Green, Blue and Purple baby quilt

The front fabric were precut squares given to me by my sister Wanda. On the back I used the rest of the squares with some green fabric designed and given to me by my friend Laura Gunn.

I tried variegated thread and free handed it.  I love the colors of the quilt. But, boy was I tempted to unpick all my mistakes. My kids insisted that was foolish. Practice quilts are for practicing the sewing skills, not to practice your unpicking skills.

Add the quilt label when it's done:

Peach and Purple Charity Quilt

 The front of this quilt was made from pre-cut 4" squares my sister bought, then gave to me. I started by making 4-squares, but decided to arrange it to make the squares appear larger by putting 4 matching squares together.

It is quilted using the Pantograph from Urban Elementz called Flirty Feathers and Curls.

Anyone who has to match colors in sewing will know that the colors available from one year to another change. As I looked through my stash, there were no colors that went with this front. The purples were all too bright and the wrong shade, the peaches too bright or too orange. I then looked in the fabric I had set aside to give away. In it was the perfect amount of this fabric - one that I made a dress from when I was sewing for Trenna Travis Design Studios for Michael Miller Fabrics. It was PERFECT!

Lastly, a quilt just isn't a quilt without the Quilt label that tells future generations a little about the quilt.

T-shirt Graduation Quilt for Parker

Many long years ago, Parker's mom asked me to make a memory quilt that I think is probably my favorite that I've ever made! At the beginning of his senior year, she asked me to make a t-shirt quilt for Parker for graduation. THANK YOU for giving me such a long time line! It makes it much easier and more doable for the quilter. Things happen as you are putting things together and the last thing we want to do is give you some shoddy workmanship that doesn't live up to our standards just because there was a time crunch.  Believe it or not, mistakes happen, but plenty of time helps make it so those unplanned design elements can turn into something even better. Yes, I did have at least one of those, but I doubt you would pinpoint what it is now. I don't know if I could beyond saying I know I had to do some rethinking on my background fabric and that I had itty bitty scraps of the background green left over.

Front

Back

Parker's school colors are green and gold, but he has played on several sports teams, so in using the colors from the shirts, I made the back scrappy as she wanted.

An all over large meander made it simple to hold everything together and avoid sewing through the decals as much as possible. Some of the printing was typical screen printing, whereas others were letters or numbers sewn on. To be able to feed things under the needle, I needed to be at the front of the machine to keep an eye on things. A pantograph from the back could have run into some difficulty there.

When it was all done, I added the quilt label and it was done in plenty of time before graduation.

Stack of 13 - Who says 13 is unlucky?

 After only about 6 weeks of it being up and running, I had a stack of 13 quilts ready for charity - to be donated to a women's shelter for domestic abuse. What a good feeling.

Still being new to the quilting world, I was surprised and very flattered that this picture was then made the group cover photo on one of my Facebook quilting groups for a while (the administrator likes to switch it up often showing off member's works). Since I will never be "rich and famous" as I had wished to be as a teenager, I'll take my little moments of fame where I can. ;-)

Shannon's Quilt Remake

When I was teaching sewing at Fabric Nosherie, Shannon, the owner, borrowed our hand quilting frame to allow customers the chance to put a few stitches in a quilt she had made once upon a time. As she was closing her shop, she said she was sick of looking at it and gave it to me. The quilt was an odd size - long and thin, and the quilting was not much and not well done, so I unpicked it and redid it.

The center portion in the center was the original part, consisting of the almost horizontal stripes, the squares with circles and one vertical stripe on one side and two vertical stripes on the other. My need for symmetry couldn't handle that. Digging through my stash I found some more fabric that went well with the colors and added another stripe on the one side and two stripes on the other. The fabric that was the back I cut and made the corner triangles, setting the original quilt at a jaunty angle.

I quilted on my longarm using a pantograph called "Spoke Greek Key" by Urban Elementz.

Here I was trying to show what a pantograph is. The pattern is printed on a long paper. While standing at the back of the machine, you move the machine, tracing the pattern with a laser light. As you move the machine from the back, how you move it is sewn onto the quilt from the front.

I must say that I really like the way this pattern works on this jaunty quilt. If the original quilt were straight up and down, the quilting lines would, I feel, conflict with the lines of the piecing. But because they are not vying for the same attention, they really look good together.

Disappearing 9-patch variation, in red/burgundy and green/forest, first one

I ran across a variation on a Disappearing 9-patch that intrigued me. After begin gifted a bunch of fabric from my friend, Rachael, I decided to make a nice twin sized quilt using this method. I would use really big blocks to make the 9-patch so I could make it more easily. I think they were about 15" squares to begin with. (The link is below. She came up with it, she gets the credit. And besides, her tutorial is easy to follow, no sense duplicating efforts.)

https://beyondsockmonkeys.wordpress.com/tutorials-2/accidental-quilt-block-tutorial/

I would use half the squares for the front and half for the back. Perfect. Unfortunately, what I didn't know is that, although there were 2 types of squares made from this method, there were actually 4 types - half of them were mirror images of the others. So I wouldn't get a twin out if it, but two lap/large baby blankets. Ugh! Not my plan, but, Oh well. It was going to be for charity anyway.

For the quilting, I used a pantograph, "Hall of Mirrors" by Urban Elementz. This quilt, though planned for charity, my mother-in-law asked to buy. The fabric on the back and in the small blocks on the front brought back sweet memories for her. I guess I used delay tactic so answering. I didn't know what to charge her. The fabric was given to me. When my husband asked if we could give it to her, how could I tell him no? Merry Christmas in July, Mom (or whatever month it was).

Pink Hearts Bargello Baby Quilt

 Fabric passed on to me by Wanda some years ago. The fabric for this was sewn together in strips and cut in odd sizes. I thought long and hard about how to use these. The idea most often in my mind was some kind of rail fence type thing, but it didn't come out evenly, using all the fabric, and being one who hates to waste anything, I wasn't loving it. Plus the fabrics were very busy. One day it hit me that a Bargello quilt might be just the thing.  It was. With all the hearts in the fabrics, it had to be a heart pantograph (Andi's Ribbon Heart by Urban Elementz). I love the effect!