Mystery Quilt and Carla's Trees

And other stuff too!

First things first. An issue of Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks is on it's way to Cherie and Virginia. I hope you enjoy them ladies!

My Clue 1 of Bonnie Hunters Grand Illusion Mystery Quilt is finished and I have started on Clue 2. This block was made using the Easy Angle ruler and 2.5" strips. I may try one of the other methods just to see.

Saturday at Quilts For Kids we had a gift card tree for Cathy and Barbara, the coordinaters of the Indiana Chapter. Lots of quilters brought in gift cards to hang on thier tree and the trees were presented after we enjoyed the wonderful lunch that Pat made for us.

These little paper pieced Christmas tress were made by Carla. I quilted them all the same and am happy with the results. You know that I don't do much custom quilting, but once in a while it's ok.

Here's the back of one of them.

 Have a great week!

Quiltmaker News

I know, it's hard to believe that I'm writing another blog post. Two days in a row...

I've been working on another quilt for Quiltmaker the past few days and these aren't my normal techniques. The applique, I'm fine with. I actually love to do this kind of fusible applique with my Janome. I use the Blind Hem stitch and set the width to 3.5-4 and the length to almost .5

Makes a nice faux buttonhole stitch, as my machine doesn't have a real buttonhole stitch.

This technique is new to me although I've seen my friend Angie do it at retreats. It's turning out nicely although takes quite a bit of time.

More Quiltmaker news:
Have you picked up the latest Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks issue?

 

Page 8 features a quilt that I assembled and quilted. I made some of these blocks at the Old Tippecanoe Quilt Guild retreat at Camp Tecumseh in September this year. 

I didn't go to bed Saturday night after 1:00am, I think. I was bound and determined to get this quilt put together.

 

I came home from the retreat, loaded it on Mabel and quilted a meandering feather design on everything except the white border, which had feathers too. I applied the binding and it was on the Fedex truck Tuesday headed for Colorado.

Would you like a copy?  I have a few extra copies of this magazine, so leave a comment on this post and If I get more comments than I have copies, I will draw some names Thursday, December 4th and I'll send you one.

Grand Illusion Mystery Quilt Part 1

Here's a reason to post on my blog again. Let's see if I can keep posting like I did in the past. My main excuse for not posting is time, I guess. I do need to sleep a little every night.

Bonnie Hunter visited Common Threads Quilt Guild November 19-21 and I was lucky enough to take a day off work to attend the My Blue Heaven workshop on Friday.

I have all the pieces cut and 9 blocks assembled. Many more units are waiting to be made into blocks.

But now it's time for the My Blue Heaven blocks to move over, so I can work on the new Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt, Grand Illusion.

I have all the pieces cut and 17 units assembled.

I just realized that I can use the My Blue Heaven pieces as leaders and enders for the mystery quilt. Yea, two for one!

Carla's Owl Quilt

Carla made this oh-so-cute baby quilt for a business friend who is expecting. I think it's just adorable and looks like an easy one.

 You could use just about any theme to make the applique in the wide strip. The logs are 2" x 6" and the quilt measures 42 x 50.

I chose a new to me pantograph, Prickly Pear, and used Omni white thread and Hobbs 80/20 batting.

Here's the back:

I LOVE it!

Julie's Star Quilt

About 7 years ago, (yes, it really has been that long) I won a $250 gift certificate from the Fat Quarter Shop. I won this because I used the most fabric in the prior year's Stashbusting Club. We would report on our blog how much fabric we used and how much we bought. That entire previous year I only bought fabric if I needed it to finish a project and I was astonished at the end of the year that I had purchased over 100 yards. I would have guessed that I normally purchased about 100 yards/year on an average. I think I had estimated really low. Anyway, my daughter Julie helped me spend my gift certificate and this fabric and pattern was part of that. She worked on the quilt at retreats only and finished it at our Spring Break this year. I finally loaded it this week and finish it up this morning before she came to visit.

It's quilted with Bountiful Feathers, Omni Lite Tan thread and Hobbs 80/20 batting.

 

She did an excellent job at piecing. It's just beautiful!! Great job Julie!

Virginia's Paper Dolls

Virginia made this cute quilt using paper doll and 1930's fabrics.

 I chose button Flower for the quilting as I think it brings out the girly-look of this quilt.

 Poly batting and White Omni thread for this quilt for a lucky little girl.

Deborah's Log Cabins

Deborah made these 43" square log cabin wall hangings. At first I thought she used recycled shirts and she may have for some of the fabrics, but I recognize a green print as a homespun I had several years ago.

I quilted both with the Circle Lord Baptist Fan templates, using Lite Tan Permacore for the first and White for the other.

 A close-up:

 The backing:

 The second one: (this is the one with the green I recognize)

 Close-up:

 Backing: (looks much like the other one!)

Deborah's Monkeys and Snowmen

These two quilt tops were made by Deborah and they are cute as can be. I love the close-up of the Monkey Business panto.

Here's the snowman panel quilt. She asked for something like swirling snow and I chose Waterworld and used Glide thread for a little sheen.

Hope she likes them!

Wedding Bells

Let me introduce my grandson, Tony and his new bride Kendra!

They were married June 14th in an outdoor wedding at my daughters house. It was lovely! The weather was perfect, Kendra did an awesome job of coordinating the event.

She opted to not have a guest book, but instead asked me to make quilt blocks for the guests to sign.

Here are the blocks on my design wall before the wedding. The fabrics are green and brown batiks.

 I took the day before the wedding off from my 8-5 job and made the cupcakes, red velvet, chocolate and white.

Here are the white ones:

 The chocolate and white have buttercream icing. The chocolate ones used a more serrated tip and the red velvet with cream cheese filling and cream cheese icing has the smooth tops. My ex-husband made the cupcake stand.

Daughter, Julie, daughter-in-law Dané, Elizabeth, Calise and Andrew enjoying some family time together.

Here is my son, Jason, his wife, Kathy, ex-husband, Jack and Andrew, the Ring bearer.

Quiltmaker Color Options Quilt Tops

Here are a couple Color Option quilt tops I made for Quiltmaker this Spring.
They are both in the July/August 2014 issue, in your mailbox and on sale now.

I worked on this one at our Spring Break Retreat and I thought for sure I wold have it finished by the end of the day on Thursday. HAH!!! It was well into the day on Saturday before it was complete.

This one is Climbing Roses by Jo Moury and is 57" x 57". There were a LOT of pieces in this little quilt top.

This one was is Luminous by Ann Hansen and was made using Olympic fabrics, which fit just perfectly with our retreat theme of Spring Break at the Quilting Olympics.

Really big pieces in the lap size quilt that I made in an afternoon.

Color Option quilt tops are frequently given away in drawings by Quiltmaker, so check out their blog for your chance to win one of these.