Arrowheads for Shannon

A lightweight spring quilt for the other grandmother of my Grandson.  Made with a 1/8ths pack of 12 fabrics (fabric of the month club!) and some white on white that belonged to my mother, and was in her Irish Chain prize winning quilt she made for my niece Carrie many years ago.  At one time she wanted to add a larger border to her hand-quilted double bed sized quilt, and so bought yards and yards of the fabric.  The quilt was already finished and bound.... THAT sounded like a project!  She didn't remake it, my niece adores it as is, and I have been able to add my mother's fabric to important sentimental quilts over the years.

Gifted to Shannon

Acrobats

This small project (approx 20 inches square) was a little fun diversion with an hour of time in the sewing studio.  I picked up the leftover charms of 2 baby quilts made this year, and just put them together as half square triangles.  Then I did it again, making the quarter square patches.  Then I flipped through my quilt block calendar and found a block named ACROBAT that used up my scraps along with some other squares I had lying around.    I had one block left over, and into the orphan box it went to be included in a scrap quilt some day.

Landon's Baby Quilt

Baby quilts are among my very favorite things to make.  The size is perfect, and they are always exciting to give away.  Here is a quilt for the first child of a young friend I watched grow up. Congratulations!

Lena's Quilt

Several years ago my friend Sharon brought me a stack of HST's that she found when cleaning out her mother's things.  Sharon vaguely remembered her mother working on the blocks when she was a girl, the 1940's or 50's. She asked me could I put the random blocks together into some kind of memory quilt. This is what I came up with:

Lena had pretty much already constructed the 25-patch blocks, all fabrics and arrangements are original. I find is so charming!

NICU for March Of Dimes

Each year the NICU challenges the rest of the hospital to fund raise by participating in several events.  The money is raised for the March Of Dimes in their prevention of birth defects and prematurity. We march, we sell stuff, we host events.  This year, I was asked to make a quilt for a silent auction.

I picked a block that has always fascinated me and put together this treasure with around 20 jelly roll strips and 5 different grays. It's a generous sized lap quilt, filled with 100% cotton batting and quilted in a 2" overall grid.

Good Luck to the winner of this cozy quilt!

Update: The raffle was banned as "gambling," so I gifted this quilt to Fayza, my housekeeper.

Making Memories

A friend brought me 2 old quilt tops, sewn many years ago by her mother.  This friend wished to divide the 2 tops among 5 family members, so each could have something made by her mother.  I told her they would be small, wall quilts, or table runners.  She agreed that would be the perfect size.  She said she preferred the blue quilt, but thought the rest might prefer the other quilt.

I was very excited to do this challenge!  Since it wasn't MY mother's work, cutting into it felt exciting, and I looked forward to seeing what I might render from these 2 quilt tops.  

I started by cutting out the center of the postage stamp quilt.  It was perfect, glorious, and I LOVED the color use.  I was very tempted to keep this one for myself, I loved it that much!
#4 was made from blocks cut from the 4 corners of the quilt.  #5, from blocks along the sides.  #3 also blocks from the sides, and I found a purple from my stash to make a centered design. #2 was the lone quilt made from the blue and white.  I carefully selected the blocks from the quilt that had a lot of variety, and a little brown stain to keep it real.  I machine quilted them all fairly dense, backed them with unbleached muslin, and gave them a gentle wash then into the dryer to wrinkle them up a bit.

This was a very fun project!

Striped Traingled Diamonds on the Diagonals

The triangle is a shape that I find interesting and want to try all the variations of setting that I can think of. I made a scrap quilt with 6" striped triangles.  In order to run my striped sideways, I had to cut each triangle instead of cutting from a strip.  It left these small (3") triangles from the sides so I piled them up and started wondering what could I do with them?  This is a small table runner for the entryway where we drop our keys and stuff as we walk in the door.  I scrapped together the batting and used strips from the strip basket for the binding.  A true "upcycling" scrap project!