Sunflower Basket

This cute little quilt was started about six or seven years ago in a guild workshop. The technique was using a lightweight interfacing with the squares marked on it so you just bonded the squares to the interfacing, sew on the lines, clip the seams and you were finished. Worked pretty well, actually, but for some reason it took me about 3 years to add borders and another couple of years to finally quilt it. But now it is FINISHED!!! Another to check off my list.

After 30 years of quilting you'd think I could make a quilt without a 'learning experience' but that has not happened yet. What I learned on this quilt is that by using the interfacing technique, your seam intersections are a little thick and when quilting, I had to be sure not to cross over the intersections or I was making lots of tiny stitches in the same spot. I think it might just be easier to sew the squares without the interfacing next time.

All Seasons Garden Quilt

This quilt was designed by Mary Mashuta and is in the book Kaffe Fassett's Quilt Road. There's just something about the lotus leaf fabrics (the strip panels) that drew me in from the beginning and I think I may have some of all the different colorways. I'm pretty fond of the zinnias in the border also. Some of these fabrics are used in the quilt on our bed so I thought this would be a great wallhanging to complement the bed quilt.

Here is a close-up view, showing the baptist fan pattern with a taupe thread, so as not to take away from the gorgeous fabrics. It blended in well with all the colors.

Colorplay 3 - Finished!!

Colorplay 3 is now finished......binding, sleeve and all!! Yeah! I enjoyed the process but am now ready to move on to some more projects, like UFOs and new ideas!

Here are a couple of close-up photos. I used a swirly design with a variegated thread to calm the sharp straight lines in the quilt.

The backing is a Picasso print I bought in the early nineties. Now how's that for stashbusting?? The colors went perfect though and I had just the right amount which is unusual since I don't buy large pieces of fabric often.

More UFOs being finished daily!!

Animals Alphabet Baby Quilt

Here is another baby quilt I made recently. It seems that baby quilts are my most popular this year! This is the Yellow Brick Road pattern with the cutest little animals and the alphabet in the border and on some of the blocks. The colors were chosen to match the decor of the nursery - another great nephew coming very soon!!

Here is a close-up view of the blocks, quilted with the pantograph 'hurricane'- fun and easy spirals.

I am Dear Jane Challenged!!

To make a long story short, I began the Dear Jane quilt several years ago. I guess just the challenge of making a quilt with 225 blocks and triangle blocks on the borders and the fact that Jane did it during the Civil War all by hand and hers had 5602 pieces in it, challenged me. When the EQ software came out for the quilt I really got on board. Truthfully I had more fun playing with the quilt program and designing my quilt and choosing "my" fabrics but eventually got 50 blocks made through the years.
This weekend I decided to pull my blocks out again, line them up on my board and add to my collection. Working on row C. Working on Block C2. As you can see above, I am piecing challenged when it comes to Y seams or anything not straight. I don't do curves very well either. I'd rather applique them. However I decided to try and persevere through these. Btw, anyone not familiar with DJ blocks, they finish at 4.5" square and some have 50 pieces.

So as not to be beaten by these tiny pieces of fabric I laid my DJ ruler on it. Of course the pieces should all line up and they are not even close. What's a girl to do?? I tell people not to worry about their quilts being perfect, we can just make things work and I specialize in 'fixing' mistakes (I'm not too fond of the seam ripper but do have to use it sometimes).

My solution was to trim those bad edges down. Add strips all the way around the block and .....ta da........solution to the problem!! Sure beats trying to 'redo' this block as I have many more to do. Sometime soon I'll post some more of my DJ challenge!