quilts

Quilts and Tops

2005 - 2006

Nine Patches and Snowballs

I started this quilt in April of 2006, making nine patch blocks for my guild's nine patch swap.

Rather than sew star blocks and connect them with white sashing and colored cornerstones, I made cobblestone blocks with a color in the center, and used snowball blocks to connect them to the nine patch blocks.

The larger picture shows the quilt center hanging on the library shelving unit.

This quilt was a Christmas gift to my brother Bob and his wife, Paula, in December of 2006.

Below, the completed top, with borders, before quilting and binding. The pieced border uses the leftover triangles from making the flip and sew snowball blocks.

It was quilted on a longarm by Mary Suhr, in Missouri.

Sweet Heart Wallhanging

I designed this one with my Electric Quilt program, and stitched it up in a weekend, during March, 2006.

The block design is one from Bonnie Hunter's website, Pineapple Blossom.

Unfortunately, I tried quilting this one on my old sewing machine, and I'm not at all happy with the way the quilting turned out, so you won't see any pictures of that... :)

Liberty and Justice

This quilt is all about liberated quiltmaking and doing things without a pattern. We'd been talking on the blogs about the 'quilt police' searching for chopped off points and straight seams, how the striving for perfection may take away some of a quilter's joy in creating.

Tonya, a qulter I met while blogging, is famous for her wonky letters and lopsided houses. She also does the sparklers, and that looked fun too. I wanted to try some of all of those, so in May of 2006, I started the words for this quilt.

I'd won several yards and fat quarters of patriotic fabric at guild. I made the log cabin blocks across the bottom and the feathered star. The heart and the friendship block were from the guild's blocks of the month, the pinwheel and the blue flower block underneath it were designs in EQ.

I quilted this one at the board retreat at St. Columba, on my new Janome. I think I would have liked it better if I'd done the navy background in navy thread... but it all looked ok after I washed it.

The back is scrappy too, all in an effort to use up the patriotic fabric.

ForestJane's Delectable Mountains

This quilt's one of my favorites. The blocks were simple to make, and I love the combinations of creams, greens, beiges and blues.

As you can see above, I took the individual blocks to the library and laid them out on the tables one morning, to try to spread out the bright turquoise blues and the darker blues and forest greens.

Mary Suhr from Missouri quilted this one on her longarm, and did a superb job, switching thread from cream on the light to dark on the blues and greens. After it was washed, it got a very nice soft hand to it.

The block pattern is another from Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville website.

Pink and Blue

Sampler Quilt

All of the 12 inner blocks were made as part of Hancock Fabric's Block of the Month program. You paid $2 for the first packet containing block pattern and fabric, then every month after that, if you brought the finished block to show at the next meeting, you'd get the next block instructions and fabric free.

Libby likes this quilt too... she claims I made it for her because it matches her eyes.

Rather than set them horizontally in traditional sashing, I made the blocks wonky with triangles in the navy blue, then I added three pieced borders to make it larger and pep it up a bit.

This quilt marks several quilting milestones for me.

It was my first quilt to be sent off to a longarm quilter, Mary Suhr from Missouri.

It was the first that I designed in EQ also, not too soon after I'd gotten the software. It was a real challenge to design the first border so the pattern would wrap around the corners!

Sara from the EQ staff helped me with the math for cutting the setting triangles that make the center twelve blocks appear to 'tumble.'

It was also the first quilt that I tried the technique of strip piecing with, when making the mountain shapes in the first border.

I was very close to being out of fabric when making this quilt - the pieced borders were from necessity not from desire!