More Quilts!

60”x60” baby boy quilt for Lydia, the daughter of my friend Theresa in WI. I believe the  babe is due in September. Made from my collection of the cowboy line “Howdy” from Moda fabrics featuring little cowboys in action, horseshoes and cowboy boots. Very cute and lots of interesting things for a baby to discover! 

The batting is of course Quilters Dream Angel, engineered to be non flammable the backing is a solid gold and the quilting design E-E ovals.

Below are two Baptism quilts for 4 and 6 year old sisters Baptised in March. They were thrilled with their “blankets” and have told me a couple of times since that they carry them around all the time 🥰      

                                          

                                             
                                              The quilt above I custom quilted, it has a blue backing

  The star quilt was for the four year old and it has a fun striped backing. I quilted it with E-E clam shells

  The bright and cheerful quilt below was a kit from Missouri Star Quilt Company a year ago or more. I  thought it would be a nice gift for a girl, maybe a Baptism or birthday, we will see when the need comes up! I always like to have a few on hand for last minute events.

The kit included the backing and again I used the fast Baptist Fan, one of my favorite traditional E-E designs. It looks great on many quilts both modern and traditional and you will see me use it often!

Below
Another scrappy batik this one with a scrappy white background. I put it together at a 4 day “in town” retreat. My friend Susan Q was making a scrappy quilt in the same design and I happened to have a box of batik scraps and decided it would be a good use of them. It made up very fast from 16 x 2.5” squares plus 8 HST’s for each block. I put it together super fast and then decided it needed a stop border of batik strips and a scrappy batik binding. Way to go to use up all those small pieces with an eye catching result! I love how it turned out and I will probably make another like it, I have plenty of batik scraps! 

                                        As you can see the spiral E-E quilt design looks just great 

The colorful quilt up next quilt was an online 3 day Zoom class that I took during COVID madness, with my friend Leslie from Texas. I know it’s wildly colorful, these are all Kaffe Fasset fabrics so that’s to be expected! It was run by the sisters from Sew Kind Of Wonderful or SKOW for short! Not surprisingly I did not finish during the class and finally got it all done last year. 

I quilted it with feathers and ruler work similar to the sample we saw on SKOW website. I used a wool batting so it’s very light weight and shows great definition of the quilting. The binding is scrappy Kaffe Fasset and I love it all-this quilt lives on one of my blue leather couches so I can see it all the time! 

This is the wonderful backing I used rather than the one that came with the class kit. It’s a wide back and I had purchased it last year I think, just because it was gorgeous and on sale!                                                    

The next quilt is my friend Shiela’s, her work is always exemplary! Lovely fabric and design choices and neat seams and always a square finished quilt🥰 It is all ruler work and feathers, those are my default quilting choices when nothing else seems to fit

I saw it beautifully bound and hanging in her home a few weeks ago and it looks even better.

Below, these traditional CW era-ish blocks I purchased at a sale at one of our quilter’s homes. She had lost her long battle with breast cancer and left a husband and two preteen children. Limbania was  a fairly experienced quilter and her work was always lovely. I set the blocks with sashing and cornerstones and it turned out very nicely 

I like to think some day someone will finish up my UFO’s-Un Finished Objects😘

Ugh Blogger! So Many Quilts To Show

Warning, this post is photo heavy!

 For months I have struggled to sign into my blog, unsuccessfully, and today I thought to give it another shot. Some unknown combination maybe a constellation event LOL, has allowed me to do so today. Hallelujah, now if I can only find a way to save this link🙏🏻 so that I do not have to wait another 5 months to find the magic trick!             

There is so much to do to bring my blog up to date, I just counted 21 quilts since my last post, argh, that will be a chore for more than a couple of days! Unfortunately I seem to be missing a few Baptism quilt. photos when I know I took pics before I gave them away! I checked all 3 of myApple devices but no joy! So I will get to work and post those quilts I can show!

Circle Of Fifths Illusion

                                                             

  

I saw the above pattern on Connecting Threads website about a year ago and loved it and because I was a quite fascinated by the musical allusion, pun intended, I decided I must make it! We have a musician friend who plays in the Praise Band and does gigs around town and because of the musical connection in the design I thought to make it for him. I was so happy with the finished quilt that I told him if I didn’t love him so much I would have kept it for myself! Perhaps I will make a smaller version for me, though the fabrics are part of the beauty of the piece and I don’t know if I am able to duplicate them. I also love how the circular quilting design echoes the title. It states “For confident quilters” and it kind of was! I found I just had to be focused and precise and careful and it went swimmingly with no bother at all. 

The next quilt was a “mystery” quilt I made a couple of years ago and finally got it quilted and gifted before Christmas last year. It went to Christina, a young lady at church for her Baptsim.

                                                          And  another pieced backing using stash!

                               This E-E circle design is one of my favorites. It suits so many quilt designs.

The next two are Quilts Of Valor presented to the helicopter pilot heroes at the annual Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Reunion last May in Reno, we actually had 10 to present but these are the two I quilted, the first was custom quilted.

                                    The second has that very adaptable circle Edge to Edge design.

I guess I forgot to take a photo of the next one after I quilted it. It went to grandson Matthew’s great GM in NZ, a smallish lap quilt I quilted E-E clamshells on.  I had lots of extra rectangles prepped so I made a larger version (below) where you can perhaps make out the quilting design

Its a larger quilt, 62”x72”.

And a very bright and busy backing, somehow I ended up with about 7 yds of this gifted from another quilter and it makes a good backing for a bright quilt.

