Bloggers Quilt Festival-Fall 2018 Edition

Hi there friends. I haven't participated in the festival in the past year or two. But I felt like I could do it this year. I decided to go back into time and select a quilt that I especially loved, that was part of a blog about some Christmas gifts from about 6 years ago.

I made this narrow bookshelf quilt for my son-in-law. At the time, he was working on his PhD. I am happy to say that since that time, he has completed his thesis and defended it and is now a Dr. of Literature. So maybe you can see why I chose this particular quilt for him.

I used a jelly roll of Basic Grey for the books. To me, each one looked like it could be the spine of a book and the width was perfect for this.

I used selvedges for the titles on the books. I remember going through all my fabrics, looking for names that looked like they could be book titles. That was fun, actually.

And then I put this sweet little typewriter on the bottom shelf. I know the scale isn't perfect, but to me, this says doctoral candidate.

This, to me, was the icing on the cake. I found this stitching pattern on line and knew for a wordsmith, it was perfect to be the top of the book shelf. I remember stitching and stitching to get this done so I could assemble the quilt. The lines from Edgar Allen Poe still get to me. I remember reading him in high school.

The background of the shelves was quilted to look like bead board. I was so happy with this finished product and My daughter hung it up for her sweet husband. They have moved several times since then so I am not sure where it resides right now, but I am going there soon to visit, so I think I will ask.
Have a lovely week and I will talk to you soon.
Linking up with Amy's Creative Side for the Fall Blogger's Quilt Festival. Go take a look at all the other beauties and visit the bloggers.https://www.amyscreativeside.com/

Blogger's Quilt Festival

I am so happy to have another chance to participate in this festival, hosted by Amy Ellis at Amy's Creative Side. I love seeing all the beautiful quilts every year and it is so inspiring to me. Here is my entry for the small quilts category this year.

 I made this quilt a number of years ago. I have never blogged about it. It hangs by (gasp) push pins in my bedroom and has for over 10 years. I had a difficult time getting pictures where the colors were true to life.

 This is the closest to true colors for this quilt. The fabrics were all purchased at my LQS, which sadly is closing this year after 23 years in business. I remember that all the fabrics were purchased to match with the leaf print.

 This is a shot of the back so you can hopefully see the hand quilting. This was done back when I only knew how to hand quilt. The quilting lines were marked by tracing around a jar lid with a white colored pencil. I would mark a few and quilt them, and then mark a few more.

 I took the quilt outside where it is cloudy, to try and get a better color representation. It is still kind of off. When I made this quilt, I was still pretty new to quilting.

 I feel like I have talent, sure, but a lot of luck went into my early quilts. This is still a favorite one.

The colors here are a little bit better. The quilt pattern is called Milky Way. The fabrics are a mystery, sorry. The quilt measures 120 inches around, so 30 x 30. Thanks for stopping by.

Blogger's Quilt Festival Time

I love looking at all the quilts in the Blogger's Quilt Festival that Amy Ellis puts on twice a year. I though a lot about which quilt to show off this time. I have made many quilts this year, but the one I am in love with the most is of my own design. I made it for a blog hop last spring and I still love it so much. I keep it close to my chair, now that the fall weather has cooled things down.

 I started out with these, and then sorted them into dark, medium and low values, just by my eye's perception.

 And then I laid them all out. I have long wanted a red and white quilt, but the design always halted me. What to do? This was just what I wanted.

 I made my own gingham picnic quilt. This was a lot of 3 inch squares to sew together and keep straight.

 And to hold them all together I used a black and white stripe. The perfect frame for it all.

 I love the way the sun and trees dapple the shadows on it here.

 The backing I have had for years and this is the perfect use for it. Now it can be a beach quilt too. And it did go to the beach this summer with us.

The text print was my "white" for this project. Many of these fabrics have been in my stash for awhile. I love this quilt!
Quilt size is approximately 55 x 60 inches.

Blogger's Quilt Festival-Number 2

I decided to enter another quilt into the festival under Art Quilts. This one is not really a ROYGBIV, since the color pallet is limited. This is made from a jelly roll of Kona solids in the Sunrise colorway.

First, I took the jelly roll strips and I sewed them together in the order they were in the roll. It really does look just like a sunrise. I trimmed the edges off and then embroidered a dandelion in a dark grey floss. I decided that black would be too harsh.

 After I finished with the embroidery, I got it ready to quilt. I wanted the quilting to enhance the feeling I was trying to get in this quilt.

                So I quilted the breeze blowing the dandelion off into the sunrise.

   And I quilted the rays of the sunrise as it came up over the horizon in all its splendor.

 And after binding in dark grey, I took it to the park on a glorious morning and tried to get photos that included the deep blue of the sky. I tried clothes pinning it to a fence...

...and throwing it over a big rock. But that cut off the top of the quilt. It's hard when you have no one to help. Anyway, I hope you like it. My daughter did and now it hangs in her front entryway.

Blogger's Quilt Festival-Spring 2014

Life has been a bit busy here, and I wasn't sure I would be back in time to post and enter the festival this year. Happily, I am. I have given lots of thought to which quilt to post about. I decided to show the quilt I made a few years ago for my sister, Nina. I like sharing quilts that have a story, and this one certainly does.

 First of all, my sister lives in California and I live in North Carolina. She bought a quilt for her bed that she loved. But when it needed to be cleaned, she took it to the cleaners. When she got it back, all the fabrics were faded and she was crushed! I wish she had asked me how to clean it. So, I did what any quilter would do, I offered to make her a new one. This is a huge quilt. It is pictured on my bed here, which is a Queen. My sister has a King.

