A Christmas Quilt

Here is one of the queen sized bed quilts that I completed and gave as a Christmas present this year to my parents. This was started last spring/summer, sat in a box for a bit while I scratched my head over whether I really liked it or not, and then had it finished this fall. The heart blocks came pretty close to becoming two Project Linus quilts in July. Here it is modeled on my 4-posted bed, just for the taking of a few picture.

I sent it here to be hand quilted by the Amish. I just knew I would never get it finished in this decade, let alone before Christmas. There's just something about a hand-quilted quilt. They are far softer than the machine quilted cousin, and it will undoubtedly increase in value, rather than just being like a pretty comforter. Fortunately, the Amish service did a wonderful job, and it was safely returned to me on December 3rd.

This was a great learning experience with quilters, especialy the Amish. To them, quilts are utilitarian, rather than a show piece in a bedroom. They mark with lighter fabrics #2 pencils, which I found immensely hard to get out of the quilt top. When I contacted them about this, they were not so concerned.."Just erase them", they told me. I bought an art gum eraser. It didn't really work. I used a stain stick and against my preference to washing, I washed the quilt. And dried it. Marks came out of all but 3 of the yellow fabrics. I then scrubbed the marks with a toothbrush and a solution of 1C water, 2T alcohol and a couple teaspoons of oxyclean. Talk about a pain in the butt! I then washed it again. Most (not all) of the marks are gone. I really did not want to give a quilt that was already shrunk up and wrinkly; it's just not my preference.

When I came home, I added heart quilting in some of the squares.
The back is actually pale yellow, and shows the quilting off nicely. The sashings have very small feathers. Talk about a real quilting job! The quilt's borders have large feathers too. Much of the rest of the quilt squares are just stitched in the ditch. The Amish just did not want to sew more creatively with the multitude of seams in the heart blocks. ... I really wanted feathered hearts.

After it was sent back, I endeavored to make pillow shams. Yes, in just 3 weeks. I am most definitely nuts. They are simple in design, but are completely hand quilted to mimic the quilt. No, my hand quilting is not as fine as that of the Amish, but then. A week before Christmas, I decided that the shams needed a punch of color (the Kaffe Fassett/Philip Jacobs Grandiose Turquoise) - the heart appliqued on the top of the sham. This was ordered a day before an ice storm hit the northeast (ordered from Portsmouth Fabric Co.). It arrived just a couple days before Christmas. I thought that this choice of accent fabric was just perfect to tie into the small accents of this fabric that are in the heart blocks (see picture above).

Two ready for the finishing

My two bed quilt tops are finished, for better or worse. There are certainly things I might do differencly, but having them done is much better than having better ideas and bags full of quilt top pieces.
This one looks a little funny on my bed, as it is high and the quilt appears to be short because of the wood footboards on the bed. It is a reasonable length, I assure you. Normally I'd design a quilt for shams, but this pattern yielded a longer top than width ratio so I opted to make it go over the pillows.
Thanks to Ms. Paisley & Polkadots (AKA Ginger) for tipping me off to an Amish hand quilting service. I have used a machine quilter that is local to me twice and I have somewhat mixed feelings about her. Her work is decent quality, I just have not been thrilled with her creativity. Maybe she needs more guidance on patterns, etc. I think my ambivalence also is in part to my love of hand quilting. The quilt on my bed is hand quilted, and I spent 4 years finishing it! It's about another $100-200 to have it hand quilted, but it will be worth it. This blue heart quilt will be sent to be hand quilted this week. It makes me very nervous mailing away my hard work, but this service does come well recommended.

Because this quilt is scrappy, I was able to use hundreds of different fabrics. Here's one of my more unusual ones (the western wagon-pulling frogs!). I know that the recipient will get a kick out of my hidden humor.



There's also some nice Asian parasol girls, and my son's favorite - a pirate ship!
And also some more lovely Kaffe Fassett geranium leaves and Foxgloves in blue. Together, it is all very lovely, and interesting. It keeps the eye traveling from heart to heart.

Here's the Simplicity quilt. Sadly, I have not good enough light to photograph it so it does not look washed out. If I had it to do over again, I'd use a medium dusty wedgewood blue rather than the rose. But that is life -

It is completed, and for someone who does actually like pastels, it will make a nice gift. The borders are rather simple. Come to think of it, the majority of the quilt is simple - 5 charm packs sewn into 20 9-patches, then sliced into disappearing nine-patches, bordered, sashed, and voila...quilt top! Anyhow...the remaining charm squares were cut into the 2" stones I used on the border. I will have it finished with a scalloped edge, and maybe bound in the rose.
This one is going to the machine quilter I use. I plan to have her quilt a feathered heart into each square, and do some scalloped feathers around the border. That is MY plan anyhow!

