Hey Baby it's cold outside!

Thank the Lord, I have a nice warm house.  It is so unfortunate that not everyone is able to say that and so sad to think that many of the ones who don't have a nice warm house are children.  Wish I could give them a nice warm quilt to snuggle up in and a nice hot meal to warm their tummies.  It is a great comfort to me to know that my kids and grandkids are taken care of, and my great-grandson also.  They all have nice warm quilts that I have made for them to snuggle in if they like.  Each year at Christmas I start going through the quilts that I have on hand and pick out what I want to cycle out of the house this year and I always have a wonderful time doing that.  I'm sure that many of you have made so many quilts that you really don't need or even want to keep them all, so Christmas is a wonderful time to start a new cycle, and it gives us an excuse to purchase more fabric in the new year and start all over. 

I have promised that I will try to be better about posting on my blog so I am attempting to do that and I want to go ahead and show you some more pictures of what I was up to the weeks before Christmas when I was running around here like a chicken with her head cut off!  So here are some more pics.

This quilt was comissioned by one of the physicians I work with.  She wanted blue and some yellow.  It had to be masculine, meaning to her that there could not be any fabric with a flower print.  Then she picked out this pattern and wanted it to be very scrappy.  Well believe me it was.  I dug through my stash and pulled out every piece of fabric I had that was any shade of blue all the way to teal!  I had well over 100 different fabrics in this quilt and none of them with a flower mofit!  Hard to believe huh.

Another specification was that she wanted it to have a little bling.  Well the bling was achieved by using Fairy Frost fabric in the yellow with the gold metalic print and the white with the silver metalic print and then I picked a grey fabric with just a hint of a shimmer.  The Fairy Frost and the gray were used as the background fabrics.

After the quilt was started then she said she really had wanted to do some purple in it but she had so much purple in the room she was afraid to do a purple quilt.  Hence the purple border and binding, which when all was said and done, she really, really liked and the backing is the same purple.

Rather than put a label on the quilt, she wanted me to do what I call quilt writing on the borders of the quilt.  This particular quilt I decided that I would only do a top and bottom border and no border on the sides.  I guess I could have decreased the time I spent on the quilt if I had done side borders rather than all that extra stripping, but then again I really like the finished project.  The top border has her husbands favorite scripture.  I just used contrasting thread in my quilting machine and it turned out quite well.

This is just a closer look at one of the stars so you can see the scrappiness of this quilt.  I made the strata and then cut out the pieces.  When I was laying the quilt out I really wished that I had kept my pieces together better because it became a huge headache to find the pieces that matched and it looked so much better when the entire star was made out of the same strata pieces.  Problem was that the strata was very different and I would not have enough of one kind to do the entire star.  If I ever do this pattern again I will have a much better ideal of how I want to do the strata and how much of each strata I need. 

 

I really love the scrappy quilts and there will be more.  I have some pieces left over from this project and I have plans for those "one of these days".  Oh me, another UFO!

 

I also finished up a batch of my Quilts for Kids and those have all been mailed now which made me feel really good!

 

Well I can hardly wait until my next post because I want to tell you what I am up to next!  Ya'll have a quilty month with lots of love and laughter!

 



Happy New Year Everyone

Well it isn't quite New Year's Day yet, but the hours are counting down.  This is the time that everyone wants to make a bunch of "resolutions" about how much they want to improve themselves the coming year.  Me, I'm fluffy, and I figured out some years ago that I could stress about my weight, or learn to live with the few extra pounds I have added over the years.  My life is so much happier since I decided to live with what I have.  Now if you want to stress, or if "God forbid" weight is damaging your health, then by all means you may want to try to get a few of those pounds off and I am right there cheering you on.  However, my "resolutions", which I actually like to think of as things I wish to do in the year 2012, for the most part are attainable goals, that have an actual end in sight.  No, I'm not talking about finishing my UFO's, which is a worthy never-ending task, or getting my sewing room in order, which is another worthy never-ending task, but more in the line of I want to make 3 quilts this year to donate to a charity org. of which I am fond.  Now the last is something I can accomplish!!

Lord deliver me from "I'm going to be sweeter this year" and instead I want to be able to say, at the end of this year that I have 3 new friends to add to my old friends who I cherish so very much.

Instead of saying I want to save more this year, I would like to be able to know at the end of the year that I have shared more of my knowledge, and been able to share some of those tangible assets that God has seen fit to place in my care.  A wonderful person at one point in my life shared his thoughts to giving to the poor. Me, I really would stress over people asking for help and my desire was that any monies that I was able to share went to people who were deserving of my help and not neverdowells who would just waste what I had worked hard to earn and was willing to share.  He said to me one day when I was vocal about who I felt qualified to be the recepient of my benevolence, "Anna, it's all God's money, and He can take much better care of it than anyone."  He went on to explain that yes, we are required to be good stewards of what He has given to us, but if someone was being untruthful to obtain money the crime lay at their door, but on the other hand, if my brethren was in need and came to me and I turned them away when I had the resources to help, the crime lay at my door.  This opened my heart up to receive many more blessings as I was able to share more because I wasn't as intent in making sure everyone is deserving.  Now I give, as I see fit, and as the Lord has blessed me and I'm a much happier person in my giving.

Now on to quilting.  I've got tons of projects that have been started and I do plan to pull out at least 2 to finish this year.  Everyone needs to keep me accountable on this and be sure and ask me as the year progresses about my progress!!

