TheQuilt Studio

  Welcome to my super duper, extraordinary, stuff of my dreams new Quilt Studio

 Work on our 700sq.ft. addition is coming close to a final finish! We delayed the start until November last because of the insanity of covid regulations and how they changed from one day to the next. Of course the price more than doubled from the day before covid hit, but now we are almost finished and hoping the budget will hold out as prices rise weekly on building supplies. Fortunately we have a wonderful General Contractor which is such a blessing. However his family had the Wuhan flu and then he injured his foot which has kept him off work a bit though it’s hard to keep him down!

The Giant Star QOV

I choose to dedicate a lot of time to these Quilts Of Valor, believing that our military risks everything for us and I will not offer anything less than my best to them. 

The only blocks that are the same in this quilt are the large triangles on each side, I thought it was more balanced keeping them alike.

      After the first corner square I decided I would be too bored making them all the same!

                     And since I had begun with the stars I made stars in each one.

                     The star points have alternating swirls and peacock feathers.

               Feathers are my default motif, and I like the contrast of straight lines.

Also I admit I love the creative freedom of making it up as I go along so I never know how the design will look until it's finished. I used Quilters Dream 80/20 batting and a neutral thread. I'm very happy with the Giant Star quilt, it was fun to quilt and tomorrow they both return to the quilter who will bind and label them.

A New Great granddaughter

 The Atwood girls are finally catching up! Watch out world these amazing women are the next generation!Annelyse June Atwood arrived a little early as is usual for her very prompt Momma! Both of her siblings were a couple of weeks early also. Weighing in at 6lbs.14 ozs. And 21.25 inches long she is just perfect. I will post a photo as soon as I get one! She joins sister Paisley and brother Sterling.                                                                      Her quilt is below in Ashlee’s requested colors, pink and teal.

A bright and delightful quilt for our newest baby girl. Congratulations to Mom Ashlee and proud Daddy Daniel. You are doing a great job populating the world with smart, wonderful human beings.

Another baby quilt for a baby girl due next month for extended family members. Mom’s requested colors for Isla Sofia’s quilt are sage/cactus green/tan and dusty pink, I really had no appropriate greens so of course I had to go fabric shopping. 

This is a different version of the pink and grey quilt from earlier this month. The 5” squares go together fast and the pink applique flowers, flange and binding make it definitely feminine.

I don’t know of any other babies on the immediate horizon so I may be onto other challenges next.

In fact I am already, tasked with quilting more QOV’s-Quilts f Valor- for our military heroes. These two are for the VHPA-Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association reunion in May. DH is a long-standing member of the organization as a retired helicopter and fixed wing pilot. 

One done and one more to go. I typically custom quilt QOV’s especially when there are wide open spaces like this. The feather wreaths are always impressive and are fast and easy to quilt. I have also become a fan of ruler quilting, I think it’s a nice contrast to the detailed feathers.

                                     The simple one color backing shows off the detailed quilting.

                              The second is very different and I am still deciding how I will quilt it.

Maybe alternate a couple of different background fills in each star point and a different design in the white areas. I am thinking about it and hope to begin tomorrow after the gym. I will probably include some ruler work, it’s a good foil for the detailed designs.

This is my first week back at the gym since I went to Boston and got the Wuhan flu variant and double pneumonia, so I am still working back into my usual routine. It will take a few weeks I imagine, but my body is accustomed to being fit and that always makes it easier to come back.

Meantime our addition is coming along quickly now, the opening to the main house has been made so the move-in date is close, a couple of weeks at most I hope. When it’s finished it will appear as if it’s always been there rather than an obvious add-on. I will post a few photos next time so you can get an idea of the 700 sq.ft. space.

Log Cabin Beads

 This beautiful quilt came from Texas and I love it enough to want to make one too! It took me a few days to figure out how I wanted to quilt it but it really needed custom and the feather wreaths in the beads were easy but oh those circles took me a very long time using different sizes of templates.

It was worth it for the effect, I cannot allow anything to leave my hands unless it pleases my critical eye!

Separate borders finish the look with a reverse feather outer border

The backing makes the quilt reversible and shows the quilting better.

I had lots of plans for Christmas quilting but life got in the way and I only made two small projects, this little paper pieced tree for myself and an angel tryptich for a friend. 

                            My tree is missing something, I think it needs some red ornaments! 

And I guess I forgot to take a picture of the angels, and I was so sure that I had!!

These next four quilts were for our great grandchildren and they are what took up all my pre-Christmas quilting time! At that point we had two girls and one boy.

Their birthdays are October, November and December so a decision has been made to have one party in November for all three.

Paisley was four in October and got the horse quilt. Poppa has a little pony for the grandkids and she loves to ride.

Here it is spread out on our KS bed.

                                                An asymmetrical pieced backing using stash!

  Paisley and brother Sterling, three in December, share a bedroom with bunk beds, their quilts are generous single bed size. Sterlingling loves everything dinosaur so of course his quilt had to be-dinosaurs!

Sterling was the only one whose quilt required the purchase of more fabric than just the panel. I really had nothing in stash that would coordinate with the dinosaur panel but I was fortunate to have appropriate fabric for the backing in stash.

Layla was three in November and like many little girls is all about princesses! She is on the petite side so her quilts fit a youth bed. I was fortunate to find panels for all three children’s quilts and added borders of coordinating fabrics, mostly from stash.

