Plus Quilt finished

I'm so happy to show you my new favorite quilt.  I am so in love with this color scheme right now, too bad it doesn't match anything in my house.  Ha!

During spring break my girls and I went to VA to visit The Grandmomma and she taught me how to use her longarm quilting machine.  I didn't do that great of a job making my "orange peel" pattern but at least I can say I did this one all by myself.  I'll do better with more experience I'm sure.

It is the perfect size for a lap quilt so it has already gotten a lot of use on our sofa.  I always have a quilt covering my legs when I'm sitting down.  Actually, I guess my girls have gotten more use out of it than I have because I haven't had much time to sit down lately.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Relay for Life Quilt

I'm so happy to share my most recently finished quilt.  My sister runs the Relay for Life drive for her company and she asked me to make a quilt for her to enter into a raffle.  Yay!  What a great excuse to make a quilt.  I chose to use Kate Spain's Terrain fabric for this quilt and based it on this quilt made by Bryan House Quilts.

These blocks are each 26" square and with the added borders came out to a perfect queen sized quilt.  I thought that since this quilt will be in a raffle it needed to be "traditional" enough for those who like traditional quilts and yet still have a "modern" flair to it.  I hope I succeeded in achieving that balance.

The backing is mostly Kona purple (even though it's showing more blueish in the picture) with a strip of Terrain on the back.

A friend of mine, Gail, from my quilting guild did the longarm quilting on it and I think she did a perfect job!  Thank you Gail!

I made this quilt in memory of my father who died of cancer and my sister who is a cancer survivor!  I hope and pray this quilt raises a lot of money for cancer research and finds a home where it is well loved.

Hellooooo...

I am excited to show a preview of one of my current projects.  This quilt is for my oldest daughter and will hang in her room when it is finished. Yay!

I'm pretty sure there are 149 leaves on the tree and 4 birds, one for each member of my family.  The birds are missing from this picture but you can see the white space where they will be perched soon.  All those leaves are ready to be appliqued now. I'm a little scared about how long that will take to do but at least I won't be bored anytime soon.

Loulouthi Garden - Finally finished!

I told myself I had to bind all my unbound quilts before I started anything new this year.  So now that the binding is on this quilt I can pat myself on the back and move on to something new.  Yeah!  I do love this quilt.  The huge flowers make me so happy.  I have to say that Anna Maria Horner is my favorite fabric designer right now.  The pattern is Modern Rose Garden by Carolina Patchworks.

I can hardly stand to look at these pictures with all that dead grass but I was too lazy to get in the car and drive somewhere to look for a better background.  Sorry.

Of course this was quilted by The Grandmomma.  She did a super job on it, I'm happy with the allover meandering she did.

I used Kona Ash on the back and just pieced a little strip of leftover fabrics from the front about 2/3 of the way down.

I want to show the fabulous details The Grandmomma incorporated into the quilting.  I love how she mimicked the butterflies and flowers in the fabric.

Happy Tuesday!

My Summer Sampler is finally finished!

When I decided to join in on the Summer Sampler QAL I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  Let me tell you that I learned so much while making this quilt.  I had always been scared of paper piecing and never wanted to try it but thanks to the brilliant tutorials written in that QAL I was able to figure it out and now I love it! I no longer have to avoid making a quilt just because it may have some paper pieced blocks in it.  Yeah!  The block below is called the six-pointed string quilt and it is by far my favorite block on the quilt!  It was a challenge to make and I love the way it turned out.

This was also my first quilt that I used all solids on.  Oh my goodness, I am completely smitten with solids, and especially these Art Gallery solids by Patricia Bravo.  They have such a nice hand to them and are so easy to work with.

The Grandmomma quilted it for me (of course) and I think she just outdid herself on it.  It is very heavily quilted and I love it!  I'm pretty sure she had a good time going crazy on this quilt. Thank you Grandmomma!

My youngest daughter laid claim to this quilt after she saw the top pieced together.  I guess she wanted to make sure nobody else would get it so she also asked to have her name embroidered on the back.  Smart little cookie, huh?  Especially since she's only 6 and knows that most of the quilts I make do not end up living in our house.

I chose an Art Gallery print for the backing but since I needed to have a space for the embroidered name I just made a strip of solids and offset it to the right.

I actually finished this top back in September, then I sent it off to be quilted, then I started a million other projects, then Thanksgiving and Christmas came and went.  So even though it's 2012 now I am counting this as a finish for 2011 since all I did this year was add the binding.  

Thank you Faith, Lee, and Kate for hosting such a wonderful QAL.  You guys are all awesome in your own individual way!

Have a great weekend! We are expecting a good bit of rain here so I'm hoping that means a pajama day with a lot of sewing tomorrow.

By the way, try not to be jealous of the dead grass in the background of all my pictures!  I didn't have another place to lay the quilt out that had decent light.

Winter Stitching - update #1

Back in October I linked up to The Big Winter Stitching over at FairyFace Designs.  My original list is here.
I'm happy to say I can cross some of those items off my list and I need to add a few.


Part 1 to be finished by/for Christmas:  I can happily check all these off!!
1.  Mug Rug - changed my mind about making this.
2.  Lined Drawstring Bag - made tons of these and loved it!  Want to keep making them.

3.  Pot Holder - decided that pot holders are stupid.  Seems like if I can successfully and painlessly bind an entire quilt I should be able to bind a dinky little pot holder.  WRONG! Maybe one day I'll show you a picture of how jacked up a pot holder can get!
4.  Dish Soap Apron - made these for my guild's chinese auction.  Turned out great!


Part 2 to be finished by mid March or so: - I rearranged and added to this section:
1.  Find fabric for and create a Swoon quilt. - I chose to use Terrain by Kate Spain for this and found that Katy is hosting a QAL that is perfectly timed for me! Oh Happy Day!
2.  Family tree quilt for Erin's baby girl due in April. I have pieced the top but still need to embroider the family names on it.

3.  Children at Play quilt for Erin's baby girl. Yes, she's special enough to get 2 quilts!
4.  Baby quilt for my cousin's baby boy that is due in the April - finished and mailed for her baby shower.
5.  Baby quilts for my cousin's twin girls due in June.
6.  Pepper Cory Georgia quilt - for The Grandmomma.
7.  Finish Bottled Rainbows - fun!
8.  Dutch Pinwheel - make for my dear sweet babysitter.  She probably thinks I have forgotten her.
9.  Kaleidoscope - I've wanted to make one of these ever since I saw Elizabeth's gorgeous quilt!
10.  Plus quilt - finished the top - need to make the back and send to have quilted.

11.  Finish Kitchen Windows quilt - not so worried about right now, there are bigger fish to fry.
12.  Make the backing for the Single Girl quilt.

I know this post won't make sense to much of anyone except me but I needed to get myself back on track and this is such a good way to do it.  I know I'm leaving something out though...I have that nagging feeling.

I'm in!

Oh how I love a Half-Square Triangle.  I'm excited to see that Jeni, one of my favorite bloggers is hosting a HST block of the month for 2012.  Each month she will provide a tutorial for a traditional quilt block using HSTs.  I'm loving it!  I am planning to use fabric from my stash so that will be a good little stash buster.

Won't that be fun?