A quilt for me

A quilt for me!  I made this from scraps & leftovers from other projects.  It's hanging on the wall in our house now.  I quilted it with baptist fans, and really like how that turned out. I added the braided border to the outside, and like the effect of that.

A quilt that I made

I actually finished a bed size quilt of my own- it's going in J's bedroom.  He moved to a bigger bed from a bunk bed, and needed something to fit.  This was made with lots of red/white/blue scraps.  The pattern came from Scraps & Shirttails by Bonnie Hunter. 

A few of my own projects

Here a few of my own projects that I've been working on lately.  I'm making a quilt for J's bed, using a pattern from this book:
Scraps & Shirttails by Bonnie Hunter

I'm using red, white, and blue scraps from my collection of fabrics, and also some recycled cotton shirts.  I love this fabric with the words to the Pledge of Allegiance on it. 

This is a really easy pattern- you start off with 2.5" strips, 18" long.  I sewed 40 strips together, and then sub-cut into long 2.5" strips.  So far the body of the quilt you see here measures 62" x 80".  I'm going to add some borders, and I also saved 3 strips of 2.5" squares to put in the borders, too. 

And, here's a table runner I put together on Saturday (just the top- it's not quilted yet).

I used some leftover blocks from the border of this quilt:

Very easy & fast since the half-square triangle blocks were already done & just waiting for a home. 

website with free patterns

Have you been to http://www.quiltville.com/ yet? It's full of free quilt patterns & tons of pictures, I go there all the time for inspiration. She has all kinds of ideas for using scraps & making beautiful quilts. I've been trying to use up some of the fabric that I have already & not buy more for a while. Here are two quilts that I've made already using her free patterns:

Here's the pattern link for this one : http://quiltville.com/weedwhacker.shtml

This goes together very fast, it was a fun quilt. I just made a baby size- with the borders it measures 40" square. This is just the quilt top, I haven't quilted it yet.

And here's the link for this pattern : http://www.quiltville.com/scrappytrips.shtml

I oriented the blocks differently that her quilt- I made them all follow a big diamond shape, since the quilt is not so bit. Go to here website, and you can see all different pictures of how others have put this quilt together.

I used the "Bubbles" pattern to quilt this- I think this is such a fun pattern. Here's the back showing the quilting detail.

Feathered Star quilt

I'm starting a feathered star quilt.... I've always wanted to make a feathered star, and came across a pattern that I had saved out of an old quilting magazine quite a long time ago.

The feathered sections are paper-pieced- I wouldn't attempt this any other way. The little triangles are less than an inch wide. It really went together easier than I had expected. The magazine pattern showed a full-size quilt with 9 or 12 of these blocks (they're 18 inches square), but I think I am just going to show case the one block in a small wall-size quilt.

It was a fun challenge- lots of "Y" seams in the LeMoyne-star center block area.

I'm thinking of adding a sawtooth border with the red fabric, and another plain tan border.

Baby quilts

I've just quilted to two of my own baby quilts lately- the first one is a fun zig-zag quilt, pieced without triangles using this technique:

http://beesquarefabrics.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-make-zig-zag-quilt-without.html

I quilted this with a new ice-cream cone pattern that I designed. After I finished the quilt, I re-designed the ice cream cone to look a little more realistic & curvy.

The backing has a fun strip of leftover pieces from the front. I think it adds a little interest to the back.

And this boy quilt is my own design, using up scraps from other projects. It's fun to look over the quilt & remember other quilts that I've worked on. I suppose it can be a sort of I-spy quilt, there are things like frogs, fish, and cars to find in the scrappy areas. I quilted this freehand, using the Circuit Path pattern.

baby quilt

Here's the latest baby quilt for a baby shower at church. It has some fun girly fabric- they're talking on the phone & having pillow fights. It's really cute fabric.
The color in these pictures is a little off- it's a bright lime green, and a bright purple in real life.

I made up the pattern as I went- on had a little bit of the white fabric (it has teeny-tiny pink polka dots on it), so those strips ended up really skinny- only 1/2 inch wide finished. In the end I liked the effect.

Americana Quilt

My sister requested an quilt to use in her guest bedroom, and she is decorating in an Americana theme. We chose the American Patriot fabric line, and I designed this quilt pattern, inspired by a customer's quilt. The size of the quilt, for a full size bed, is 85" x 78".

The color in this picture is washed out... it's really a dark navy backing.



And, to go with the quilt, I made this pillow. This amazing eagle pattern is from OneSongNeedleArts.com. I thought it would go perfectly with the quilt.

Log Cabin baby quilt

Here's the latest baby quilt that I just finished... it's a log cabin with fabrics that I pulled out of my stash. Some of my favorites. It's quilted with a simple free-hand loopy pattern.

