Blogger’s Quilt Festival!

Thanks to Amy for sponsoring the Blogger’s Quilt Festival.  I know I will spend hours looking at all of your beautiful quilts, and hope that you will follow the link above.  It’s a lot of fun!   This is a quilt I finished a few months ago for my co-worker who is battling malignant melanoma.  She is currently struggling with her first round of chemo, which requires daily hospital visits for a month.  We are all praying for her.  

I used a soft apple green minky fabric for the back.  I took every precaution in prewashing and testing the permanent pens (note Sharpie markers are not 100% waterproof—thank goodness I found out before I tried to use them on the blocks).  I sprinkled the blocks with water and ironed them before I put the quilt together to make sure it wouldn’t bleed. I was disappointed to find that a few of the pens still bled into the fabric a bit during the final washing.  Here are some pictures of the quilt


Some close up pictures of the messages before it was quilted.  I was so glad I had gathered quotes from the internet as several people used them.  All of the messages were very inspiring!












 

Faith

Hope

  

Love

My co-worker made a beautiful tote bag, with lots of pockets, to put the quilt in.  We filled the tote with small books of crossword puzzles, email jokes, candy, gum, hand lotion, lip balm, tissue, a water bottle, and a card signed by everyone.


Thanks for stopping by my blog.

Spring Ahead/Fall Back

So, I’ve been teasing you with Favorite Fabric Friday pictures from my quilt so I thought I would post pictures of the entire quilt.  I made this quilt in 2004 when I first started quilting.  This is a reversible quilt that was made using the quilt as you go method.  I loved this method because as you sew the strips down, you are creating both sides of the quilt as well as the quilting and sashing.  When you are finished with the quilt, all you have to do is sew down one side of the sashing, do the binding, and you’re done. 

I had signed up for a class at the LQS, and knew I wanted to make a blue and yellow quilt.  I spent hours looking for the right blue and yellow fabric that would go with the first fabric I fell in love with as shown here
 
I spent all that time looking for the blue and yellow fabric that I kind of forgot about getting fabric for the other side.  I arrived for class 1/2 hour early and started picking out fabrics for the other side.

I found this focus floral fabric.

I quickly found several fall color fabrics to go with it.  This was the days before I had any stash and had to buy fabric for each quilt I made (those were the days, eh?)  After I got the quilt made, then I had a dilemma in that I had such different fabrics for the front and back that it was difficult to find a binding that would match both sides.  I ended up with a green binding and even that was difficult to match the green color.

  Here is the back of the quilt.

Here is the front of the quilt.  It looks much better up close than it does in the picture.

This shows both sides

Funny how I spent all of that time looking for blue and yellow fabrics, and now I find that the back side with the fall colors is my favorite side.  Which side do you like?

I named the quilt Spring Ahead/Fall Back for the daylight savings time change.  I’ve been thinking about this because the recent time change has been kicking my butt.  I am still waking up an hour earlier than I need to even though I go to bed at a reasonable hour.  Coming home in the dark doesn’t make it any easier, and work has been a bit busy.  So I’m seem to be exhausted during the week.  Thank goodness for the weekends when I can catch up with a few naps here and there.  OMG, I must be getting old…

Hope everyone had a good weekend.  Another (mostly) great weather weekend here in Michigan. I can’t believe it is still so warm in the middle of November.

Karen

Happy Halloween!!

I think I’m finally over my mental block with the FMQ on my Halloween quilt.  I’ve got the quilt about 3/4 quilted, and while I will finish it for the New Year’s UFO challenge, it will not be done before Halloween is over.

I’m getting a little more comfortable with the quilting.  When I stipple quilt, I don’t use a pattern.  Seeing that this is going to be a pumpkin wall hanging, I wanted to quilt some leaves on the quilt.  I found a pattern, and traced that pattern onto freezer paper, and ironed it to a test piece of fabric and quilted away.  My quilting was a bit jerky and the pattern was a little more complicated than I wanted.  I didn’t think I would like picking out the paper once I was done.  So, I went to plan B.



