Truely Miscellaneous Today!

I was inspired to make a Quilt of Valor quilt by our speaker and so picked up a couple of fat quarters of patriotic fabric as I have none.  I found a pattern on Facebook that I liked and that I thought would be appropriate.  This is the finished top.  I am going to let someone else do the quilting as it is pretty big and I wasn't comfortable with doing it.

This is what the individual blocks looked like.

The back of yet another Quilt as You Go.

This is the front.  I added the green as the gold and brown started looking like Brownie uniform to me!!

This is a block I did for a friend who had sent me a envelope of scraps from a bridal quilt she has made for her son and daughter-in-law to be.  We have been email friends for close to 25 years along with two other ladies.  We have met up a number of times over the years despite geography!  I really wanted to have four stack and whack blocks but only had enough repeats for two.  I only had tiny scraps left when I was done!  I have held off posting it as I didn't want her to see i before she got it!

The last of the baby quilts made from those long ago striped fabric that I had made.  I don't have enough left for any more.  I tried to use lighter fabrics both on the front and the back.

All done except for the binding which is done now.  I only had 1/2 inch of the blue fabric left!

Had a nice visit with my daughter and was surprised to see a bunch of Cedar Waxwings in one of her trees.  At the time, I only saw 2 but when I looked at the camera pictures, there were obviously six or seven!

Her neighborhood Great Blue Heron payed us a visit as well.

A Great Egret also visited but was chased away by the heron who had claimed the territory!

 

Quilters by the Sea January Meeting - Part 2

Our members have obviously been very busy this last month as there were a lot of quilts for show and tell!  

This was made as part of an exchange. As usual, I don't have the names of the people who made them but have tried to at least put their picture with the quilt!

Loved these birds!

This quilt and the next  one were done as a result of a class taught by one of our own!

Made for a recently adopted dog!

This quilt and the next one were Neonatal quits.  They didn't display the rest of them but there was a pretty good pile!  I had my two in that pile.

This was made for Christmas!

Really loved the colors in this one!

I took this and the next picture off Facebook as I was in  line and couldn't get their pictures.  This was done for Habitat for Humanity and was just beautiful!

I always love kitty quilts!
 

Quilters by the Sea January Meeting - Part 1

Our speaker this month was Katherine Carter who lives here in Wilmington.  She is a super high energy person who primarily makes memory quilts for other people.  Her Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Katsbags.  She obviously gets lots of customers as she is booked out a year in advance and makes about 100 quilts a year!!  Her business is called Kat's Out of the Bag!

This is just one of the quilts she has made.

This is another one!

A really fun part of the meeting was the showing of many of the Cape Fear River challenge quilts submitted by members.  The following are about half of them and you may remember my one of the sunset at Ft. Fisher which I posted before.  These were just stunning quilts and am constantly amazed that our relatively small guild has so many talented and creative art quilters!

 

Farmer's Wife Quilts Almost Done!!

This is th e quilt from the Farmer's Wife 30s book.I felt like I have been machine quilting forever but it appears to be done with both quilts!  If I had the patience, I would have done some quilting in all those white spaces but didn't!  I like the colors in this one better than the purple one even though I don't usually enjoy working on my blue quilts even though it is one of my favorite colors!

I only have to put borders and binding on the purple one and  binding on this one as I am not doing borders.  This one has 90 blocks and is smaller than the other one so I could actually get a halfway decent picture of it on my design walls.  It is about 80 x 72.  

I have updated this piost to incude the almost finished purple quilt which now has borders on it.  I have the binding (just a darker shade of purple) ready to attach and then I  will handsew down!
 

-Farmer's Wife 20's Quilt Almost Done

If you read my blog, you remember me doing these blocks around this time last year.  Well, I finally managed to get them put together this summer and have been working the last two weeks on getting the three sections machine quilted which I finally got done this week.  The quilt is currently about 110 x 90 in so pretty good sized.  After putting the three sections together, I will add a small border of purple and then call it quits!  This picture does not include all the blocks as I can't get far away from my too small design wall to get a complete shot!

