Elephant for my Sister

 I have an old, really beat up quilt for my grandmother. It has holes every where and there is no way it could be saved. Well, one day a few months ago, my local quilt shop sent out an email about this...

It mentioned something about turning old quilts into something new. What a great idea! So I made this for my sister for Christmas. I didn't give her any explanation, but she knew right away what it was and where it came from. And she loved it!

(I have plans for another one for someone else who I know would really like it! And if there is enough quilt left, I might do one for me too!)

Quilts for my Kids

 Earlier this year we repainted the kids room so decided that they needed quilts to go with their "new" room. So I drew up two patterns, found a color scheme that went with their room and their favorite colors.

So first I started with Naomi's quilt. I started last spring when I could work on it when she was in school.

Her quilt was very random. I started by throwing out the squares and made sure they were mixed up real good.

Then straightened them up.

Then sewed them together with the sashing.

Then quilted it. I kept it simple with straight lines.

She loved it. 

For Alana's I had a hard time deciding with way the pattern should go. This one has three different squares. Pretty simple. 

This one has 5 separate blocks. it takes more planning, but is funner to look at. My husband voted for the second one. 

So, after bed time during the summer, and after she started Kindergarten, I sewed it all together.

See, its fun to look at!

I got it pinned together...

And quilted it with a bunch of diagonal lines.

She loved it too!

I love how they are different enough that when they grow out of liking to be the same, they can be different, but yet, they still work together with each other and the color scheme in the room. As you can tell, Noami's favorite color is pink, and Alana's is teal blue. They also picked out the colors for the room. I was really surprised when Naomi picked yellow fro her wall color

Sports T-shirt Quilt

I was contacted by a friend of a friend to make this shirt quilt for a daughter who is a sports star!

I started out by rough cutting each shirt, ironing on stabilizer on the back, then cutting them to size. Each square is 12.5 inches across, but they all vary in length, depending on the design on the shirt. 

Then I pieced them all together, starting in vertical strips, centering them together, adding filler blocks, piecing the strips together, and adding a border to bring it to size.

Then I layered on the batting a back fabric that the mom picked out. Then i quilted it like crazy. I used my favorite design or a meandering swirly line. It creates a lot of movement, is easy to fill areas, and I can start and stop easily and hide it easily.

Then I added a coordinating hem.

I love the way it turned out. And the mom loves it too. She is giving it to her daughter for Christmas!

Mystery Quilt

In quilt guild I participated in a mystery quilt challenge. They gave us one part a month to do and at the end they showed us how to put them together.

We started with this triangle. 

We had to make 4 of them.  This went on for a few months of making randle strips of squares and appliquing cherries. 

Finally they showed us this:

They had gotten permission from the makers to share it with quilt guild and break it into pieces. 

My quilt ended up like this:

In the end they invited the makers of the pattern to come judge our quilts. They had never done anything like that before. I learned a lot about appliqué and what judges look for when they evaluate a quilt. Needless to say I ended up in fourth place (of 4 quilts.) but I think I come to an important conclusion. My style is a lot different than the other ladies in quilt guild. I like the simplicity of my quilt. There quilts were very busy to me. They were very cutsie. But on the other hand thier quilts were very well made. They definitely have superior quilting skills.  

I want to improve my skills. So I am going to find one quilting technique that I really enjoy doing, and work hard on that so that I can master that technique. Instead of bouncing around from technique to technique. So that is my plan. We will see where it takes me. 

Scrap Wreaths

I saw something like this on Pinterest a while ago. I saw the wreath frame in the store and bought it on a whim a few months ago. It's been on my list of projects I wanted to do for a while. 

So I finally made on last week.

I loved the way it turned out so much! The next day I bought more wreath frames and I have made one a day for the last few days. 

They are so fun to make. I have ideas for 3 or so more! I am going to sell them at the next boutique I am participating in. Then I will probably add them to my Etsy shop!

Blue Strip Pieced Scrap Quilt

 I have huge tote full of scraps. I think I will be making more of these this year. Enjoy!

This quilt is available in my etsy shop here.

First Wool Project

One of my New Years resolutions was to do a project with wool. Santa gave me a tiny project to get me started.

It was really easy and super cute!

Now I want to do another!

Parent Christmas Quilt

Each year I have been making a quilt for one of my sets of parents. This year was the fourth and final one. 

My dad and Verna are very outdoorsy. They love being at their properties and working on their projects. So for them I made an Irish Chain quilt in green. I found a pattern for the trees that I liked but after I bought it I found out it involved buying a specific template. I thought that was useless so I created my own pattern.

I don't have enough floor space so I borrowed the gym at the local church and pinned the layers together while the kids ran around. 

 I embroidered the trees on by hand and machine quilted the whole quilt on my domestic machine.

During the process I found out what happens when you sew over a safety pin. Not so good. But I was lucky. It didn't even break the needle! But it definitely needed changing after that!

Here is the finished product! I love how it turned out! I need to make another one!

I think Dad and Verna enjoyed it too! Merry Christmas!

Same blocks, different quilt.

It's amazing how the same blocks can be arranged in different ways and make so many different quilts. Here is one example. 

I made 16 string pieced blocks. They all have a cream stripe down the middle with a dark strip on one side of the cream. The rest is just random blues. 

I started out with this layout. It's so cool looking. Like an optical illusion, but it makes me dizzy. 

Then I tried zig zags (bottom two rows) and little squares on point (top two rows).

I know there is probably hundreds more ways to arrange them. This is just three of the ways I tried. Now I need to decide on one!