The next is a 50” square cowboy quilt a “Giant Hunter’s Star” for a friend’s grandson. I purchased quite a lot of this particular collection of little cowboy fabrics “Howdy” by Moda, thinking “what little boy doesn’t at some stage want to be a cowboy?” I am getting down to the last of it I think/hope, but there are some 10”squares from a layer cake left with little cowgirls for a horse loving family! 

                                                                        Hudson’s quilt

                                             Pieced backing of fabrics from the same collection 

I think I will take a break, this is time consuming and my tummy tells me-as does the clock-that it is dinner time 

 

Tula Pink Butterfly Quilt

Sandy S. sent me this to quilt for her, along with a request for similar quilting to that shown on the pattern! Lots of feathers which fortunately is my default quilting choice. If I cannot think of anything else I will choose to quilt feathers or ruler work! Or sometimes a combination of both which this quilt has.

It took a long time, it is quite a large quilt, Sandy's is 94x100", queen size, and there was all that matching side to side of the designs and all the various sized filler circles.

My quilting is not exactly the same by any means-poetic license, LOL, but is very similar in style.

                                                        Sandy loves it and that's what counts!

The next is one I sneaked in before Christmas, Linda R. in CO. wanted it for her bed for the winter and I managed to get it done in time. It is queen size, 84x84"

It's a perfect design all around for the state of CO., for the winter season and also for Christmas-if you look carefully you will see the little gold star on top of one of the trees, how clever of my friend.

This little Gnome table runner I also squeezed in before Christmas for a different Linda who lives right here in Scottsdale.

There were two other family celebratory events in that time before Christmas, one was granddaughter Emma's birthday, and she was so proud and excited to be three! Isn't it funny how children can hardly wait to grow up, ever longing for the next highest number? I remember myself in that same mode, how then do we wish for the childhood years back!

                                        It was a unicorn cake made by her talented Nana in Yuma

                             The other lovely event was the Baptism of Emma and baby Owen in Yuma

One of the children's great aunts in Yuma makes these beautiful decorated cookies for special occasions and this was indeed special!

Emma and Owen, sweet little ones now Baptized into the family of Christians.

Quilts From VHPA

  Vietnam Helicopter Pilot's reunion, San Antonio TX, July 3-7, 2023

Each summer my DH's Military group, Vietnam Helicopter Pilots, meets to visit and celebrate their continuing lives. About 15 years ago another wife Kathleen Sherfy and myself began to make quilts in red, white and blue celebrating our beautiful USA Flag, the Stars and Stripes. These are presented to a few soldiers each year, I think the first year we had only two or three, and now each year we have 8-10. The names are drawn randomly, but a couple of years ago I looked around at the presentation and saw the quilter's husbands sitting there watching other guys get quilts and thought it was sad they didn't have quilts too. So I told Kathleen I was making one for DH, and last summer in San Antonio I was able to surprise him at the presentation with his very own patriotic quilt. To say he was shocked would be putting it mildly!

It's been a very rough 3 years for him in his fight to recover from cancer, radiation and around a dozen major surgeries including last March a month in the hospital and six surgical procedures. I said when I presented the quilt that I wanted him to know he was still my hero. The ranks of these men are shrinking every year and we are blessed to have DH still with us, he is a tough guy to survive what he has. This year we have been married 52 years.

This past summer I also made T Shirt quilts for our great niece and nephew who were graduating High School. Unfortunately I don't have good photos of them but next time we are in Boston I will be sure to take some! This one is Emily's,  at this stage it isn't even trimmed or bound!

Here is Daniel's, before it was even quilted! I have no idea where my head was that I didn't take my usual pics of the finished quilts. I do remember taking photos of the quilts in Boston after the graduations, laid out on the billiard table, so where are those photos?? Duh!

Last spring Matthew was Confirmed at our church, an important day for him in his life as a maturing Christian. We were all very happy to see him take this big step forward.

Matthew has been attending worship with us from about one year old and has progressed through all the Sunday School grades where I was the assistant in class, and through first Communion and three years of Confirmation studies every Sunday, so at 14 he was well prepared for this next step, growing into an adult in his Faith.

Filling in the past (nearly) 2 years!

Above another military themed quilt for a Gold Star family whose loved one died in the Vietnam conflict.The striped band on top is the Vietnam Ribbon worn by those who served during the Vietnam War.

Below, a quick all-over for my friend Sueann, she made it for a friend’s baby girl. I thought the color combo quite different but they were the mom’s choice!

             Below,  a sample of my experimenting with the Embroidery Model that came with the Bernina 765 I purchased about a year ago. I will take it to my friend Linda when I visit in Sept/Oct.                                             

 

I did quilt this small lap quilt, but cannot find the pic, Matthew’s mom asked me to make it for her GMA in NZ.

Another little embroidery experiment for my visit to CO.

I was asked to make new paraments for the altar at our church for Easter, and this is a result of the embroidery experiments!   

             And this miniature Dear Jane made by my friend Shiela, took a third place at the AZ Quilter’s Show last year. I had quilted it in tiny detail, every 3.5” block differently and it was a lot of fun making it up as I went along. 81 blocks no two the same, a labor of love- I would never have the patience or ability to hand sew all those little blocks. Unknown to me Shiela had entered it and I was quite surprised when another friend sent me this pic with the word “congratulations” . The two ribbons were both for Shiela’s beautiful hand piecing/applique and for my quilting.  I was quite excited , I never bother entering my own quilts in shows anymore so this was a lovely surprise.