borders, you will see the "reverse" fabric use that resulted in the zigzag pattern in the middle. I designed the four corners (two different blocks in opposing corners) from leftover fabric. Unfortunately this is the only photo I have of the top, and it doesn't have all of the borders on it. I finished the quilt off with a 4" blue border (you can see the border on the left side) before I gave it my brother as a Christmas gift.

Okay, okay, so I like unusual color combinations. I call this quilt Asian Retro. I made the Courthouse Two
Step block pattern as part of my Stash Busters' quilt group pattern assignment. I couldn't find a fabric that I liked to tie the blocks together, so I went with an Asian pattern that had the right pink and purple flower colors that I needed. The acid green with maroon stripes border is just because. Really, it doesn't look that bad in person.

I rarely have an opportunity to take a quilting class, so this one was a rare treat. Jeanie Poole taught Grandma Addie's Block to our Q.U.I.L.T. guild members. I don't usually make scrap quilts, so this was a little out of my comfort zone. I rather liked the final product. I haven't been able to place this quilt on a bed yet since it is currently folded up in the sewing room and serving as the favorite cat bed. Callie made the quilt into a comfortable nest, Tessie took it away from her, Sinbad in turn won it from her in a less-than-fair fight before abandoning it for a spot in front of the space heater, and Maxie has now claimed it for her own. I think I'm next in line.

Once again, no photos of the finished quilt before I gave it away. I made this quilt in response to a fabric challenge from Sager Creek last year. The challenge fabric we were given is the striped fabric that you can see in some of the pinwheels and on the border in the bottom right photo. I pulled colors out of that fabric to colors for the pinwheels, and Mom used gorgeous, bright variegated thread to quilt it. I gave this quilt to my nephew (my brother's son) for Christmas. Oh, and I won second place in the challenge - but only by one vote! So close...



This is the first African wall hanging that I completed. I entered it in the April 2011 Q.U.I.L.T. guild's travel themed quilt challenge. The beaded necklaces that are sewn on are real trade beads from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These beads were used as currency for buying and selling ship cargo, including slaves.

 

I gave this quilt to my husband's son and daughter-in-law when they got married.



Jewels of the Sea. I like bright colors and pulled these fabrics from the border fabric that I found. There's no pattern. I used many of my purple 7" squares from my Eureka retreat fabric exchange.

 First wallhanging I ever made. I donated it to the small quilt auction at our 2007 regional quilt show.

First patterned quilt that I adapted. I added the starts in the corners and the sawtooth border. It won third place in the hand quilting category at our 2009 regional quilt show. Mom did the hand quilting.

 Mystery quilt from Eureka retreat about five years ago. Now resides with niece.

Queen sized bed quilt. Won an honorable mention award at 2009 regional quilt show. My first attempted at floating borders. I designed the border using remnants that I couldn't bear to throw away
.

First ever mystery quilt. It was very bright, so I gave it to the two-year old grandson of a co-worker. I'll bet it kept him awake at nights. : )

Commissioned piece. A co-worker wanted the center panel (a gift from an out-of-country friend) finished into a quilt. I added the solid and pieced borders, and Mom quilted it.

This is another Eureka! Guild color exchange quilt. We had a blue exchange one year and a black and white exchange the next year. I decided to combine the two in an hourglass design.
  

I sold this quilt to a co-worker who wanted it for her new grandbaby's nursery. She said that it was the perfect colors for the room, so how could I refuse to sell it? It's actually a full-sized quilt, so that baby is going to have some fast growing to do!

 I finished this quilt in 2012, and I just love its calm blues. It makes me smile. : )

 This quilt is a baby quilt living with my newest grand niece, born March 2013. Enjoy it Lucy!

This quilt is so not my style that I love it for its difference. This was a Friendship Star class I took a few years ago, and I decided to use a cream confetti background and drew the star colors from the colors of the confetti. I designed the border myself using the left-over four patches. I ran out of the cream background, so I left the borders are floating instead of tying them in on the corners.

This pattern by Angela Padilla was my first attempt at a major applique pattern. I can't claim that it was particularly successful (my owls wound up leaning rather drunkenly), but I certainly got a lot of practice!

 

Some of Mom's Quilts

Mom bought the pattern and all of the fabrics for this quilt for $6 at a quilt guild auction. When she got it together, it wasn't quite her taste, but it was mine! This stays in my guest room. What a fun quilt. Thanks, Mom!


My sister made these blocks using her embroidery machine. Mom sewed them together into this fun baby quilt.



Mom made this clinging cat quilt for me. It's adorable and hangs in my bathroom.





Mom made this lovely quilt using Asian fabrics and following a Mystery Quilt pattern at one of our retreats. She did a fantastic job. I firmly believe that it was the prettiest quilt of all those made. I hate the one I made from this pattern and have not finished it. It's on my To Do Quilts List page, but don't look at it. Ugh.



Here is another beautiful quilt that Mom made from Asian fabrics. These were her pizza blocks from Dogwood Guild from 2010. What a lovely presentation!

This is the block that I made for her quilt. You can see it on the far left side of the final quilt above. The block was not sewn together yet when I took the photo. I was still "auditioning" configurations.

 

Mom learned the hard way never to ask a small child what she wants her quilt to look like. My niece's favorite colors were green and purple, and she wanted elephants. What a combo. Mother, of course, pulled off a miracle with this child's quilt. I never knew how well purple, green, and elephants could go together.

 

Another wall hanging that Mom made and gave to me. What a beautiful little heart quilt!

 

This adorable Santa quilt was not finished when this photo was taken, but he now has glasses and hangs on my door every Christmas. No, I didn't make it. I'm afraid to try intricate things like this; Santa is one of Mom's creations, of course. Thanks again, Mom!

 

Quilts From My Mother-in-law

 

An old quilt that belonged to my mother-in-law. We don't know who made the quilt. It appears to date from the 1950's.



Another old quilt that I inherited from my mother-in-law. This one is discolored and in poor repair around the edges. It appears to date from around 1910.