I used a chalk marker to mark the leaves and stipple loops so I would have a very loose pattern to follow.  I had just finished marking part of the quilt when Red showed up.  He thought it would be a good idea to roll around on the quilt and erase the marks I just made!!

Still, while chalk doesn’t stick around very long, I like being able to erase it with my fingers as I mark the pattern.  So, the quilting is a combination of following the pattern, and trying to quilt without it in areas where I didn’t mark it or it was erased. 

  

Here is the whole quilt.  I plan to applique a pumpkin top and stem to it, and cut it in the shape of a pumpkin. 


I’m trying to decide on which binding to use.  Do you like the stripe fabric I bought a few weeks ago, or the plaid fabric that you see around the cat blocks?



If you want to see close up pictures of the cat blocks, or get the free pattern, you can click to my previous blog here.

Have a safe and  Happy Halloween, and keep an eye out for the kids on the streets.
Karen

50th Anniversary Quilt

The quilt that I’m the most proud of is my parent’s 50th anniversary quilt. Some of you may recall that I previously blogged about this, but since the blog was lost, I wanted to recreate the post about my favorite quilt for Bloggers Quilt Festival.

I started planning the quilt about 5 months prior to their anniversary. My parents knew we were planning on giving them a party, but they didn’t know anything about the quilt. I wanted to do a signature quilt with blocks from all of their friends and family. But as I contemplated sending out fabric blocks and permanent pens, I thought there must be a better way. So, I drew several different size boxes on a piece of paper. I sent out the paper to their friends and family with instructions to write a message inside one of the boxes with a good felt tip pen. When I got the papers back, I cut out the messages using fancy scalloped scissors. I wanted to use the messages in the border, but didn’t have time to appliqué them. So, I took several messages and laid them on the scanner. I laid a background border of several strip pieced blocks on top of the messages. Then I scanned and printed the image onto Printed Treasures fabric on my inkjet printer. Since I used several of the background fabrics in the body of my quilt, it tied together very nicely. Here is how the border turned out.

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The images are 8 x 11 size sheets of fabric that I only had to sew together in sections. On the body of the quilt, I started with the garden twist pattern for the middle of the quilt. I put their wedding pictures and their parent’s pictures in the garden lattice and surrounded them with lace.

I found a beautiful fabric called Violet Postcards by Debbie Beaves. Since violets are my Mom’s favorite flower, and the postcards had a lot of beautiful sayings and poems, I thought it was the perfect fabric for an anniversary quilt. Here is the postcard fabric (the color looks like it is blue, but it is really purple.)

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I had a lot of fun searching for fabrics to match. After I pieced the middle of the quilt, I made up the rest of the quilt as I went along. I created tulip flowers with wedding pictures of myself and my 4 siblings along with grandchildren pictures. I named the quilt, Our Secret Garden for the “hidden” pictures in their “tulip garden”.  If you look closely, that’s my wedding picture in the bottom red flower.

For the corners of the quilt, I cut up my grandmother’s doilies.

For the back of the quilt, I printed a copy of the anniversary invitation to put in the corners along with the quilt label which reads

“Our Secret Garden”

One look, One smile,

One touch, One embrace,

One kiss, One love…

Two people, Two minds,

Two souls, Two destinies…

One road, One journey,

A few seeds

Many flowers now grow in our “Secret Garden”

I used a pink flower panel for the back, with a pale pink marbled border, and a prairie point edge.

I appliquéd their last initial

And this is a full view of the quilt

It was fun presenting the quilt at their party because everyone was in on it except my parents.  There were lots of tears, and my mother has dragged this quilt everywhere to show her friends.

I hope you enjoyed reading about this quilt as much as I enjoyed creating it and posting about it.  It was a nice trip down memory lane. Thank you for visiting my blog. I’m off to check out the other blogs for the Bloggers Quilt Festival. Thanks Amy for hosting the festival.