I don't know if you can read the fabric or not, but there's one fabric in this set (in each color) that has words on it... "love", "family", "hope", "peace", "dance", "wish", "celebrate"...just to name a few. I just love this.

As for the rest of my week's work...
- A trip to the lake today (Oh, that doesn't count, does it!?)
- added 1st border to my round robin piece, after deliberating on this all week. It was a real challenge for me.
- bound the second of my Legacy quilts. Small details until it is completely finished.
- worked a little bit on my next ALQS mini
- And this weekend I plan to pull out my summer quilt that needs border attention! If this sounds scarry, it ought to! Here it is...

One nearly Done, One to Go

Last border is on and it is not yet 8am. There's progress! I need to toss it onto the bed and check it for size before I trim off the excess border and call it good as done (& ready for long armer). I can now say that I do love the way this one turned out, despite some doubts I had along the way, and I know that the recipient will too. Many thanks to Amy, Solidia and Julie who contributed scraps for this project also!! All of your variety of fabrics made it work. Thanks too for all the wonderful comments about this. They may go unmentioned most days, but they mean a lot to read.

Now to get ready for the MIL's visit and plan what needs to be done for the 2nd quilty project I will conquer at naptime today.

Making Border Progress

Though I have a few things to fix here and there (ie., couple chopped off triangle points, little extra unexpected length, etc.), two of this quilt's borders are on! The third border is all pieced together. I need to square and even up all of it's edges, and it will get attached tomorrow morning. I think I am happy with how the scrappy blues are looking on the border. I will likely do a scrappy blue binding too. Later today I will put it onto the bed to see if the sides have adequate drop, but I think they are fine.

A Drowsy Blogger

The last week or so I feel like I have been asleep behind the blogging wheel. I am behind in my personal projects and have felt the stress from that more (despite having my bday block swap blocks done for the next 2 months, and my Miniature Booty quilt finished as well). I have 3 queen size bed quilts in the works, and none is ready for the LA quilter.

So rather than pull out what I really needed to work on (AKA those dreaded quilts), I pulled out my flannel scraps and whipped up a couple relatively simple flannel quilts for Project Linus. These make quilt numbers 9 and 10 for me to bring to a drop off in early October, for which I will receive 3 fat quarters for each quilt. That alone is a great motivator for me to finish another 3 or 4 before then! I'll get pictures up soon.

I staged 2 of my bed quilts this weekend on my bed. Until Sunday, they were still in too many pictures to put onto the bed and get a good visual of the quilt.

This is made mostly from charm squares of Moda Simplicity. I hate how the pastels wash out in the photograph. It does not help that the bedroom is dimly lit either. Sadly I just lost steam on this a few weeks ago. I am just on the fence over the rose borders. It seemed like the right color choice at the time, but in retrospect I wish it was a much softer color. Rather than take it all out (which is a project in a box forever if I go down that road), I am rethinking what to do with the remaining 8" of the border. It will have some of that rose on it, perhaps in swirling quarter inch applique (like stems or filligree). I am tempted to use it for the binding and do a scalloped edge to soften the look of the quilt too. That's the project for the week AFTER I return from here :-) (AKA vacation!!)

This past weekend I also sewed the 12 22" heart blocks together so I could get a good look at this quilt. I was very close to making these into 2 Linus quilts, but with my ambivalence with the Simplicity quilt, I have a reformed love for these blocks, and feel like the initial recipient of these would relate and appreciate this quilt more than the Simplicity. Further, I have another person in mind for Simplicity, who's style is really much more in line with those fabrics. So, with that ambiguity (grins!!) as they may be reading this before Christmas, I'll stop my blathering.

My plan for the hearts??... Add an 11" border. At first I designed up one, and fortunately (and much unlike myself), I made just one of the 14 blocks up last Saturday. I did NOT like it. I was much relieved there was not all 14 before I decided that too! The consensus was that it was not scrappy enough to blend nicely with the scrappy hearts. So I made a small modification and the borders are scrappy like the hearts. Pictures soon, promise. Unfortunately, I used all of my bolder Kaffe Fasset scraps (ones with turquoise), so border does not have those small "punches" of color. It will still look good. And, more importantly, this top will be completed before we depart this weekend. I have 2 of the 3 borders sewn and awaiting squaring and trimming before I attach them to the top. That's progress I can be proud of!

One last little show...Here's Nell's pet block for Kate's bday block swap.
It went into the mail today. Every house ought to have a fat orange cat. I already posted a picture of Anne's mariner's compass.

