Baby Quilts

I recently made some baby quilts and the recipients have them so I can post pictures!  There are seven more days of school left this school year and I have lots of great quilting plans for the summer.  I usually do all my outside work/house chores in the mornings so I can quilt in my basement in the afternoons where it is cooler.

This is the first quilt.  I made it for my new great niece, Evelyn Rose born in April.  I had struggled with what to make and finally saw the raw edge bullseye rose pattern and knew that was it.  Then I had to acquire pinks.  I wanted to stay a bit more on the pastel side.  I finally got it made and quilted.  I gave it a wash to fluff it up.

Roses for Evelyn Rose

embossed rose minkie backing showing the rose quilting

Evelyn Rose on her baby quilt

I have a new granddaughter scheduled to arrive in early July.  My daughter Amy sent me a palette of colors she would like and wanted flowers.  She made a mobile of fake flowers in these colors.  We found the floral fabric online from the Butterfly Haven line.  She suggested triangles or hearts.  This is what I came up with.  It is quilted with hearts!  I delivered it to her this weekend.

This next one isn't a baby quilt, more of a lap/recliner quilt for a dear friend.  She is so giving and I decided to make her a quilt for her birthday.  The only problem was her birthday was May 16th and I decided to do this on Mother's Day!  Since my husband was busy working all day in the fields I had a free day.  I didn't take a picture of the backing, it is Care Bears.  She loves Care Bears and I knew it would be perfect for her as she is so caring of others.  I found a floral fabric in my stash (she sent me flowers for Mother's Day) and a couple coordinates and this is what I came up with.  I made the entire quilt start to finish that day.  I quilted flowers in the floral fabrics and a very wiggly line through the other fabrics.  I delivered it to her on her birthday and she was thrilled.

This past week I was on a two day overnight field trip with the 5th and 6th graders.  I think we put on about 500 miles on the bus!  We traveled to Central Washington and a town along the Columbia River in Oregon studying agriculture.  We had a great guide and some interesting tours at dairies and feed lots and potato processing plant along with the Sage Center in Boardman, OR.

I barely had time to do a load of laundry and pack up before we headed out 12 hours later for Boise to visit our daughters and grandkids.  It's hard to get 4 kids to all look at you with good expressions at the same time.  The twins, Finn and Remy, are 18 months old now, Nicole is 5 and Jared will be 8 in August.  Jared and Nicole are the ones having a new baby sister!

 Linking up with Design Wall Monday.

I am here and still quilting!

I haven't posted for awhile, mostly because I was working on gift projects and I couldn't show pictures!  Part of it was just laziness though and busy with lots going on.  I have gone on a retreat, two quilt shows and done yardwork along with working full time.  I guess I do have some excuses!
I still have two projects I can't post, but the recipients should have them by next week!

This is the last of the samples I made for my friend's shop.  Yes, I used the same pattern with lots of panels.  She provided all the fabrics.

I went to a retreat at a new to us retreat house.  I was with 8 friends.  We were in a farmhouse across the road from St. Gertrude's Monastery. I walked around the grounds a couple of times. 

This photo is in the backyard of the farmhouse.  I love the big old barn!  The bookcase quilt is a gift quilt I made for my late son's roommates.  He was a groomsman in their wedding almost 8 years ago.  The husband commissioned me to make this for his wife for her birhtday/mother's day.  He said she loves to read and loves shades of blue.  See below for other pictures.

I took this photo on one of the beds.

 Excuse the wonky photo.  I embroidered lots of things on different light colored books.  Their names, names of their three kids, wedding date, genres of books, etc.  I had a lot of fun learning my new Brother Innovis Quilt Club series sewing machine!

I finally have all the blocks assembled for my Sew Many Strips quilt from American Patchwork and Quilting.  I am working on piecing borders, although I don't have the blocks sewn together into a top yet.  This will be a queen size quilt made of 1 1/2 strips so it is taking a long time!  That is a LOT of sewing.  The blocks finish at 8" and have 32 pieces in them.  Thank heavens for strip piecing!

I captured some apple blossoms in my back yard.  The apple trees are VERY old.  We live on an old homestead site, but built a new house in the mid 90's.  I look forward to showing the other projects I have finished soon!  Plus I started a couple other projects at quilt retreat!

Linking to Design Wall Monday.  Check it out!

More Piecing

I have completed three more shop samples for my friend's shop.  I have one last one I am working on.  I need to get some other projects done very soon!  I couldn't get great photos as my design wall is occupied and the weather is too rainy.

The first one is a flannel one.  It was very yummy to work with.   The dark is a brown, hard to see in the photos.

This is a Majestic Elk, made from the same pattern I used in quilts in my last post.  All the fabrics were provided by the shop.

I really like this bear one.  It's very subtle.

