Amy's Birthday Quilt

My daughter Amy's birthday is not until September, but she wanted a lightweight quilt with navy blue on one side.  The quilt needed to be HUGE to be a spread for her king bed.  The intent was it could be a light quilt for the summer and an underlay for her queen size quilt I made for her wedding in 2010 in cooler weather.   

I didn't measure it after it was finished, but it was something like 116 X 126.  When Amy was here in April she picked a top out of my stash.  I had to make it larger and she also picked out some navy fabric at a stop at a fabric store.  It is a modern style print.  My late friend Debi had provided some of the fabrics and pattern for the 30's quilt called Gentle Moments from McCall's magazine MANY years ago.

It was a tough project to quilt under my machine, but I got it done.  I had to do a two color binding to make it work.  I had never done that before and I like the results.

Gentle Moments 

Backing - I extended the fabric by adding a panel I had on hand.

Two Color Binding

Closeup detail of the front

My birthday is coming up soon and I am part of a forum on Connecting Threads and I'm in a birthday swap.  My gift arrived early!  I love it!  I love the purple and the embroidery design.

This past weekend I was a volunteer at Camp Erin, sponsored by the Willow Center.  There are many locations around the country, and there is one about 2 1/2 hours away at Camp Wooten.  Having suffered a personal, tragic loss, I knew I could empathize with these kids who had lost love ones.  I worked in arts and crafts and had an amazing experience.  The whole camp is a huge undertaking and this year there was 52 campers and 60 adults.  There were lots of donations of supplies.  The kitchen crew has a tough job and they did great at providing healthy meals and snacks.  Everyone was so kind and helpful and the Cabin Big Buddies worked with the kids tirelessly.  Overall it was tough being away from the land of internet and phones, but I was so busy I didn't have time anyway!  I was exhausted last night and I'm moving sluggishly today but I did get out for my 3 mile walk.  I highly recommend this experience to anyone.

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Progress on Quilt Tops

I have made some progress this week.  I am making both my daughters big quilts at their request.  I showed LIsa's last week, it is a queen size.  I couldn't get a great picture without things in the way but this is a sort of layout on the leaves.  There will be three vines randomly coming down and leaves will be on either side.  I wanted to see if I had enough.  They have fusible web on the back with the paper still attached currently.  The quilt will be bound in red.

Gentle Moments partially finished

I have this top in my collection for awhile.  The pattern was in McCall's quilting in 2001 and my friend Debi wanted to make it and bought the pink. She gave it to me along with all her 30's. Amy wants a quilt roughly 126 X 108 with a very thin batting and navy blue on one side so it can play double duty.  When she was here she saw this in my stash and said it would work.  I had set it aside because there was a booboo.  I had somehow mismeasured on the pink border and the quilt was not laying flat.  After taking the outer borders off and removing 2" off each side I got it back to this point.  Then I had to make two more white boders and then the piano key and finished it off with the only piece of 30's I had that had enough yardage.  It's so big I didn't have a place to lay or hang it.  It's in my lumpy yard so it doesn't look even and it's wrinkled so ignore that!  It was sunny so the color is a bit washed.

Gentle Moments 109 X 125

strange mushroom



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We have woods behind our house and I have been going out and laying out trails for our dog to follow.  She is 15 months old and is doing very well at her search and rescue training.  I loved this mushroom, not sure what it is, and I love the purple flowers on the skunk cabbage.  

skunk cabbage flowers

Design Wall Monday Plus!

Even though things have been crazy, I have made some accomplishments.  Last Monday I posted fabrics for a Quilt of Valor and I am happy to say before the end of that day I had the top completed!  This was a donation kit and not my normal style at all.  I am just not sure of the striped fabric, but I followed the instructions.  I wanted to make sure I had enough fabrics that were included.

Quilt of Valor

This week I also finished the top to Gentle Moments, but realized I messed up the outer borders going vertical.  I had measured but not written the measurement down and thought I knew the correct length and sewed the border on.  With all the bias it sewed on great, but now makes the quilt wavy!  It's 2" too long on each lengthwise side so that will be fixed.  I can't believe I did that!  I will still add another border around to make it queen size, but don't have yardage so that is in the thinking stages.

Gentle Moments

During the process of sewing Gentle Moments and other blocks I have been sewing 2" squares together.  I sewed most of them in groups of 8.  I was originally going to make a block that was 8 X 8 squares (12" finished) and then sash them but started doodling on graph paper and came up with this.   I have some of the pieces on the design wall below.  I need to sew more pieces and the fabric in all the blank areas will be the purple shown.  It will be a donation quilt for a child or teen.

bright strips and background

The other big news is my new sink and faucet.  I asked for a new faucet for Christmas (Doug needs help in the idea dept.) and thought I asked in plenty of time to get the faucet for Thanksgiving when we hosted his family.  Nope, then because of the care needed for his father, it didn't happen at Christmas either.  Doug's dad passed away New Year's Eve and January has been rather busy.  We are also now fixing up our rental house and went off to Home Depot Saturday.  Sunday was spent installing the new sink and faucet!  I LOVE it!

old sink

new sink and faucet!

 Linking up with Patchwork Times!

Design Wall Monday and Day of Service

I have today off work and to remember MLK I will be making a quilt for Quilt of Valor.  I have made many quilts for the American Hero project, but this will be my first QOV.  I received the fabrics last year in a kit from Idaho Public TV. It will be a rail fence quilt.

Last week I showed the pattern and strips for this quilt.  This is what I have so far.  I sewed and sewed and sewed!  Since I was enlarging the pattern I needed more squares.  There will be a white applique strip around the center, pink frame around the whole top and another applique strip on the top and bottom to elongate it to queen size.  I will need to add one border around the whole top.

 I am linking up to Patchwork Times Design Wall Monday.