Oh and a glimpse of what I am sending to someone tomorrow...the center (part of the center) block for the Spring Fling Round Robin 2. In case you are reading and wondering...the fabric I sent with it is the red dotted batik! I call it "Lollalilou", because it reminds me of something out of Dr. Seuss and I think he had a creature named that!

Belated Happy Independence Day

I know it's the 6th of July, but I was lazy this weekend and did not post anything. I took the kids to the beach on the 3rd and 4th. They love playing in the sand and water. It's a bit of a chore getting them cleaned/showered off so I opted not to go another day this weekend. The boys start swim lessons again in another week so hopefully they'll be swimming by the time we go on vacation this August. No plans are firm yet, but we're looking into a week on Lake Champlain in upstate VT. Is anybody familiar with that area? Will the water be freezing cold??

Scenes from Friday's beach trip...
Little sister was content to just play in the sand and try to pop the seaweed. I certainly fetched enough bucket fulls of water for her though.
I'm not sure if this is the "finished" piece, but in honor of the 4th, here's one of my more patriotic blocks. It's for the bday block swap. Anne's birthday is actually August, but I'm trying to get ahead, and was a bit intimidated by doing this block so I tried to get a head start. The darn thing took me near 5-6 hours, and albeit is not perfect either. I may remake it if I find time.

One of the other more mundane things I have done is complete the yellow scrappy borders on the scrappy blue heart blocks. I kind of lost steam on this project. I'm not sure that I really "love" the overall finished look enough to complete it for the person I was initially doing it for. I am leaning towards making the 12 blocks into 2 Project Linus quilts instead - just add a wide blue print border and quilt them. They'll be ~55" x 75" which is a good size for a teenager. Because I have felt lackadaisical (spelling???) about this project, I have allowed my mind to wander (ie., I have fallen off that proverbial "use your stash" wagon).

The first thing I got, mainly because I just LOVE the fabrics, are these from Lakehouse Dry Goods - Cherry Baby collection. I will save them until I make Sophie's twin bed quilt next year. They will coordinate with her room and curtains that will not be replaced, as well as several other fabrics I am hoarding for that special day. I love sewing for little girls! All things are Sooooo cute :-)

Anyhow, this is just a 7" alphabet panel that I will use on her quilt or a wall hanging of her name, or something like that.
I had to have a little bit of the sweet cherries too...
And these panels also...They may get used as blocks on her quilt top or on the back, or even as little pillows. I'm not sure yet; I just love it and know that if I wait until I know what it is for, I won't find it anywhere.

The other thing I have done is reconcile with myself that I will make one Christmas present. It has to be done by October so that I can get it to the quilter in time. I bit the bullet and ordered several of these charm packs which I found onsale for about $6 each at http://www.thequiltedcastle.com/. I thought that was quite a steal, and I don't have to cut the material. Win-win for me! I'll probably do a disappearing 9-patch pattern in blocks with three of the fabrics (which I had to order elsewhere) as block sashings and quilt borders. This is a project I am psyched about. I need to get it done realistically before I go back to work in September too.

Twelve Hearts

I now have finished all 12 of the 18" hearts. I gotta admit, I start things really well. Following through and finishing is so (sooooo...) often a problem. So, this does feel great to have it this far. Will it be done by Christmas ("ha ha, silly girl", the voices in my head say to me)?? Time will tell. I still plan to add scrappy yellow borders around each block, but that fabric is not washed or cut yet. Next week...

Other notes for the week:
- Need to put in a zipper in the dress I'm making for my soon-to-be 2 year old's upcoming birthday. Her dress is cut out and started. Not a fancy smocked number this year, but something cute and colorful. Turning two should be fun.
- I have already made my July Partner Diane's blue & white star block for the Forum Birthday Block swap.
- For the same swap, I have sketches for a NYB and Mariner's compass, both of which I oughtta get sewing on, as they may test my patience a bit. I've never made either block, but they don't scare me!...
- I have my Booty swap partner now so I can brainstorm on that mini soon too.
- And for those of you sending such nice comments about my summer quilt, thank you. I have gotten much of the 2nd quilt pieced and really cannot tell which of the two I will send!! Oh, such troubles :-) They are both very "Summer in Maine". I hope my partner actually likes the beach...

Have a great weekend-

More Blue Hearts & Weekly Dreams...