                                                                    Layla’s backing

                                                                   Love this picture. 

Layla got very lucky this year because I made two more quilts for her to keep at her Mom’s house. More Princesses, but this time from the movie Frozen which little girls also seem to adore! If you look closely you can see I chose to crosshatch the picture part of the panel. I have found this is a neater option than trying to outline the quilt realistically and to me looks as if you are peering through a window at the people. And, by careful positioning of the quilting lines it’s possible to mostly avoid quilting on the faces.                                          

Another panel and how sweet that I had just the right fabrics to coordinate with the panel and also to make the backing. I do a happy dance when I can rotate my fabrics to make room for the current purchases!

 All the children’s quilts were custom quilted, the panels make that necessary I think.

One more little quilt, a small ”drag around/lay on the floor” quilt for Layla to take to Mom’s house, just so she knows Great Grandmother loves her wherever she is!

                                                                  

I am struggling and in a time wasting mode because I am not familiar with working off my iPad Pro in Blogger and it is a lot different to the laptop, but my laptop is a dinosaur 13 year old MacBook. It has no blue tooth and cannot connect wirelessly with my other Mac devices so pictures from the iPhone and iPad Pro do not seamlessly populate in the iPhoto album! I also haven’t discovered how to edit pics in Blogger yet on the iPad other than enlarging them, another irritation. Obviously I need to update, probably with a small desktop since I have the iPad for portability. However life has got in the way, but I am at least now looking into coming up to scratch! The drag around quilt, just right size for a tiny 3 year old girl to carry around!

A couple of photos her Mom sent me I can add- Mom says she is “Obsessed with them. Quite literally” which makes Great Grandmother’s heart happy!     

                           In AZ the room will need to be chilled for the summer,LOL.

Rescuing A Quilt

 A friend brought me the quilt her Grandmother made for her as an infant so it's close to 80 years old and has had good use. Consequently the binding is frayed and the area at the top of the quilt has deteriorated to the point that it really isn't useable. 

                      As you can see some of the damage is extensive and had to be removed. 

                      The binding also was not salvageable, the quilt needed a strong new fabric. 

      I went on a hunt for a pink fabric to replace the binding and was fortunate to find one very close.

Unfortunately I had to remove two of the borders from the top of the quilt the damage was just too bad.

After removing all the old binding I sewed on the new giving this quilt a new life!

                            Below you can see it displayed on my KS bed, looking fresh and new.

                                

              My friend was of course delighted to have Grandmother's quilt in it's restored condition.

                    The quilt below was also a commission, for Erica and Rick's daughter's birthday. 

The request was for black and white squares which can be very stark. 

The black and white theme is softened by the addition of a dark grey, 

retaining the modern concept without the harshness of simple black and white squares.   

Quilted with a the traditional Baptist  Fan design which works well for simple, repetitive block quilts.

This grey, white and pink baby quilt was for a baby girl. Simple 5" blocks using left over fabrics from other projects- adding the applique pink flowers,  flange and bindings make it the simple, modern style so popular now. And, it's super fast, easy and thrifty what's not to like?!

Oh My Goodness!

 That's all I could say when I realised how slack I have been about blogging, and I have noticed that some of my fellow bloggers are even worse! Not that I haven't thought about it and knowing I was soooo far behind wondering how I would catch up, but life has been harder and my "spare" time less!

In addition to the global covid debacle and my husband's cancer treatments and entertaining two days a week our now 15 month old delightful granddaughter, there's the fact that I finally succumbed to covid at Christmas time and ended up with double pneumonia! I had easily avoided the infection for two years until we all went to Boston for Christmas and on the fifth day there came down with a variant, something I had not yet been exposed to. It went through the entire family and for everyone else it was like a cold or a bit of a cough but I became very very ill. I do believe that my lungs have finally cleared as I am no longer wheezing and returned to the gym this week with no adverse effects except for some mild soreness in muscles that had not been used for a couple of months!

                                                           The gorgeous Emma at one year!

Our long awaited addition to the home, my new quilt studio and a workshop for DH is almost finished. 700 square feet total I am so anxious to be able to gather all my sewing/quilting together in one space instead of spread from the garage to dining area to the library. Its been challenging, every project seemed to require twenty trips to the garage to dig through multiple totes and cabinets to find what I needed. But it's almost over, now the finish work hopefully will be completed in the next two weeks.

To follow up from the last quilt posting, I made this KS Garden Gate design quilt on commission for Rick and Erica, dear friends here in Phoenix. They have a beautiful print over the bed and they asked me to pull colors from it for the quilt.

The back has a large block with all the colors from the front and their names embroidered in the center

I am very happy that they love it!

The big flower panel below was a couple of weeks work maybe three, but fun and challenging to quilt. Its about 50" square. 

It was something I had been wanting to do for a long while, and I will quilt more of these panels but they are very intense so I have to take breaks from them! This one hangs in the law office of our niece in Boston along with another I made her a few years ago. Perhaps I'll take pictures of them next time we are in Boston.

I have ten more quilts to post to catch up and it will soon be 12, I am currently quilting two more for Quilts Of Valor for our heroic military. I am determined to get up to date and stay that way, so stay tuned, there will be lots more to post the next month as we move into our completed addition, I can hardly wait though I know the actual move will be a huge job!