Dorothy's Purple, Green, Orange Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4-Square Quilt

Dorothy made this quilt for a nephew who wanted a purple quilt. 

I quilted it with Grape Glide thread on the top and purple MicroQuilter on the bottom. The pantograph I used is from Urban Elementz and called "Diamonds are Forever."

Dorothy always uses up the leftover fabric from the front by making a scrappy back for the quilt.

Dorothy Tool Quilt in Blue, Green, Red, Orange, Tan

Dorothy made this reversible quilt for one of her nephews. 

Tool on one side, construction trucks on the back.

Reversible quilts are very tricky on a longarm. You can center something side to side (or top to bottom depending on how you load it on the frame), but the for the other two ends all you can do is guess. I have measured carefully along the edges to make the front and back line up exactly and it never works. I've always been at least an inch or two off because the the way the quilting draws in the fabric. I warned her that it was the case, and she opted to have it centered side to side and not worry too much about top to bottom.

I used Light Tan Glide on the front and Mocha Glide 60 on the back. The pantograph used is "Spoke Greek Key" from Urban Elementz.

Refugee Vintage/Antique Wedding Ring Quilt Pink, Scrappy

This vintage/antique quilt top was found and given to me to quilt and donate to the refugees by Dana. Each little piece was cut out by hand (before rotary cutters) and hand sewn. This was a challenge because of inconsistencies in the piecing. There were a lit of gathered areas which were impossible to entirely disguise in the quilting. Heavier quilting does a good job of pulling in fuller areas, but there was too much and therefore, some tucks. 

I used Glide Pink Lemonade thread on the top and MicroQuilter Baby Pink on the back.

I made a scrappy back from leftovers from another project.

Scrappy 4-Square Charity Quilt

This quilt was made from lots of leftover squares from other projects. I pieced the 4-squares as leaders while doing other sewing, then cut the white squares and asked my mother to finish it. The quilting is a mix of freehand and ruler work. I used white Glide and Glide 60 thread. 

 

Dorothy's Space Quilt

This lovely quilt was made by Dorothy as a gift for a family member.

 

I used the Stellar Pantograph from Urban Elementz (who asked for permission to possibly use my photos on their website for a promotion), and Glide and Glide 60 Military Gold Thread.

As always, Dorothy uses the leftover fabrics to make a scrappy back.

Quilt Preservation for Jordan

When Jordan's grandma passed away, she was gifted the quilt her grandma made and they had snuggled under at her house. The quilt was well loved and had small tears in old fabric as well as places the seams were separating. She asked me to repair it, originally wanting to patch over the worn fabric and make it useable again. After some thought, she decided she would rather it be preserved the way grandma had made it.

You see in the pictures above and below the types of repairs needed. Holes like the one above was pretty easy with a little hand stitching to fix the separation.

Worn fabric like the one above, took me more time to research the best way to preserve it. I was fortunate that my quilt guild had a guest speaker from the St. Louis Art Museum come to speak to us about textiles and how the museum cares for them. I was able to speak with her and she told me what she would do and how. I followed her directions.

Taking tulle, I cut a piece larger than the area to preserve.

I, then, carefully stitched it down.

After it was all stitched, I trimmed the tulle to slightly larger than the stitched area.

The same kind of thing for the binding. I covered the binding with tulle to prevent further fraying.

Some after photos.

And it is done and ready to return home, where it will be lovingly and carefully displayed.

 

Another I-Spy Raffle Quilt for Emmanuel

I mentioned a couple posts ago about how I'm involved with a local preschool. For a fundraiser, I made an I-Spy quilt to raffle off (and posted pictures). I had more t-shirts and more fabric, so I figured I'd make more to raffle off each year until I ran out of t-shirts. This is a second quilt, supposedly for the next fundraiser, but I got this quilt done the night before the raffle, so the winner got to choose which quilt they wanted. This one was chosen, so the first one will be raffled off next year.

I quilted this with white Glide thread with hearts and swirls on the t-shirt part. Swirls around the darker blue borders and diamond in the light blue border.

For the squares, I quilted a free-hand swish (for lack of a better word).

As I took a photo of the quilt, I noticed there was a stain in the top border. What?! So I used a new stain remover (bad idea, but I was in a hurry - Dad always said, "Lazy people work the hardest") and it took off some of the coloring. PANIC! My sister had the idea of patching over it, and after some brainstorming and more thought, I embroidered "I-Spy..." on left over blue fabric, cut to size,

and sewed it on carefully so it wouldn't be obvious that is was a patch.

With some white thread, I stitched a little of the quilted swirl onto the patch so it, again, would look less like a mistake and more like it was intentional. (The color is off a bit in the picture. The thread is white, not yellowish.)

In the end, many commented on how they liked the "I-Spy..." on there. 

Below is the Princess Castle back.

Emerald's Scrappy Rainbow Pinwheel Quilt for Charity

My sister, Emerald made this quilt top from scrap fabrics and designed the placement based on how many of each color she had.

I custom quilted it with white Glide thread on the top and white Glide 60 thread on the back.

I had some fun with the border, with some scallops and matchstick quilting to give texture and dimension.

The overall effect is lovely. The back is pictured below.

 

I-Spy Auction Quilt for Emmanuel

I am involved a lot with a preschool near me. As they were cleaning out the closets, they came across some T-shirts that were misprinted - the logo was on the back instead of the front. Those that were too big for the kids to use for art projects, I took home to make some I-Spy quilts to be auctioned at their big fundraiser. Here is the first one I made.

I quilted it with the pantograph, "Dear Heart" by Urban Elementz.

The back of the quilt is a navy blue fleece (color doesn't show right in the photo) and it has a scrappy binding. The finished size is somewhere around a small twin or large lap quilt.

Fat Quarters Twin Size Quilt for Charity - My Bingo Quilt

Last December, my quilt guild had a bingo night. Each person was to bring a fat quarter to participate and another fat quarter for each card you wanted to play. I have lots of fabric, so I went through my "to give away" fabric bin and quickly found 5 fat quarters I didn't want. I ended up with 4 cards (which was entirely too many). Four bingo games were played. The first 3 were won by people at the far table and jokes were made about it. The winners got to pick a fat quarter from the collection. The last game was a blackout round and I won. Yay! Oh wait. That means I got ALL THE REST of the fat quarters! I was trying to get rid of the fabric, not acquire more! 

As I sat down, one of the ladies at my table jokingly said I had to make a quilt with them by the next meeting. Over Christmas Break? I don't think so. However, I did make it and bring it to the February meeting. Though this didn't use up all the fat quarters, it did used most of them. I saved the black and white ones and the other few were used in another quilt made a month or two later. All of the big strips on front and back, as well as the colored border were from the winnings.

Here is the back where I used up the remainder of the strips as well as some leftover fabric from other charity quilt backs. The only fabric from my stash was the white binding and the white in the border.   

The quilting I did was my Baroque Filigree pantograph that I designed. I love what it adds to the quilt. NOTE: Each fat quarter was cut into 4 strips - 4.5" x 20.5" and then 5 strips were sewn together to make a 20.5"x20.5" block for the horizontal blocks, with a random number of strips vertically.