One of my old quilts - Waterwheels

This quilt was finished in the year 1995. The quilt guild in Dubuque, Iowa, had a color challenge. My color was peach. My first thought when I saw the color written on the little piece of paper was, "I don't have any fabric that's peach!" Guess what? I found 20 plus pieces of fabric on the shelves that were light peach and on into some pretty rusts.

As always, I had no idea where this quilt was going nor what size it would end up. Believe it or not, the guild had put a size limitation on the challenge and I ended up being a couple of inches too long. No, they didn't disqualify me but for a minute, I thought they might!

54" x 63"

This quilt was designed on graph paper, the greens are all one fabric, it's just the peach and rust that is made up of multiple fabrics. This quilt "talked" to me more than most of my quilts.  I had marked the quilting in the solid border with a water soluble pen in a completely different design. The next morning the quilt said, "No, I don't like what you have marked on me." So I got out a wet wash cloth and blotted all the lines out, waited for it to dry, and remarked this design.

Center upper left corner.

Center lower right corner.

This quilt was made back in the days when I still did the little hand stitches. Today, it just the Big Stitch for me.

This quilt had been hanging in my dining room but I did some rearranging lately and my fabric cupboard have moved into that spot. I figured it was about time the quilt got washed and while it was still flat with no wrinkles, a good time for a picture.



Shhh! It's a Christmas present so no telling!

This summer I had a friend in the shop wanting Fossil Fern flannel from Benartex. She wanted it for backing fabrics and since she was taking over half the bolt I special ordered for her. Add to that, the fact that I have a grandson going to a college that has red and gold for their school colors, my mind went to work on what I could make that would be easy and fast.

Then, there is that box of denim that has been in the basement for what seems like forever and was I ever going to use it for something? Seems to me I had the necessary ingredients for that easy and fast quilt I wanted to make.

45" x 81"

This quilt is intended to be put in the trunk of his car and can be used for eating McDonald's in the park or sitting on to watch a band concert on the lawn. It's nothing special, just two pieces of fabric, one flannel 10" square and one denim 9" square sewn together. Then sew the blocks together using only the flannel pieces, press the seam open and sew down. I used the serpentine stick on my sewing machine. I made the 5 long rows first. Then sewed the rows together, pressing and stitching the flannel down as I went.

As I stated earlier, I wanted an easy and fast project. No spending hours here with scissors in hand trying to cut all those seam allowances for a rag quilt. I have better ways to spend my time.

Doll Quilts

For a few or maybe some years, I have been subscribing to Benartex's Fat Quarterly magazine (club), not sure exactly what it is called but I love it. What they do is send a little 8 page magazine plus 5" squares of one of their new fabric lines that have come out. You get this 4 times a year. I love getting fabric in the mail, always have.

Most of the time I fondle the fabrics for a while and then end up setting them aside. After a while they go into (another) scappy hexagon flower quilt that I have going.

The last set of fabrics I received with my Fat Quarterly magazine were a set of batiks. Now, as a hand quilter, I don't use batiks in my quilts so these got set on the sewing desk in a stack of other things. When I came across them a few days ago I made the decision that they would work for a doll quilt.

22" x 27"

I think it worked out pretty good.

Kona Bay Scrap Bag

A few months back I bought a Kona Bay scrap bag. I really enjoy buying the unknown. Also, I have come to realize that I like a challenge. (Side note: Some of my best quilts have been fabric challenges from the different guilds I belong to.) When sorting the fabrics in the bag I came across some pieces that were more like drapery fabrics so I set them aside (on my sewing desk, of course) to deal with later, meaning, trying to find somewhere else to put them.

Well, the other day I decided that the best way to deal with them was to make a baby quilt top and donate it to a guild. I had 6 different pieces of varying sizes. Mentally I was thinking of making 12" finished squares out of them and just sew them together. Right! First thing I did was to cut the first one at 12" now making the blocks finish at 11.5". Then, one of the smaller pieces wasn't big enough to cut a 12" square so I cut it at 9". Then I started doing some math and figured this wasn't going to work out well.

In the end I cut large squares and small squares out of what was left, I had the medium squares so I cut strips to make the medium squares large squares. I know, I know, I am so capable of mixing myself up but in the end I had a baby quilt, i.e., a very funky baby quilt.