This quilt is a good example of what the Intelliquilter can do. The "here kitty" border was a purchased pattern- I had this quilt in mind when I found the pattern. I separated out the kitty, and repeated that in the border corners.

This is a baby quilt I made lately- found this fun car fabric at The Crafty Corner in Worthington. Thought it would be great for a boy's quilt. I used the square spiral quilting pattern on it.

Those corner blocks ended up too small, so I had to improvise & add the tiny white border to make everything work out. A nice happy accident- I like how the second white border looks.

What I've been up to....

Yesterday was the classic blizzard snowed-in day, so I decided to give soap-making a try... here's a picture of the bars just cut up...

I have been wanting to try this for a while & yesterday was the perfect day for it. I was a little leary of the whole lye- thing, but it went fine & was pretty much uneventful.

This batch is vanilla scented. The bars have to cure for 3 weeks before using.

The weekend before, I started on this baby quilt- it's all frayed-edge applique, if you can even call it that. The squares are just laid down & I quilted 1/4" from all the edges to hold them down. I'm going to wash it to fray the edges & hopefully it will be a nice snuggly quilt.

And lastly, here's the picture from our front window, after the raging winds have died down today. I have a feeling C will stay busy with the snow blower this winter. Do you see the snowman little C & I made a week ago? It looks like it's got it's arms up calling for help! "I'm drowning!"

Christmas stocking

I'm working on stockings to hang on the mantle... here is the first one. I am hoping to make one for each of the kids & embroider their names on the cuff. We'll see if that gets done. They're taking a bit longer than I had hoped.

30's prints wallhanging

I've had this little quilt pieced & quilted for quite a while... just last week I found it in a tub somewhere buried under a stack of unfinshed projects. All it needed was the binding. I guess I put it away earlier, as I wasn't sure if I wanted to make a pillow out of it, or a little wall hanging.

So, this Saturday, I got the binding on.

It's all reprodution 30's prints, which is far from my usual fabric picks. But, I like it alot. It's bright & cheery & fresh looking. I added the bee & 2 ladybugs & the embroidered verse.

It's machine pieced, and hand quilted & hand appliqued. I don't do much hand quilting, this size project was just the right size for me to hand quilt. I admire those of you who can hand quilt a bed-size quilt!

It came from a pattern in this book:

Her version of the pattern was made into a "Good Morning" pillow... As I am very much not a morning person, I think the wallhanging suits me better!

New baby quilt top

Yesterday I put this together... I was feeling like I needed to accomplish something other than washing dishes & making meals. And there are quite a few baby showers coming up... it's nice to have some quilts ready to go when I need them.

I found the cutest cat fabric at Jo-Anns fabric when we were in Des Moines in October for the AQS quilt show there. I used a free pattern that I had gotten, called Speedy Baby 2. It went together in under 2 hours. I did veer from the pattern a bit, I changed that last border into 2 borders, because I wanted to repeat the cat fabric from the middle section.

The cat fabric makes me smile. :-)

T-shirt quilt & matching tote finished!

I finished the t-shirt quilt this weekend.... here it is! I did the binding completely by machine- do you know how hard it is to see black flannel binding on a black flannel background? Yikes! Anyway, I hope they like it.
I quilted this with a freehand version of my "hurricane" pattern, I thought it could stand in for the school's "comet" mascot.

And, I think I am more tickled with this than the quilt... it's a tote bag I made for the quilt out of the leftover t-shirt pieces. I just *love* how it turned out! The t-shirt fabric is fun to work with, because it doesn't unravel on the edges. I just made a simple bag & cut a 1" strip folded over in half to bind the top edge- I zig-zagged than on. Then I zig-zagged the edges of some 2" strips for the handles & sewed those on. It's so fun when I have an idea in my head, and it actually turns out like I hoped it would. What a great way to recycle all those out-grown shirts. These might even work for all the "green" grocery bags that are all the rage.

T-shirt quilt

I am working on making a t-shirt quilt for C's cousin and their family. They have 2 boys a bit older than ours, and they give us all their out-grown clothes. It has been so nice for us- our boys are excited to get a new bag of stuff to look through (& fight over who gets what!). They have given us so many great jeans and shirts over the years... I've been saving all the school t-shirts & am making them into a quilt to give back to them as a thank-you. We are so grateful for all the time & money that they've saved us. Clothes shopping with 2 boys is not my favorite past-time.

They never wanted even a thank-you note for the clothes, but they never said anything about a thank-you quilt! :-)

Here it is, it's not quilted yet. I hope to get that done soon. It's about 65"square- I guess kind of a throw size. The sashing & borders are flannel. I think I will do a black binding, since I have some of that fabric left.