Currently I am working on a new mystery quilt and it has lots of cutting and sewing and I'm really hoping that I will be able to get that completed.  Also I have on my quilting maching a quilt for my nephew and his new wife that I think is going to turn out really well.  I'll be posting pictures when it's finished but here is a peek.



Chad & Kellie's quilt.


As you can see the pattern is large pinwheels.  These are sooooo easy to make and you can make them in any size and then just sew them together and put on a border and wonderful quilt.  Emily at quilt guild showed us how to make this block and I just love the easy quick stuff that's hard to mess up!  Just 2 blocks of contrasting colors (I got these Oriental prints at a great price when the local quilt shop was selling stuff after the tornado took their shop away.)  Cut the two blocks in any size you want.  I used 10" squares for this quilt.  A really good ideal is to measure the width of the fabric and then divide it by 4--5--or 6 or whatever number you choose to be sure and get the most out of your fabric.  This was 42" of useable material.  Now I really didn't want to mess up a bunch of fabric so I gave myself the 2" leaway and cut the squares at 10" so I got 4 squares across a width of material.  I could as easily have done 5" squares but then I would have had a lot more cutting and sewing.  I took those 10" squares with right sides together and sewed my 1/4" seam around all of the edges.  Next I laid that 10" block down and cut across the diagonals both ways.  (Just a big X really) and then pressed those 4 pieces and laid them out in the pinwheel pattern.  There are several different ways you can lay out the 4 pieces just play with them and see what you like!

This quilt went together as easy as pie!!  Now when I finish the quilting I plan to use a maroon binding.  I think it makes the colors really pop!  I just had to lay a piece of the binding fabric down beside the quilt so you could see the colors together.  Simple quilting is the order of the day but I wonder if they will ever find the little surprize I put in when I quilted their names into the quilt and the year.  Maybe I'll just have to show them! 

At any rate I hope you all have a wonderful New Year full of love and quilts.

Another Photo Transfer Quilt

Typically around graduation time I hear from a lot of people about making quilts for their graduates.  They are all so very special.  This year has been no exception to the rule and I've had several people who have contacted me about quilts.  One particular lady wanted a photo transfer quilt for her granddaughter with pictures of her through the years.  She brought me a variety of pictures and I dutifully copied them off onto the fabric and went through the entire process of rinsing and ironing and trimming.  I went out and got the fabric in the colors of the college she will be attending this fall and  decided on a pattern.  I decided not to do the traditional thing with the pictures all lined up in a row or used as the center of a regular pieced block.  I decided I wanted the arrangement of the pictures to appear as through they where just tossed down across the quilt without the precision alignment.  I had no ideal it would be so simple.

The first step to accomplishing this was making the decision that I did not want to cut the picture itself but the fabric surrounding the pictures.  Therefore the pictures had to have a border.  Having no ideal what I was doing I just decided that I would put a 3 1/2" border around each picture and see what happened next.  After putting the borders on the pictures I laid them out and discovered I had 2 pictures that just didn't fit.  I had 3 rows of pictures that balanced each other and then I had 2 extras.  Oh well I will think about those later and see what I can do about them.

Well the next step was really easy.  I just took my square up rulers and started cutting those borders.  I would turn the block at an angle and cut out the new square. 



I think the picture with more angle actually looks better on the quilt. 
You will notice I tried to alternate the angles from side to side.


After I cut the blocks I wanted to add another border around the pictures, mainly because I knew it would help with aligning the pictures and give me room to manulipate the rows to the proper size for the extra long twin bed since that is the size found in most college dorms and in addition I had to use the second color fabric which was a white on white print that I had found with little baby foot prints that was adorable to go with the solid maroon. 

Grandmother had told me which picture she wanted in the center of the quilt and it was the only 8 x 10 picture and I decided that this would look better just set in straight and it was large enough that I didn't need or want a second border so that it would automatically drawn the eye right to the focal point.


By not adding the white border around this picture and using the same
fabric as the sashing, it draws your eyes right to the
main picture in the quilt.

 It wasn't until I was placing the pictures in the quilt that I discovered that I had duplicate pictures in two sizes.  I had two of them!!  Oh well.  Then when I tried to substitute the two extras I had they just didn't work at all in those spots.  What now!!  I'll think about that later.

After getting all my borders around the pictures I lined up the vertical rows and trimmed all the pictures in each row to the width of the smallest picture and sewed my vertical rows.  Next I trimmed one row and added an extra strip to another to make the rows all the same size.  Finally I added in sashing between the rows and added the outside borders.

After getting the top all pressed I laid it out on the bed and that's when I decided what I was going to do with the extra 2 pictures.  I would just place them across the sashing between some of the pictures and turn them on an angle also.  Such an easy solution.  I trimmed the border down even and used bias tape over the raw edges and zigzagged it onto the quilt top.  Now  I was ready to quilt.

I really loved the way these extra pictures added an extra punch to the quilt!

I always like to do something different and something special on quilts if the customer will give me the opportunity.  I had told grandmother that I did some "quilt writing" on some special quilts and asked if there was anything she would like me to write into the quilt with the quilting.  She actually called me a couple of times before she decided on something simple "From Mammaw" and I decided to add the year. 

Every quilt is special for one reason or another.  This is one I am sure the granddaughter will always treasure and it will never be forgotten that this was a gift from a loving mammaw.  I hope you all have a great week and do something special for someone else as a rememberance for someone you loved.