33" x 39"

I really like flowers (on fabric, please note, I am not a gardener) and these large Hawaiian type prints make me smile. I hope someone will be pleased.

Yes, daughters, I can see you rolling your eyes!

2011 MAQ guild BOM

I've made the decision to unclutter my life, I have too much "stuff" laying around on my sewing desk. No room left to work! So, I pulled out the box with the Maquoketa guild Block of the Month to see how far behind I was. It looked like two or maybe three months. I had the directions for two of the blocks so I decided to make one block of each to give to the guild. I didn't want to take the time to make a set for myself.

Then I started thinking, did I really want to make this quilt for myself? The answer turned out to be NO. So the decision was made to not make any more of the blocks and to give the guild the other set that I had made for myself. The guild gets 16 blocks total and I have an empty box. Wonderful!

JoQuilter Fabrics BOM

Let's go back to Sunday, October 3, 2010. That was the post that I showed my JoQuilter Fabrics Block of the Month blocks laid out on the floor. One of the things I worked on this past month was how to make that quilt longer. I had an idea in my mind for a while, but the "box" it was packed into never came up on the rotation. Finally, it did and I put my idea to work.

What I am going to show you today is what I did with the scrappy blocks I used to test the patterns. The BOM was done using Pat Speth (the Nickel Quilts lady) BOM patterns. Since I had never used any of her patterns before, I figured I should "test" each block with scraps before I started in on my real quilt. I did this for 6 months and, by then, figured the lady knew what she was doing.

When I got my quilt done, I used some leftover blocks for a small quilt. Then while digging to the bottom of the box, I found the 6 scrappy blocks. I decided to put them to good use by making a charity baby quilt top.

36" x 44"

This is the result. Nothing special but a finished baby quilt top. I will be giving this to one of the guilds charity groups to finish and give away. I am trying hard to make the decision that I do not have to finish everything I've started. It's a hard concept but I think I will learn.

In a couple of days I hope to have pictures of the BOM quilt and the little quilt from the extras.

Driving in Style

At the end of July I bought myself a new car. It's the first car I have ever picked out all by myself and was able to buy exactly what I wanted.

Then, with the help of my best friend Lorinda and a company called PrimoWrap in Dubuque, we decorated my new car.

I have gotten loads of great comments from people, including being told my car was "sexy".

Pictures were taken by Joan T. on a fun trip to Galena.

And, yes, the quilts are actual quilts that I have made/own.

Pineapple Chunks

I have been feeling very overwhelmed lately, so I did what I do best, I started another project!

A couple of months ago I saw an ad for Gyleen Fitzgerald's book, "Trash to Treasure Pineapple quilts". It sounded intriguing and it had a scrappy pineapple block on the front. So I bought the book and the special ruler.

Now you must understand that I already own 10-12 specialty rulers that I have never used, so I am asking myself, "why am I buying another one!"

Then I joined Gyleen's facebook page. Then she said she was having a Pineapple Chunk Challenge. 

Here are my first 9 blocks. And it may be the last 9 blocks.

Hexagon Black Diamond Quilt

For those of you going to the AQS Show in Des Moines, Iowa. Stop by and say "Hi" to my Hexagon quilt. The show opens on Wednesday, September 28 and closes on Saturday, October 1.

Each full diamond is made with 49 scrappy hexagons, all just leftovers from other projects or cut from my stash. The exact number of hexagons are written on the quilt label, as I recall it is in the vicinity of 4,900 and some. When I started this, I didn't think that it would ever get finished, it was just something to work on when I was visiting my mother in the nursing home, or at guild meetings, or waiting at the doctors office. Start to finish, the hand piecing took about 7 years, then it got set aside for a while. The hand quilting took about 10 months. I named the quilt, "Why do people think I'm crazy?" Do you agree?

New Roof

I was thoroughly entertained for a couple of weeks by watching a new roof being put on the gazebo across the street. They were putting on wooden shingles, that's what had been on it before. And yes, you could see there feet slipping at times as they walked across it. Mostly they were careful.

What I was really looking forward to was watching them put the tin and wooden topper back on.

Then I got distracted for 15 minutes. Next time I looked the topper was on and the guys were packing up to leave.