A Happy Anniversary Quilt

I finished an anniversary quilt a few weeks ago, for my daughter and son-in-law. Their anniversary isn't until October 1, but I couldn't wait any longer, so I gave it to them this weekend. What can I say, I get excited when I finish a project and it was a secret for so long already. So, this is what I did.

When they were married, 5 years ago, I made 100 cloth napkins in sets of 4, 6 and one set of 8, for the wedding reception. The plan was that later, they would use them at home. And use them, they did. Awhile back she gave me all the scrap fabrics she had from those napkins and it sat here for over a year until I got the idea to use it for a quilt for their anniversary.

 I wanted to do triangles. I have long wanted to make a quilt of triangles. I had such a variety of amounts here, once I cut out all the triagles, I had to find a way to make it look good, and random.

 So I stared rearranging them on the wall as hexagons in color groups that looked good to me.

 And I just kept on moving them around until I had used almost all of the triangles.

 This is the final arrangement on the design wall, all sewn together before quilting.

                     And this extra wide fun fabric is the backing!

 The top and bottom are straight lines, but I decided not to cut off the side angles to make it straight. Instead, I let them swerve in and out along the sides.

 I found enough solid green in a couple of colorways in my stash to do the binding. I made a bias binding to help ease in the indents and curve around the hills and corners. It's not perfect, but it works.

 My daughter commented that those napkins are so faded now from all the washing over the last five years, but these are so bright, just like the original fabrics.

 I love the way this turned out so much, and it will be a constant reminder to them of that happy day.

The colors will stay bright longer, since it won't be washed as much, and no one will be wiping their mouth on it. :)  Talk to you soon.

Summer Solstice-All Together

This is the next phase of the Simmer Solstice QAL. Where we put all the blocks together. For me, that meant only 4 blocks. 4 very large blocks. Each block is 40 inches square to make a queen size quilt for my bed.

This is one of the blocks. I love the size because it helps to show off the Mendocino prints that I love so very much.

 Next I laid it out on the bed to see how I liked it with the sashing, as in this picture.

 Or maybe without the sashing as in this picture. After discussing it with my husband and getting my daughter's opinion, I decided without.

Omalley's opinion is that either way, it will be a cozy quilt to sleep both on and under. So, yay!

 So, the assignment was to sew all the blocks together. My problem with that was, I wanted to quilt each block separately, and then attach them to one another. I couldn't see fighting all that fabric to quilt it on my Bernina. I had a specific quilting motif in mind.

 So I decided to do it my way and see if I could still meet the deadline. And the answer is yes!

 I love the secondary design that putting the blocks side by side gives this quilt. I quilted it in Aurifil 40 weight thread in a hot pink color.

 It's a little hard to see here, both indoor and outdoor shots, but it looks great against the grey background.

 I am pretty happy with it. I am planning to take the sashing strips and put a grey border all the way around the quilt and quilt it with waves, cause, you know, mermaids and fish?

 The points meet up pretty well and now I have to decide on a back. I am thinking of buying some extra wide backing fabric. I love how easy that makes a large quilt to finish.

 I will still have a bit of wrestling to do with this baby. I need to quilt the centers of all those squares still. I am thinking on how I want to do it.

 When it's done, I will be back to show off the final pictures to you. The parade of finished quilts may come before I get done, but if so, I'm okay with that. This baby is so close, I know I will go on to finish it.

Thanks for reading to the end. Thanks to Melissa for a great quilt along. I have loved every minute.
Talk to you soon.

How I Write a Blog Post

I don't know how you do it, but when I write a post, especially if I have  nothing specific that I want/need to share, I flip through my photos and see what I can cobble together to make up a blog post. This most often happens when I am in between projects or just noodling around with small projects. Like now.

So here is what I have to share with you today:

 This was just some noodling around with shapes and applique and color. I like it and am going to quilt it as soon as I figure out how I want to do that.

 These leaf shapes are still floating around in my collection of WIPs. I left them with my daughter to see if she could find a cool way to arrange them. I am stumped right now.

 This chunk of extra wide backing fabric is on the back of a secret sewing project. Once it is gifted I will post about the front.

 Wanted to make a strawberry. Just one. I have been doing lots of straight line quilting lately.

 Small feather wall hanging for daughter number 2. She requested a few small wall hanging size quilts for her home. Fall colors are her favorites and she picked these out.

One more small wall hanging for the same daughter. Just finished, not quilted yet. I have to look at it for awhile before I know how it needs to be quilted. Any suggestions?

