Random Acts of Quilty Kindness

Quilters are great people. Just great. In the running of the nearly dozen swaps I have hosted over the last 2 years, never have I received so many great gifties from so many people as I have the last few months. There truly are too many to list them all, ranging from pieces of fabric, to little gifts, to sending me a number of blocks from which I have made charity quilts. I am floored, sincerely. Yes, running these swaps is tedious, time consuming and on occasion frustrating. But it's a job I take on because I believe that the majority of those that swap love to do it, and need a facilitator. Out of the blue today, these pieces of fabric arrived from Wendy. She's done several of my swaps this past year, and consistently creates a lovely end product. When I saw her package, I thought perhaps she'd decided to make a large stack of the Colorblocks that we are doing at the Four Seasons Quilt Swap, but I was quite surprised to find these nearly yard sized pieces of fabric instead.
They are for my Linus donation quilts, except perhaps for the little houses that I TOTALLY adore (and coveted on another blog a few weeks ago). It's so completely cute. I am speachless for your generosity - Thank you! I may meet my goal of 52 quilts for this year yet! And another recipient of some less than ideal 9-patches emailed to volunteer her's for my charity quilts too. Amazing, the kindness (ok, albeit, some of them may just be disgusted that they got so many unusable blocks, but I see it as the glass half-full!). Thanks, Vanessa.

Lovely New Additions

My Spring Fling Round Robin-3 piece has come home to me this week. This is the 3rd session of this swap which I host, and in this session the recipients of each quilt were allowed to make their own center 8" square. This was the mechanism that each person was given to convey their style, color preferences and general likes to the other unknown people that would work on their quilts. Here is what I made. And here is the finished 20" quilt...
I selected fabrics that are in the quilt currently on my bed (and with incomplete quilting in this picture) as well as in the flimsy which I hope to have quilted by the Amish later this summer (also destined for my bedroom). My desire was for this to be a busy, colorful piece, in shades of cranberry, greens, aquas, limitted soft beiges, etc.

Here is the back. The quilting is an all-over pantograph-style quilting. It doesn't show up too much in this picture.

And here you can see how it might coordinate with the new quilt. It doesn't have as much of the aqua, but the cranberry and beige carries it well.

And it's actually a dead ringer with the old quilt. I say "old" - This has been on my bed just 5 years. It's not old, but it's before I really got meticulous about triangle points and some details which today drive me nuts. I created the center block using EQ6, and modeled it after some of the geometric blocks on this quilt - wanted a somewhat "flower" and star look - with lots of triangles. I think the 8" center block had 120 pieces in it!

The quilt is very nice. My thanks to Marlene, Alicia, and Amy for working on this for me (even if they didn't know it was for me!). Marlene said she suspected that it was my quilt she was doing a 1st border for, but I don't really know why she'd guess that! And the green that Alicia selected is just perfect for coordinating with both quilts. It couldn't be a better match.

On to my second nice delivery this week... This (the runner) came from Lisa and was PIF gift. It came with a couple nice pieces of Martha Negly prints which I can't wait to use. She's got great fabric taste (despite her love of brown :-)))

I thought that her choice of runner was ironicly unique. I never would have guessed Lisa do make anything not paper-pieced, as she's fantastic with this medium. The cathedral windows and excessive handwork really surprised me. I just told her to make something that she loved (preferably not brown), and that I'd appreciate it too. It's totally lovely, and coordinates fantastically with the two NYB pieces in red and purple in my dining room. Pretty convenient that my smaller buffet didn't have a matching piece, huh? I just finished a small 9"x12" piece for Kate as a part of a swap in this same Cathedral windows pattern. I cannot fathom making another, so I love that someone else did it for me. Look below...The detail is sweet - Little birdies in the center and on the two ends. It's very pretty - Thank you. And, Lisa, my trick to not make the white thread show, was to use a black sharpie to cover up when I had to take white stitches on the black material (it was a black&white print)!

Now, back when I signed onto Lisa's PIF, I did post about one of my own. Apparently nobody was interested. I will repost soon, or hold some form of another giveaway. Stay tuned..

The rest of this week is dedicated to working on a smocked birthday dress and the finishing points on Sophie's quilt, which must be delivered for the Maine Quilt Show next Saturday!

Up to No Good

OK, not so much "No good", just not overly prolific sewing going on here. Last week I sent off some of my birthday block swap blocks. This one went to Debbie - she wanted a depiction of our favorite vacation place. Duh...France.

Here's a 12" NYB for Michelle in what have to be some immensely bold batiks. Honest, it is square and not as wonky as the picture looks.

And a birdhouse for another swapper (Connie). Obviously, birds are not my thing. Or I should say, sewing birds isn't. We've actually been spending a lot of energy lately watching dueling hummingbirds outside my kitchen window.

And for my version of the Four Seasons swap this summer, we are making sets of 20 of these "Colorblocks". I have actually made up close to 40 of them now. Just trying to get things off my list of To-Do's.Someone special's birthday is soon to pass and I have not made a gift. I envisioned this as a summer table piece, perhaps with a flag and slice of watermellon, etc appliqued onto it. In the end, I pieced it and I'm not sure how much it actually resembles a watermellon. I am toying with embroidering the seeds in black, but making them resemble ants. Perhaps this is nuts. I hope ot quilt it this week once that plan is finalized.
I also made my next part of a ALQS3 quilt this weekend, but I won't show it just yet. I still have this sinking feeling I may change my mind and keep this one. Sigh... OH how I love to create work for myself.

This week's sewing agenda includes...

~make double hanging sleeve for Little Dresses quilt. Needs this before it can be submitted for Maine Quilt show in July. It'll give me some evening hand work to do.

~Maybe make last couple June birthday blocks - something with texture and a purses-shoes block (that should be a hoot!)

~I have a round robin and a row robin expected to arrive any day. I have plans for both so these should only take a few days. Just need to see them in my hands to match fabrics.

~Find a design for an appliqued Orca. You'll have to stay tuned for what this is for!

Apples for a Special Teacher

Here is this week's major project. It's a table runner for my son's 1st grade teacher. School gets out in 4 weeks, but I wanted to get this done during my project lull. It measures 15" x 30". Initially I felt a little guilty making what on paper seemed so simple and quick compared to last year's grand adventure, but now that it is finished, I totally & absolutely LOVE it. I wish I could just keep it. It is hands down, my best attempt at machine quilting. The MQ gods and planet were definitely aligned. No tension problems. No thread run outs. Good design & execution. I couldn't be happier. Unless of course if it were mine, but I don't have plans in the next 3-4 weeks to have the time to make another.

Here's some detail pics. I did feathered hearts in the diamonds. It was challenging not to encroach on the appliqued apples, but they look pretty good.

I quilted with a soft tan thread so it definitely shows against the ivory Kona.
The feathers of the border were also free-handed. I marked a curved line and just stitched. Not too bed, eh?!

...And I love how the diamond setting stones pop on account of the stippling and ditch stitching around them.

I feel strongly about always labeling my quilts, but I am very torn because the back of this is as pretty as the front. Almost hate to put anything there ~