Blue

My beloved grandmother enjoys creating more blocks than she needs for a project.  She then gives many of them to me for me to play with.  I made this wall hanging from the first such care package to go in my sewing / spare bedroom.  It matches the blue Storm at Sea she gave me for my birthday several years ago.

Dolly Blanket

Date:  January 2007

Size:  12 x 18

Inspiration:  My daughter's "bee bees" needed a quilt.

Special Fabrics:  I used a sleeper that was falling apart.

Thoughts:  I did it in a screaming hurry and wasn't really worried about perfection.

Dominic in the Dell

Date:  May 2012

Reason:  I have collected a lot of eye spy fabrics.  I wanted to put a little boy's quilt together.  I was also secretly hoping it would tickle the fancy of my friend who has a little boy.

Fabric:  I've been collecting fabrics from so many sources for so long.  Many of them have been precut to 4" squares for ease of use later on.

Lessons:   This is only the second piece that I've machine quilted using a darning foot.  I need to remember to keep the needle in the down position when shifting the quilt and to hold the quilt firmly in place when starting again to make sure it doesn't move.  There are a lot of little jaggedy lines that I'm sure will go away with practice!

Thoughts:  I love machine quilting!!  Must do more!!

Jen's

One Christmas, everyone got potholders.  It was when I first started quilting.  I wanted to practice making individual blocks.  It seemed like a good fit to make them all into potholders.  These are Jen's.  I enjoyed using DMC floss to quilt them.

Junior's Quilt

Date:  July 2006

Reason:  The birth of my first born and the love of the ragged edge look.

Fabrics:  Fabric from a local warehouse.  They were prepackaged in lights and darks for $15/8!

Lessons Learned:  Be very careful when cutting the ragged edge.  It is quite easy to snip through the seams!

Apple Box #6

Last fall I was given three large apples boxes full of heavy cottons.  I immediately started cutting:  6½" squares, 4½" squares and 2½ x 6½" rectangles.  This gave me the most out of the pieces of fabric without much waste.  I am trying to make each quilt at least 60 x 80

There are 6 quilts in the works (so far) from those boxes, well 5 now that the one I designated #6 has been tied and will be send to the MCC thrift shop for sale.

My quilt group Little Bits of Comfort ( www.lbcq.blogspot.com ) tied this quilt at a bee last weekend.

Lessons in Blue

Alternate Title:  Privately I called this quilt "Evil Quilt of Doom".  I was pregnant at the time.  Tears came often.


Pattern:  I drew this pattern four times before I was happy with it.


Date:  Top finished 2006


Size:  64 x 80


Inspiration:  Precut fabrics were donated to LBCQ.  I finally had a sewing machine of my own so I volunteered to take them home and play.


Special Fabrics:  Some of the fabrics were starched, some were super stretchy.  My favourite was a green fabric with bugs and the yellow fabric with frogs.


Lessons Learned:  When sewing 2 pieces together, the bottom piece will stay the same, but the top piece can stretch out a little.

To match seams, put a needle through the 2 seams.

When designing a quilt, attempt to put together pieceable squares that can then be fitted together. ( I was working with pre-cut squares that I was doing my best not to further cut down.  This resulted in a lot of T-seams.  For a beginner quilter, it was very trying.)


Thoughts:  A member of LBCQ machine quilted this and it was sold at an MCC auction for approx $70.