Design Wall Monday...but it's Tuesday today!

Here's what's on my design wall.  These will be the final gifts to  our advent friends, so I need to get them done by January 8th.  Mother and daughter scrappy trips quilts from November block lotto winnings!

I've been busy!

I've been very busy.  My quilts quilted on the Tin Lizzie now number sixty-one! 11 of those were included in my Christmas gifting!

1st gift quilt is and ABC quilt for granddaughter Serenity.  I quilted the letters of the alphabet in the blocks adjoining pictures depicting things that start with each letter.

The backing is a pretty floral from the stash.

Next up is a quilt for my sister, Mary.
This is made from winning of the September 2011 block lotto. Batik Curvy Rail blocks.  Quilted in an all-over freehand design I'm calling "Sun Swirl Meander "

Back of Mary's quilt also from the stash.

Next a quillow for Mimi.
I used liberated astar block which I also won in the block lotto.  These have been aging for over a year.   Bright green sashings of different sizes horizontally and vertically and rectangular red cornerstones finished by a fun border fabric and red binding.

The quilting shows really well on the dark green corduroy backing.  I quilted a freehand ribbon-flower meander.  the pillow panel is made fro a cotton velour.  A very comfy-cozy quillow. Mimi loves it!

A quillow for Katy.  WHen she told me she wanted a new quillow  I decided I could find blocks in the UFO stash that would work.  First I found 15 Swapper's Star blocks that I swapped several years ago.  Not enough for a quilt top, but if I made 2 more and did alternate blocks..hmmm...could work.  Then I found a bag of forgotten swapped 9-patch blocks in the same size as the stars.  Surely from the 100 or so 9-patches I could find 18 that would work with the stars.  I think I did! Floral border (aqnd backing) from the extensive floral stash at the guest house.  This quilt came together in just a few days.  I quilted with a funky feather meander allover design.

Here it is folded into a pillow.  I used another 9 patch and border fabric to make the pillow panel.

Next I quilted six quilt tops Mom had made to be donated to a veteran's center. I only took picture of 5 of them.  This one is outline quilted on the appliqued picture, meandered in the background and a simply feather type border.

This one has star centered fan quilting.

Outlined the Eagles and ribbon candy in the border.

Outlined the flag and the rest is allover paisley echo freehand.

Back of the above.

Back of the following.  The quilting really shows up well on this.  I did a fairly detailed outlining of the center panel, a swirl centered fan freehand, and a simple feather border.

Front of  the above.
I also quilted one more for Mom,  but failed to take  a picture.

Last quilt is Johnny's.  I asked him his favorite color: green.    Found a large piece of green I thought he would like in the stash and used it for backing, binding, and the main diagonal of Scrappy Trips Blocks from Bonnie Hunter's website.

I quilted with a freehand swirl centered fan design.  i love the texture fan quilting gives to a quilt.

In addition to the quilts I made 4 scarves, 3 skirts, 2 aprons (cooking and woodworking) , a fabric journal cover, a pair of pajamas and an apple crumb pie...No pictures of any of those...

5 more quilted in 3 days time...

Mom brought me 4 quilts Monday that needed quilting. Three of them had been

pillowcased and turned and I said I could try to put them on the longarm to quilt rather than tying them. The first one i just did a quick meander, and it turned out okay,

so the next 2 I did "in the ditch" quilting....but not really a ditch as they were cheater panels not pieced tops

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They turned out pretty nice, and will be going to the KC Ladies auxilary for their charities. The 4th was a panel and I had to piece together the batting.

I quilted and bound it... Note to self and anyone else who might care...printed checks should not be cut WOF for binding strips if you want the checks to line up right. note the twisted look because the checks are crooked.

Then I decided to quilt one of mine for Community projects.

The fun thing is the binding...Mom brought me a baggie with some bindings in it and one was the leftover binding from when I made Katy's hearts and chains quilt (appliqued hearts set in an Irish Chain)with a scalloped edge 13 years ago...narrow bias binding , but the colors worked. I usually like darker binding but the pink and purple theme was a bit dark and the binding was pink and purple as well. I quilted a freehand flowers and ribbons design.

I think the binding looks better with the back of the quilt than the top..

I think I have 5 left to quilt for community projects and another 5 or so for Sunshine. Guess I'll be busy. But I have NAQG board meeting Monday, KC Ladies Auxillary meeting Tuesday, girls to the dentist Tuesday, and boys to the dentist Thursday (different dentists). And Denny is working days for the next couple of months so he won't be doing school with the kids....but maybe I can have him take them to R.E Wednesday evening so I can just stay home!