Karen

Shop Hop Quilts

I started quilting about 7 years ago. I've always been into different crafts, and I have loved to look at quilts since I started making annual trips to Shipshewanna in the early 90's with my girlfriends. I had a stressful job in 2002 that was taking up a lot of my time back then, and decided that I needed some balance in my life. My husband bought me a used sewing machine, and I signed up for a shop hop and my first quilt class at the same time. I had no idea of what a shop hop was. My mother and I went on the shop hop and had a lot of fun collecting fabrics for their progressive quilt and for my first quilt, a rail fence quilt. I had done some sewing before, but never on a quilt. When I got this pattern, I had to look up applique and try to figure out how to make the quilt. I bought some Wonder Under, not knowing that there were different weights you could buy. I bought the stiffest, heaviest stuff and couldn't figure out why my new sewing machine was giving me fits with the gummed up needles! Anyway, this is my first quilt. It hangs in my hallway. It doesn't exactly hang straight, but I'm proud of it anyway since I made it without any help or classes.

I continued to go on shop hops each year, and continued collecting fabrics for the progressive quilts. Sad to say, only the first quilt was ever finished. The 2nd quilt has a finished top, and I started to quilt it, but never finished the quilting. I think I'll try to finish that UFO next after I finish the Halloween quilt. I don't have a picture of this quilt. The ladies at the LSQ are quite talented, and have designed all of the shop hop quilts.

This is one of the UFO's I was working on earlier this year, before I got bored making the same blocks over and over again. It is very pretty, not the typical bright colors I usually choose.

I was looking for a tote bag the other day to put my pinwheel quilt in to take to the LQS to find some fabric for the borders. I am quite embarassed to admit what I found in the tote bag. I had purchased this at the shop hop 2 years ago. I found the fabric in the tote bag, and I couldn't even remember when I had purchased the fabric. I had to open several of the kits to figure out what the quilt looked like. Now, I don't know whether I want to make this quilt any longer. I'm thinking about just adding the fabric to my stash.

What do you think?

This is last year's shop hop quilt. While I think it is very cute, this one just didn't call me enough to buy the fabric. I had decided that I wasn't going to buy another shop hop quilt until I finished some of my UFO's.

Hope you enjoyed the show.

Karen

Sunday night rambling...

Well, the weather was as bad as we thought it was going to be this weekend. It rained ALL day yesterday, and today it was hot and humid, with a heat index above 100 degrees. It was a good weekend to stay inside and quilt. My husband worked most of today, so it was nice and quiet. We are now having another severe thunderstorm with lightning and strong winds. Enough whining about the weather, at least it gave me some quilting time.

I worked on the applique flowers for my pinwheel quilt. I'm quite pleased with how they turned out. I decided that I was going to use freezer paper and turn the edges under rather than do raw edge applique. I am a bit late in learning the benefits of freezer paper. That stuff is amazing. I used it to draw the flower shapes, and then when I was done cutting out the flowers, I used it again to cut the batting that I stuffed the flowers with. Next, I will break out the bias bars I bought 2 years ago (and never used) to make the flower vine. I've decided on a black border, with a green repro print for the binding and flowers. I'll try to get some pictures next time.

I'll leave you with a smile. A couple of years ago, I was privileged to go to the Houston International Quilt show. I took so many pictures of breath-taking quilts. This was one of my favorite quilts. Perfect for a hot day like today. I just love the way the quilter captured all of the "lumps, bumps, and grey hair" of these two "lovers". Unfortunately, I did not get the quilter's name. But I think they did a fabulous job!

Hope everyone had a good weekend.
Karen

Quilt Give A Way

I really like this quilt. These fabrics are gorgeous, and it is so bright and cheerful. The ladies over at marie-madeline studio are giving this quilt away. But there are only 2 days left to enter their contest, so if you're interested, visit them soon using the link above.

I haven't done much quilting this week as we've been busy at work with the month end books. I did get some fabric last weekend for my pinwheel quilt. I also got got my designs transferred onto some fusible web for the applique I want to put in the border. I'm still excited about finishing this quilt, so that is a good thing.

We are expecting to get some very warm, humid weather this weekend. Not the really hot weather that Lane and other have been experiencing, but 93 and humid is still the warmest I think it has been all summer. So, I think it will be a good time to quilt.

Take care,
Karen