In my last post I included a photo of my twin grandkids.  The older two came to visit the same week and stayed a couple days longer.  My husband took them on an adventure with a friend and his grandson.  The friend has been restoring a Model A and my husband posed for pics with the grandkids.  My daughters and I went for a walk on the road (I actually carried one of the twins in a backpack) and the road was being flooded by the melting snow.  Kids and puddles!

Piecing and Piecing

Things are the usual crazy busy here!  I have had some distractions, but have managed to piece a bit.  I went to a retreat a couple weeks ago and worked on a couple projects.  Neither of them are done, but that's the story of my life! 

This is a quilt I am working on for my brother.  It needs borders.  It was a kit I purchased with my brother in mind and I'm finally getting to it.  I worked on it at the retreat.

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I saw the American Patchwork and Quilting magazine with the pattern Sew Many Strips.  I cut out hundreds of 1.5" strips and pieced them at the retreat and started making blocks.  These are NOT my normal colors at all.   Most of these are Bonnie and Camille fabrics, except I added other low volume backgrounds.  I only have 27 blocks left to make and then the pieced border.  I have no idea what I am going to do with it when I am done though!

I pieced three more tops for my friend's shop.  I couldn't get great pictures, but here they are.  Lots of work with panels.

My younger daughter came to visit and brought the twins!  They are 16 months old now.  My older daughter will be here later today with my other two grandkids!  Spring break!

Linking up with Small Quilts and Doll Quilts.

Quilting and Snow

I can't believe I didn't post last week.  Oh well.  I do have some more finishes to share.

The first one is a row robin from MANY years ago.  I furnished a lot of the fabrics and it sat for a long time because the rows were wide but not very many of them.  At a retreat several years ago I finally set the top together and now it's quilted.  I am not sure what I will do with it yet, I may be gifting it to a friend.  Another old UFO bites the dust!

Srping Row Robin

This quilt was made several years ago from a pattern on Craftsy.  The directions were really bad and I emailed the designer and she told me I didn't know what I was talking about.  I am an experienced quilter, so I threw away the pattern and made it my way!  However, then I HATED it.  Yes, strong word.  I really do not like this quilt.  I am not a fan of green and I tried to liven it up by quilting it with a shiny thread.  I will definitely be trying to find a home for this quilt!  But another UFO bites the dust!

Christmas Candy

A friend owns a quilt shop about an hour and a half away.  I volunteered to help make shop samples.  She sent me two kits for the same pattern.  The first one I made is Hoffman Wolves.  I am not a fan of wolves, but this came out great.  It's taller than my design wall.  Much bigger than I thought it would be.  66 X 88.  

 The second one is a fox and this is really cute.  The pattern is easy to follow.  I will be making some more shop samples for her at an upcoming quilt retreat.

 We had a backyard visitor last week.  The photo was taken out my upstairs bedroom window.  Icicles are hanging down!  My coworker saw a moose over the weekend and thinks it might be the same one.

Doug had to plow again last week.  My deck is about 3 feet off the ground for a depth comparison.  I'm ready for spring!

Linking up with Design Wall Monday.

Hawaiian Quilt and Christmas Eve Table Runner

I had two complete finishes this week and one almost finish that needs binding. 

Last Monday we ended up with a snow day from school.  It started out as a two hour delay, but was soon canceled.  To hide out from the storm I was in my basement quilt room.  I decided since I had a free day I would tackle quilting my Christmas Eve tablerunner.  The kit was from Shabby Fabrics  I had done the layout and pressing at a retreat in November.

I layered the top and one layer of cotton batting and loaded my machine with Superior Monofilament thread on top and So Fine in the bobbin.   I free motioned around the edge of every single piece on the quilt!  With the Monofilament I could travel without having to stop and start a lot.  I finished that and then added a backing and quilting the dark sky background with swirls and the outer snow so it would lie flat.  Then on to the bias binding and embellishments and it was done!

The next day I started in on my pile of basted quilts.  I quilted a row robin quilt, but it is not bound.

Then I tackled my Hawaiian applique quilt.  This was a long term project.  I hand appliqued the blocks MANY years ago.  My original plan had not worked out and I put together 9 of the 13 blocks into this 54 inch wallhanging.  It sat and sat and sat some more.  I decided to do free motion echo quilting and it's not perfect but I like the effect.  The problem I ran into was I was echo quilting each block individually and didn't have sashing and I disliked how it looked at the seam.  Some were worse than others at looking disjointed. 

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My solution was to make a 1/2" strip and topstitch it over the seam as a pseudo narrow sashing.  I used my 1/2 inch bias tape maker my mother in law had given me at least 25 years ago and I had never used!  I used straight grain fabric though since there wasn't any curves.

 Here is my finished quilt!  I love it now!  It has been through the washer to remove glue stains.  All but one came out.

 I am linking up with Design Wall Monday.