 I tried to make a quilt similar to what she had in style. The center had a similar checkerboard style piece. My  sister gave me a list of colors and the cash to buy fabrics. I photographed all the fabrics and emailed them to her for approval before I cut anything. I do not always prewash fabrics, but I did with these due to the deep colors in them.

 The original quilt had some vines and some flowers going all around it. I had never done this before, but I used this as the perfect time to give it a go. I made my bias tape for the vines and cut out hundreds of little leaves. I used a fusible web to attach them and then zigzagged around each leaf to secure it.

 This pattern came from a book, and I don't remember which one, unfortunately, but it is called Pomegranates and Pumpkins. These are also fused and zigzagged onto the quilt top.

 My sister wanted the quilt to be large enough to have overhang and also long enough to cover the pillows on the bed. I added more checkerboard to the top, and then a plain muslin to the top of that, to accomplish this. The outer border is more squares of muslin alternated with colors.

 There is a pumpkin appliqued on each corner of the quilt. This quilt is so large, that I didn't want to quilt the whole thing on my Bernina, which was brand new at the time. What  I did was to quilt it in pieces, and then attach the pieces to each other, carefully butting the batting up against each piece. Any overlap of batting makes for lumps in the finished quilt.

 I wish I could remember how long this quilt took me to make, but I think it was about 3-4 months of steady work. I don't think I worked on much else during this time period. All the fabrics were bought here at my LQS. I know it is hard to see, but they are tone on tone prints and a batik that I used in the applique.

 All the pictures were taken with my old camera, which has since died and been replaced. It was hard to get a shot of the whole thing and I wasn't blogging at the time I made this, so it never occurred to me to take it outside and take the pictures. Most of these I took to send to my sister to show her the progress on the quilt.

She paid for all the fabric, and the rest was a labor of love, plus a great learning experience for me. The white fabric is unbleached muslin. This quilt measured over 100 inches on each side, the largest quilt I have ever made. When my sister and her husband received the quilt, they could only say "Wow!" They loved it. Sadly, my sister has Alzheimer's now, and is in a home. But it warms my heart to know that this quilt gave her such joy and love for a few years.

Blogger's Quilt Festival Time!

I love this Festival and I start by saying Thank you to Amy for doing this twice a year. I know it is a lot of work! The chance to show and see so many great quilts is amazing.

I have shown this quilt before, but I have been thinking a lot about it and the experience of making it, and I wanted to revisit that, so that is why I have chosen this one to share here.  This quilt is from my Sunday Morning Quilts Bee. We help each other make quilts from the book by Amanda Jean Nyberg and Cheryl Arkison.

 When I first got the book and went through it, I fell for the Gumdrops quilt. So different and so cute. I had to have one. When I started the bee, I kept thinking about it. During year 1 we made slab blocks in different colorways and swapped them. During year 2, we started making the quilts.  I changed the colorway of the quilt for my version.

 This was so very different from the slab blocks. We had to take our chosen quilt and figure out how to break it down to assign "blocks" to be made for us. That part was fairly easy, each quilter could make me one strip. I figured it out, made one, posted pictures of the process I used, along with directions.

 When I started getting them back, they were great, but I quickly noticed the variation in each quilter's work. How different some of them were. I was so grateful to these quilters for their work, but it pushed me as a quilter too, to figure out how to make this work.

 Some rows were too short, some rows were too long. Some rows had tall gumdrops, some were very short. I soon embraced the differences and assembled my quilt top. If you notice, up on the top left, there is a big, white spot. Rather than make a small couple of pieces to fit there, I just added some white to those rows. This is not a show piece, it is just for me to love and enjoy.  And I do.

 I also took two of the strips that were batiks, beautiful but way different than the others, and made a pillow to go with the quilt. I love the way the pillow turned out.

I am going to do a third year of this bee, and I have learned so much from these women. Everyone interprets things differently and it is always fascinating to see the creativity of various quilters on the same project. As a quilter, it stretches us to be able to assemble what we are sent and make the completed quilt. And it doesn't always turn out the way we imagine in the beginning, but it will certainly be a beautiful quilt all the same.

Blogger's Quilt Festival

It is that fun time again, for the Blogger's Quilt Festival, hosted by Amy Ellis from Amy's Creative Side.  This is such a great opportunity to share tons of great quilts made by quilters around the world. I love seeing all the creativity.  So without further ado, here is my submission:

It all started with the book, Sunday Morning Quilts. That book really struck me in a way no other quilting book has in a long time. I read it and reread it many times thinking how wonderful to make some of these quilts. Then, I thought even better, get some help from others by starting a Bee. I asked Cheryl and Amanda Jean for permission to name the Bee, Sunday Morning Quilts Bee. They were very gracious and said yes. This quilt is from the blocks made during round one of our bee. (SMQ bee is now in round 2)

For round one we made slabs in a particular colorway and swapped with each other until we all had all the colors of the rainbow, plus pink.  All made from scraps.  I took my 14 blocks and made 2 more in aqua for an even 16.  I worked to find a pleasing arrangement and bordered it with Kona white.

The back is a two fabrics from a Benartex line called Floralicious that I bought quite some time ago. I was originally going to make curtains from it, but when I need a back for this colorful quilt, I knew this was it.

I quilted it all over with flowers in the style of the backing print. It was such fun! The borders have pebbles in 3 corners with wavy lines representing water, running in between. The 4th corner has clouds and rain drops falling from them. Just a bit more fun for me.

I chose to enter in the Bee category, since all my blocks were made by my Bee mates.  I hope you enjoy it.  The statistics: Made mostly by me, quilted by me, approximately 58x58.