So, that's what I am working on here, along with a bunch of other things. Talk to you soon.

Summer Solstice Progress

The Summer Solstice QAL is progressing quite nicely from here. I still have one week to go and only one block left to assemble and it's almost finished!

 These are the 40 inch blocks. I am making 4 of them to make a queen size quilt for my bed. I love that they are so big and show the prints so well. I have never done big blocks before.

This one is on the design wall still. Partially assembled, but it will be finished by the end of the day, I'm sure. So glad I joined Melissa at Happy Quilting for this.

Pets on Quilts

I have never gotten around to participating in the Pets on Quilts blog hop that Snoodles does every year, although I have gone and looked at all those adorable pets and their quilts. Such talent in these quilts and the animals are adorable. I have a quilt inspector named Omalley, after Omalley the alley cat in the Disney movie Aristocats. He is an old man now. He is 16 years old. He has been a part of our family since my daughter adopted him as a baby. Here are some pictures of him doing his job:

 This is my favorite place to sleep, especially in the winter. Lots of pillows and quilts and mom even puts a heating pad under the quilt to keep me warm. These old bones get quite chilled in the winter, you know.

                 I know mom wants to get this quilted, but it is already pretty cozy.

                           What? You need me to move? Now?

 When she won't let me lie on the work in progress, I sit here in her quilting room on the sewing machine cover. It's quilted too.

 I love the bed in winter. It usually has several layers of quilts on it for  extra coziness.

                       And now I lay me down to sleep...
Thanks to Snoodles and Dragondrop and Padsworth. This was fun. Lily Pad Quilting

Summer Sunday

I have a couple of finishes today and an update on the Summer Solstice QAL I am participating in. First, the finishes.

 This is a wedding gift for some friends that I couldn't show until I was finally able to deliver it to them. I know it is hard to see, but it is a tree, stitched on Kona snow. I added the butterflies because my friend loves butterflies.

 I went back over the white stitching with a light grey to enhance it a bit and added this sweet little heart to the trunk of the tree.

 I love the blue butterflies. I didn't have any kind of fabric to make them more iridescent.

 Needless to say it was very well received, so I am pretty happy about it too.

 Then I had another secret project. After my sister's quilt went missing, I decided to make version 2.0 in a mini to give to my other sister. These are all the tiny leaves I cut out for it.

And this is the finished top hanging on my design wall. I have since quilted it and gifted it, but apparently I forgot to take any more pictures of it. It is roughly 38 inches square.

 These are the pictures of my Drunkards path blocks for the Quilt Along. I am so happy I am making the 40 inch square blocks. I can't imagine how much longer it would have taken me to finish.

 Plus, these are bigger and I suspect the curves easier to sew together. I did one practice block and then tackled the rest over two days after work. I starte a week late on this installation due to vacation.

 But I am all caught up and looking forward to beginning the assembly of the blocks. This is going to be a great quilt I think. Talk to you soon.

Eight Years Later...A Finish

Well, this quilt certainly has a story to go with it. I started it about 8 years ago, when I had a denim couch. I have always been a blue jeans girl, and I loved this denim couch. It was great for having with kids and grand kids. The covers all came off and went into the wash, going back tight and great fitting as jeans do. So I wanted to make a quilt that matched it as soon as I found the perfect fabric at my LQS.

 They are all batiks, which I don't use much even though there are so many beautiful ones out there. I pieced it fairly quickly, but got hung up on the quilting. I started out hand quilting it. I used to do a lot of my quilts that way. But it is slow. And it went to the back of the line.

 This is the part that got machine quilted a few weeks ago just so I could get this thing done.

 There were a few centers that were hand quilted like this, but I couldn't find the stencil I used back when I started. So I made a choice to go in another direction.

 All the small squares are hand quilted and the stitches are of varying lengths. My abilities have changed some over the years.

 The back I love. It is an older Heather Baily print that I bought because the colors matched the front pretty well. The outside borders are a dark blue marbled fabric.

 I love that it is done. The colors are just so delicious. I still love them after all this time.

 This quilt would have looked great on that denim couch. But alas, the couch is no more. One of the kids took it and has since gotten rid of it. I love my new couch, but I will never forget the old denim couch.

                        This quilt will always remind me.

And one more small miracle, while wondering what to bind it with, and searching for something else at the time, I found about a yard of the coral batik. Perfect. Just perfect.

And it looks pretty good on the new couch too. Another happy ending for one of my quilts. Talk to you soon.