A decade in the making

Flag quilt, 56 x 77

I first blogged about this quilt four years ago when it was a six-year-old UFO! My flag quilt was quilted by Maggi Honeyman in a Baptist fan pattern on her longarm. I don't remember how the original was quilted, but this old quilting pattern seemed appropriate, like wind blowing the flags around.

Yes, those cornerstones are half-inch squares.

The binding was completed some time ago, but I kept forgetting to get a picture. After the binding is on, I consider the quilt done, but lately I've been feeling a bit guilty about not putting labels on my quilts. It's taken 10 years to get this far, what's a little more time to add the label? Does anyone have a good method for making labels?

Aboriginal ???



The Aboriginal Quilt, 70 x 84 inches.
Quilted by Maggi Honeyman.

Looks like this one was about two years in the making. Started with a block made for fun and now has ended with the last binding stitches. You can read about the process here.

 

Love that fabric in the left corner. I think it's a Thimbleberries.
Also used toile, repros, text and part of a Halloween line!

The back. Not terribly exciting, but the fabric complements the front
(despite my photography skills) and was on sale.

I'm not sure what to call it. In my head it's The Aboriginal Quilt because I tried to use Aboriginal fabric in every block, but that name doesn't match the look. Suggestions welcome.

Pointless Lone Star

Pointless Lone Star, 86 x 86, pattern by Sarah Fielke
from Quilters Newsletter August/September 2011.

Another finish from the last few months was the quilt for the couple whose favorite colors are purple (him) and pink (her). Again quilted brilliantly by Maggi Honeyman. This was a fairly easy pattern because there are no set in seams, some strip piecing and only four very large blocks.



Back of Pointless Lone Star.

Here my husband models the back of the quilt, made up of the prints that didn't make the cut for the front. They helped shape the direction of the colors for the front, but didn't work in the blocks themselves.

Back to blogging

The whole point of this blog for me is to record my quilting activities and sometimes other things so I can remember when I did them. The last three and a half months were an unintentional blog break. It's not that I haven't been sewing, but that I haven't been inclined to spend time on the computer (or life keeps you from it). Before I forget what I've done lately, I'm back to blogging.


Transformer Stars, 76 x 81 inches, original design by me.

Transformer Stars came back from my longarmer, was bound and mailed to my nephew. I've already gotten a cute thank you card from him, and I hear that he really does like it. Thank heavens. I was afraid that it took me so long he may have lost interest in Transformers before he got the quilt.

Detail of quilting by Maggi Honeyman.

Maggi Honeyman quilted an all-over star pattern that is exactly what this quilt needed.


Back of Transformer Stars.

Forgotten finishes

Spider web quilt, 44 inches square

I realized the other day that I hadn't posted pictures of these two quilts I finished awhile ago. They had been languishing in the binding stage for a bit behind a couple others.

 

William Morris I, 68.5 x 74 inches

The William Morris one is on my bed. It's not that big, but the duvet is almost the same color brown as the border so it looks good on top of that. The other day, we were reading in bed, and my husband said, "Have you heard of William Morris?" Ha! (He was reading "The Book of the Dead: Lives of the Justly Famous and the Undeservedly Obscure.")

Looking back in my blog, I see it took over a year from start to finish for the Morris quilt, which was quilted by Maggi Honeyman. I enjoyed making this top and figuring out a different method of piecing it.

Red and white quilts

Taryn of Repro Quilt Lover is hosting a Red and White Quilt Exhibit in honor of the show coming up in New York. Here are a couple that I've made. Red is my favorite color. If anyone is hosting a Red and Brown Quilt Exhibit, I've got a few entries for that too.

Woven Blocks, 60 inches/152.4 cm, 1997?
Quilted by Maggi Honeyman

This is one started earlier in my quilting career. Maggi quilted it with red thread so it has kind of a redwork look to it. Once I started making quilts faster than I could hand quilt them -- it took me a couple years to hand quilt my first quilt -- I started going to a long-arm quilter so the top pile wouldn't give me guilt pangs every time I started a new one. 

Split Ohio Stars, 92.5 inches/234.95 cm square, 2007?

I need to do a better job labeling my quilts (and/or putting dates on patterns and class handouts) so I know when I made them or at least started them. Time flies by so fast now I think it's been only a year and it's been three or four, and the top is still waiting to be quilted. (That's code for sent to Maggi!)

I'm excited about the New York exhibit because I'm supposed to be going. Hotel reserved and flight reservations made. But I had big plans to go to the V&A last year for that exhibit and Eyjafjallajökull ruined those so we'll see. If Mother Nature foils me again, I will have to rewatch this video from Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims' blog as consolation.

My entry in Blogger's Quilt Festival

I'm sharing this quilt for Blogger's Quilt Festival because 1) it's finished except for the label, 2) I was able to get a picture of the whole thing between wind gusts yesterday and 3) I had lots of fun putting it together.

The pattern is Girlfriends Galore by Kathy Doughty from Material Obsession's first book.  I had bought a couple yards of Philip Jacob's print "Daffodils and Dogwood" around the same time I bought the Material Obsession book. I was planning on making a different pattern from the book, but these two insisted on meeting. The rest of the fabrics were pulled from my stash. I didn't have enough yardage of any one fabric so I used several fat quarters of similar colors to make up the yardage.

The different piecing sections made the quilt fun to work on. I get bored doing the same thing over and over. With this quilt there was the Lone Star center, a few set-in seams, then a triangle border, some four-patches and some half-square triangles.   

Maggi Honeyman of Texas did the machine quilting on this. I hope that you can see in the picture how great her quilting is. Each section is done differently to complement the piecing. Because I used a solid backing it looks like a whole cloth quilt. That makes it reversible and is why it doesn't have a label. I'm not sure what to do because it should be documented (I regret not putting labels on some of my earlier quilts), but I want to be able to use it with either side showing. Suggestions appreciated.

Somebody's quilting, but it's not me

Got two quilts back from my longarm quilter, Maggi Honeyman.

She did a fabulous job on the Girlfriends Galore pattern. Each diamond in the star center has a leaf design, and each border around the center is quilted differently to complement the shapes in those borders. You can really see the border treatment on the back (although maybe not as well with my photo.) Looks like a whole-cloth quilt.

William Morris got some special treatment too. I love the feathered border and the interior is a similar pattern that fills the little squares jutting into the border.

I was so excited to see the quilting and take pictures that some of the photos are a little blurry from my jumping for joy.

Maggi has quilted my quilts for years now. We used to both live in Florida, then she moved to Texas, and I moved to Illinois. When I have something I really like and want it to be treated to more than my expert straight-line quilting with a walking foot or feeble free-motion attempts, I send it to her. I tell her a little bit of what I'm thinking for the quilting, but ultimately leave it in her hands because I trust what she's done with my quilts in the past and know I won't be disappointed. Isn't it great when you are the same wavelength as someone else?

No more work travel for awhile I hope. Now maybe I can get back to quilting if only to pack up a couple more quilt tops for someone to help me finish.