Life is Precious

Date: 2008

Reason:  Applique Class

Fabrics:  The leaves and stem piece were provided by the class teacher, a friend from LBCQ.

Lessons:  Needle turn applique, piped borders

Thoughts:  This is one of my first attempts at machine quilting - I only had a walking foot back then.  I wanted to continue the stems and leaves into the quilting.

This is actually a bit of an emotional wall hanging.  The leaves that my friend provided were leftovers from a quilt that she made while sitting in the hospital at her husband's side.  Using the same pieces that my friend did during a very hard time in her life reminds me that life is precious.  I just can't take it for granted.

My friend's quilt (called Lifelines) and her story is in the book Little Bits of Comfort.

Jane's

Quilting for a quilter is always intimidating.  These are paper pieced

Lilac Fields

Date:  2008

Reason:  A friend gave me corduroy blocks that were already cut and pinned into a pattern.  I like treats!

Fabrics:  The backing is a pink sheet that another friend gave to me.

Lessons:  Corduroy frays a. lot.  After I put it together I washed it and SO MANY seams frayed.  I took the opportunity to use a pretty variegated thread and some fancy stitches and sewed over all the seams.

Thoughts:  A very good drag around the house, picnic on the kitchen floor type of quilt!

Pink Baby

Date:  June 2012

Size:  30 x 30

Reason:  I took some pretty pinks from the blocks my grandma gave me because I knew they would make a cute baby quilt.

Fabrics:  Scraps from my stash, my grandma's blocks and a baby blanket of my daughter's.

Lessons:  My machine quilting is getting better!  Although I'm not doing Leah Day's tutorials per se, most of my quilting information comes from her blog:  http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.com.  She has oodles of videos.  My opinion of machine quilting went from "pshh, not happening" when I saw her first video to "I could try it once" to "wheeeeee" after my first quilt.

On the half square triangle centre, I did a loopy style of stippling to hopefully emulate the flight of the butterflies that are appliqued in the centre.

Thoughts:  I still need to learn what I am doing wrong or how to fix my wavy edges.  Is it a quilting issue?  Am I a bad measurer?  Do I need to square my quilts better?  Probably it's all of the above.

I used a baby blanket we no longer needed.  I kept the 'satin' binding from the blanket to use on the quilt.

I traded this to a co-worker for some NuCerity.

Ali's

Ali will ever be a purple girl.  I did two like this for her Christmas 2006.  This is paper pieced.

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.