Here are 18" heart blocks #7, 8 and 9 to go along with the first six already finished. Only three more to do (I think!). I got another package of more pretty scrap blues late last week from Solidia. Many thanks - they will be put to good use! Once I get the last three finished, I will add the scrappy yellow borders to the blocks. At that point I will need to rethink the design a little, as I'm not sure what will happen on the part of the quilt that drops down on the sides of the mattress. The hearts are only on the top of the bed. I have a couple of nice asian-ish blue prints in decent yardage that may encompass a wide border though.

Other quilty projects going on...

~I am hand quilting my piece shown in the last posting for Ginger's swap. It turned out cute, but the blocks have a lot of bias and I hope that there will be enough to hold them smooth. At this point I waffle between continuing and believing all will look fine and ripping out the quilting threads and rebasting the top. Neither option leave me feeling 100% confident!

~I am gearing up for Kate's About.com birthday block swap which is set to start in a couple weeks. I have signed up for 2 groups which means I have to make 3 blocks a month. I am trying to clear several of the other projects I have so I can jump right into that. In the advanced group, I will be receiving a dozen 8" New York Beauty blocks. Maybe I will also make a few. They will be in purple, red and orange batiks. In the other group, I will receive 24 of the Broken Heart blocks (from http://www.quilterscache.com/) in 1930's prints. I am excited to see what blocks the others will be requesting that I will have to make. I just wonder how long I will have to wait until it is "my birthday"??

~Thelast stages of the Spring Fling Round Robin are winding down. 6-8 of the 24 quilts have been finished & mailed. They are so lovely - go have a look (though most of my readers are probably in that swap!). This is such a tremendously talented group of quilters and it has been a fun honor to work with them. I will undoubtedly run another round robin once all quilts are at their end-destinations. Look for a posting sometime next month. This has been a sticking point with me lately, as I learned that one of the other popular swaps started up another session recently with over 15% of their members STILL not having a quilt in their hand. I just don't think that is a very courteous way to run a swap.

~The Miniature Booty swap has ended and I am anxious to see what is coming my way there. Despite my partner announcing accidentally that she is my partner early in the swap, there has been no action on her blog to indicate what she is making. So I wait anxiously...

~I will get back to my 4SQS beach quilt very soon. I've been busy designing this with my scrapbook software so I can add it (somehow!).

The Blue Scraps

The blue scraps are going to this queen-sized bed quilt. MANY thanks to Amy and Julie for passing along some great blue pieces to my cause. I have heard that there may be a couple more packages of blues coming - and they will be most appreciated.
The top of the bed quilt will be made of 12 of these 18" heart blocks. Each block will be sashed in strips of scrappy yellows. I haven't decided what the sides of the quilt will be yet, but I have a lovely Asian-ish blue for a wide border. I have four different blue & yellow small prints for the backgrounds of the heart. I know that the picture here does not show the print very well. I am trying to make myself do 1-2 of these weekly so as to get them done! They do not take that long. In fact it takes longer to cut all the squares. But I get side-tracked and bored too quickly. So far I have six finished.

Other projects...
- preparing for this Saturday's garage sale (YUCK!) - make a little fabric $$!
- I remade the ocean for the beach quilt that I showed last post. I decided my 1st attempt could be improved upon. I am also searching for a nice sailboat picture (with spinnaker) to replicate.
-I have joined Ginger's quilt swap on the About.com forums. I stumbled upon the posting yesterday, but had my dates confused. I thought it had not closed yet since there were still 5 slots open. Turned out it closed the day before. But, many thanks to Ginger for making an exception for me! Like I really need to make one more thing!! The ideas are a-flowin'. I just need to get my partner's preferences before I start anything.
-My Spring Fling RR still needs it's label and to be packaged. It will get mailed Saturday to somebody!
-My middle man is turning 4 on Sunday so we have a little family party to prepare for. Oh Lordy...it better be sunny so we can be outside, otherwise I have to clean 30 yards of fabric pieces off of the dining room table :-O
-And for all inquiring, there is still no DQSIII quilt in my mailbox, but I have given up hoping for it. Now I am looking for that Miniature Booty quilt that should be mailed by now. Despite already knowing who my partner is (she made a goof and posted it to my blog, with her identity), I am still excited to see what was made for me. BTW, Lisa...I miss Lucky! I hope he likes his PA home.

Soliciting your scraps

I am starting a scrappy quilt that is to be made of largely dark and medium tones of blue. If anybody has scraps of these that would like to rid their stash of them, I'd be happy to take them or to bargain a trade for something I may have. If this sounds plausible to you, I need the pieces to be at least 4" x 4", and any mid-tone to deep-tone (AKA navy) blue, solids, prints, dots, stripes, etc. email of leave a comment if interested. No polyester, flannel or homespuns please.