This is a rather poor picture that shows it altogether but still doesn't show the whole quilt.  I am in the process now of sewing the seams in the back down where the sections go together.  This is so simple fete as this quilt is large and very heavy as I used cotton instead of my usual wool.  The sad part is that I think this quilt is too big for out quilt club show or even to bring in for 
"show and tell" down here!  It will be about the right size for one of the three king sized beds that I have between here and Rochester!

Next to work on the 1930's Farmer's Wife quilt which has fewer blocks and only two sections but is still pretty good sized as there are 90 blocks in it!
 

Oh No. More Quilt as You Go!

Well, first I have to show you a piece of fabric I fell in love with and am pondering what to use it for!  The repeat is 36 inches which is very large for fabric like this and I only have a piece that is 40 x 108.  It was a gift from my sister, who, I might add, is a very bad influence on me!  I visited her in Florida last week and the first day, she suggested we visit a local quilt shop that was in its last week of going out of business!!  Everything was 75% off and even me, who has sworn off buying any more fabric, succumbed and bought a couple of smallish pieces of purple (my weakness) and a whole bolt of a green leafy grassy print.  When it is less than $3/yd, who can resist?  As it turned out, I bought as a backing for one of the two Farmer's Wife sampler quilts but it is perfect for both of them and there will only be a scrap left when I got it for them!  

Then I mentioned to my sister that I was getting low on purples and greens, so she dragged out two boxes of purples and let me have whatever I wanted!!  More purple and green quilts in my future.  I should note that my sister used to make quilts for Hoffman and got lots of batiks in return!

Here is another qayg baby quilt and I still have a lot of the center strip fabric left so there will be more.  Actually  using up some of my lightly dyed lavender fabric in these!

Here is the back.  Like the front, I chose the lighter of my strips which I don't use in the larger "stained glass" quilts.

This is probably the last one using the darker blue strips.  I do  have some yardage of a lighter set of blue strips so may use thosee.

This is the back of the above quilt. These are so fast to make!

I have proceeded to start putting together the Farmer's Wife quilts, starting with the "20s" version which is puples, greens, yellows and a smattering of blue.  It is in 3 sections and I have spray basted 2 sections so far and will get the third done today and maybe get started on the 30's version which is mainly blues and greens.  Of course both have beige/white components as well.  Both will look great with the green fabric I bought and I am so glad to find a use for for the whole bolt so quickly.  It assuages my guilt a little!

After that, I am going to make a "Quilts of Valor" quilt.  Our current Guild president gave a presentation in November on this program as I was very, very impressed with the care that goes into giving these quilts.  I picked up some blue patriotic fat quarters that she had for working on them and have been searching for  patterns that I like and have found 3 or 4 that I liked.  It might be awhile as the machine quilting on the FW quilts won't be quick!  Hopefully, they will turn out good enough that I can enter them into the Rochester club show in May.


 

Two More Finished!

Everyone seems to want larger quilts these days for "comfort" quilts so I added this sashing to make it about 56 x 78.  Now just to baste, machine quilt, add borders and bind.  I have used hand dyed fabrics for all the solids as i don't ever buy solids anymore.  Can't seem to find the picture of the fabric that this was made from.

And here it is completed.  I like the grey/blue binding I put on it, matching the background of one set of blocks.

I found some major yardage of more strip sets that were much lighter in color and decided I could do baby quilts with this colorway, choosing a lighter color for the sashing and only using lighter colored strips.  I hadn't known what to do with all those light colored strips as I use them sparingly in the "stained blass" looking quilts.  Seems to work here.  I was also selective in the prints I chose for the back.

This is the back.  The white looking block has musical notes all over it.  It is difficult to get the backs and fronts to both look well placed!

I will be working on the last of the "stained glass" quilts tomorrow and use up the remainder of those strips.  It was a tight squeeze to find enough to finish a 40 x 60 in quilt but I did!  I have enough of the lighter strips to make several more baby quilts.