A quilt for Kayla

I thought I would work on the Block Lotto October sneak peek blocks, but on Sunday my husband mentioned a girl who works with  Katy,  whom he had been visiting with a while back and discovered that she had no memories of birthday gifts growing up, except one time she was given a comb.  She has had a hard life.  Anyway he thought it would be nice to give her a gift for her birthday, which is tomorrow.  My thoughts immediately went to a quilt as a gift.  I remembered I still had some of the Sept. 2007 lotto blocks I had won...pink/ purple Ohio Stars.  Katy  said Kayla would like pink.  I also had border fabric in mind with pink flowers and birds on it and Katy said Kayla like animals, so I decided I would do it.  From the start this quilt has just been meant to be. I pulled out the blocks and the border fabric and decided a green sashing would be best.  Right on top of my greens was the perfect green with white dots...enough for sashings and binding.  Then I found a scrap of a pink that was great for the cornerstones.  By bedtime Sunday it was all cut and up on the design wall.  Monday was community quilting day for guild so I was gone most of the day, but I sewed after I came home in the evening and had it all sewn together but the top and bottom borders.  The border fabric is a standard 44" width.  Being a very directional print and fairly large at that, and the quilt being 62" wide I needed to piece the fabric for those borders. I wanted to match the designs in the fabric.  Amazingly it went together perfectly on the first try.....the seam runs right down the center in each of these pictures of the border.

Tuesday morning I attached the borders and found fabric and pieced the backing.  I mounted it on the longarm and started quilting.  I could have done a simple allover meander, but decided the the large simple blocks and sashings really needed a bock by block quilting.  I meandered the border, did a heart chain in the sashings, heart in the cornerstones, and hearts in the start parts with straight line quilting in the background.  It turned out quite nicely!

I went ahead and bound and labeled that last quilt for Community Projects....after I had quilted, bound and labeled this one that Mom left for me to do last week.

I have more tops waiting...2 from Mom and a crumb quilt I made last weekend are all ready to go except I need to cut batting.  I think I can get 4 smallish quilts out of the one king size W&N batting I have, but I'm just not sure I want to cut it up.  Wal-Mart isn't carrying the cotton batting anymore...at least it hasn't been in the store when I have checked lately.  And I haven't been seeing king size poly batting either.  I really need to just bite the bullet and buy a roll of 96" wide cotton batting like we get for the guild community projects.

Mimi express a liking and desire for a crumb block quilt when she moves out and gets a full size bed after seeing this crumb quilt top I made last weekend.  So I am sewing crumb blocks since the scrap drawer was getting too full anyway and I have no other projects lined up that I have to be working on.  

More Quilts...

Since my last post I have quilted 4 quilts. One for Habitat House, one for Sharon N., one to enter in the County Fair, and one for NAQG community projects. I have had the one for Habitat for a few months and have been procrastinating. It is a BIG quilt 102x 90, and had a n applique design on the border. I could not get inspired with an idea of how to quilt it, so I just didn't even try. I finally decided I had to get it done and pulled it out and draped it over the rails of the quilting machine and waited for an idea. It didn't take long before the quilt "spoke" to me and said to take off the applique. Once I did that it was clear how I needed to quilt it. It was great practice as I did the same freehand design in 120 triangles!

The next I did was for Sharon N. She said she would pay me to practice on it. She really did not like how the top had turned out and thought she would just donate it when it was finished. It was another case of the quilting making the quilt , because she was thrilled with how it looked when I was done with it. I had thought I would do meandering feathers and actually did start out with those, but it quickly became apparent to me that was the wrong thing. So I spent 2 hours ripping out what I had done.and then let it rest overnight and thought about it. I also asked Denny for ideas, and ended up somewhat following his suggestion.

Next I decided I ought to enter a quilt in the Cleveland County Fair. I had a top and back Just waiting to be quilted, so I thought why not. I was impressed with how it turned out, and apparently the judges at the Fair were too. It won a 1st place ribbon!

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Last one i did is for NAQG Community projects. I wanted to quilt this one because it was so nice and the backing fabric is gorgeous! I did a leaves, loops and ribbons meander.

I've been busy and sick....

I had a busy week getting ready for the KC's garage sale and then I was home sick Saturday, the day of the sale. Something hit me with a fever, achy, sensitive skin (fan blowing on me hurt!), and diarrhea. But I did get another quilt on the machine early in the week and got it quilted Friday evening before I started feeling bad. This one is for NAQG community projects. I didn't make the top, just brought it home to make the backing, quilt, label and bind. Yesterday I was too miserable to bind it. But I got it done today...going a bit stir crazy with nothing to do but feel bad! I hope this quilt cheers up a child in need. I quilted with chained spirals.

Another being paid forward

This one is made from another set of Lotto blocks. Theses were called Stacks as they look rather like a stack of books. Rather than making a strippie, Chinese Coins type of setting I alternated the way the blocks were turned and added a simple, narrow white border. I quilted it with a linked spiral pattern. Then I used up bits of leftover binding for a scrappy finish. My niece Claire signed up on my pay it forward post and I will be sending this one to her.