I’ve been LABORING on a quilt for my sister-in-law, Sally, for quite some time folks. Oh Lord its been a project! But I do now have the top done and need to use a machine to do the quilting on. Unfortunately my go-to quilt machine @ Granny G’s is no longer available. Now due to the quirky times with the Co-vid virus, I’m not sure where else to go. There’s a place in Lewiston, but I haven’t established contact there. I think I will need to take a class to use their machine. That quilt Is my Bear Creek quilt. That’s where Sally lives, and we all love to visit.

Besides that I have been working on my mural quilt for Sonia, and some small pieces for Leah Petes graduation quilt. I sent them to Hannah to incorporate into her Leah Pete quilt. Yeh team! So, below are the Bear Creek quilt photos. You like?

And while I’m at it below those is a photo of my Sonia mural quilt. I will think of a creative name for it later. Ooops the photo went to the top w/out my permission, but, “I like it!” How about you? That’s all for now folks. This blog stuff is a chore!!!

I was having trouble getting onto the administrative side of my blog, got frustrated, and thus being busy with all kinds of things since last entry have utterly neglected my blog.
Buttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt I haven’t stopped quilting. Perhaps I’ve slowed down slightly.

I have almost completed the fastest quilt I have ever produced. Its name is still pending, but will have the word treasures in it. I was prompted to make the quilt quickly when I realized that as a part of a summer trip I would be visiting a very enthusiastic sewing friend who has a very high tech quilting machine among many other machines and devices. I didn’t get the memo that I was to bring a quilt with me that we could put together and quilt with her fancy computerized quilting machine.

I leaped into action, made a quick choice on which design to use, and colors to include. I had to finish the last block at her house using one of her sewing machines, and then had to decide quilting designs to use with my blocks, border and other spots on the quilt. The main design was a star-like/sunflower-like large design for my large blocks, a snowflake-like design for smaller squares, and a wavey fun design for the border. It turned out fantastic. The binding is almost finished.

Soooooooooooo, It is now called Jewel Blossom Treasures.  I started it somewhere in  May of 2019, took it mostly finished to Wisconsin in mid July almost finished, and reading to quilt it together, and eventually got the binding finished Oct 9th, 2018.

It turned out pretty cool for as quickly as I slapped it together.

 

Well, my intentions were good, but with a poor follow-through. Another year has sailed by. Sorry. My quilting has been a bit sparse this past year, but I have been working. I’ve been making a quilt mural depicting some very fun events (which I have had many) in my adventurous life.

At present I have finished 5 pieces for this project, including a recent boardering of each one. I don’t know how many more I will do, but there needs to be enough to complete a rectangular longish mural. I have a few more ideas.

This isn’t my favorite type of quilting because it requires applique, which I’m not fond of necessarily. I do have a new sewing machine to aid me. Its a Singer Patchwork. It is a little more heavy duty w/ a few more features, but nothing fancy. My feeling is that for quilting you don’t need much.

I will take some pictures at an appropriate time and add them here, to give you an idea of whats up.

I have also been experimenting with a few bright ideas I have had. You’ll see a few examples soon. Happy Spring. I’m happy for some better weather.

I did have fun making Streak of lightning because I was trying to make it quite colorful for a teacher friend. I was making it lap-sized, but it turned out big enough for two laps.

To finish it off I used a cut-in thin brown border along with a rich blue wide border, and a green brown binding. I do my binding via machine on the front side and by hand on the back side. The brown binding came with some cool sparkles. I make my own bindings.

The back of the quilt was a nice yellow with red flowers in it. I know Mrs. B. likes yellow. I got the yellowish backing for a really good price at a garage sale. I had plenty!

I remember having trouble getting the lightening bolts going up and then back down. You had to pay close attention to the lights and darks, and how you hooked the units, and blocks together. 

Anyway, we got it rolling without too much thunder. I varied the types of lights I used, which turned out fine. Some of them are a wee bit distracting. If I would have used the same lights throughout it would have been less distracting.

This quilt was finished on February 1st, 2014. That is my birthday.

 

 

 

As promised over one year ago, my, how time flies! Here are some notes on the Many Miles quilt. Sorry I can’t believe its been this long.

I went back to the fun geometric realm of Nickel Quilts. I enjoyed making this pleasingly colorful largish lap quilt, although it took me a long time to finish this up.

Altogether, due to much busyness, a summer trip to Europe with my son Preston, a torn meniscus in my left knee, and a few other matters seemed to delay my work.

Anyway, I had some nice blue-green material for my border which really set this quilt off, al0ng with other colorful contrasting darks.

I made this quilt for some dear saints/friends who have been serving the Lord mainly with college students here for quite some time. It was a thank you for all their care for people and for the material given to me by the sister (in the Lord) for my quilting projects. She sews a lot, I don’t sew, I only know how to quilt. Some of the things she donated to my quilting cause were incorporated into this quilt.

I don’t remember any troubles with making this quilt, other than how long it took. It was a fairly easy pattern. I always have fun with colors. I finished it on January 15, 2016. I’m not sure if I can figure out when I started. I’ll check into it.

More to come, sooner than later.

Hello fellow quilters. Happy new year 2016. I believe I have been most negligent in posting for quite some time. Sorry. I seam to stay a little too busy, and not just with quilting.

Since we talked I have made one full sized quilt for a family friend called Streak of Lightning. I have some notes I’ll share on that one. I made a new quilt for my youngest son which was an experiment doing a strip quilt technique which I soon tired of so finished it off w/ some of my more standard colorful border block designs. Thennnnnnn, I am now finishing a largish lap quilt with awesomely nice color combos of turquoise and assorted bright color accents. The book called it Path and Stiles, but I will call it Many Miles. This is for some dear friends who love the Lord, and give of themselves a lot. So it is a thank you for their faithfulness, and also for the sister’s generous giving of leftover scraps for my quilts. I built some of them into the quilt.

So I’ll get back to you with more stories and pictures. Happy 2016 quiltitiss.

This fun quilt was a slow developing process. It started out w/ my friend Jed who wanted to learn how to quilt, so we made a few nine-patches, and left a few unfinished. It didn’t turn out for Jed to learn more quilting due to circumstances.
When I learned of Jed and his new buddy Jennifer getting married I wanted to make a quilt for them. So….I took the nine-patches Jed made and finished his other starts into a checkerboard-like block, Then I slowly built a quilt around them. So the center was just about a checkerboard.

Taken in the upper room.

Due to their wedding being put off again, and again I couldn’t get the quilt rolling very well at first. Little motivation. But I found out Jennifer likes greens, and darkerish purples, so I began to build around the center using my trademark bright colors, and working in colors for Jennifer in different blocks. I even included a really cool tree I had made, I used it as one of the corners. I call it The Tree of Life. I hadn’t made any more of it because it was annoying to make.

A lot of the large outer boarder blocks were made in picture frame-like style, building from inside out. I very much enjoyed throwing in some of my favorite trees I had made from time to time, and a fun mountain. I also threw in a few pinwheels in order to harness wind energy for the scene.

One unfortunate matter I had to undergo is that I wanted it queen sized, but then their wedding got moved forward a month so I didn’t have enough time to continue out with the quilt as originally planned if I wanted to have it ready for the wedding. It was still plenty large, but not queen. I udderly (notice cow blocks) enjoyed making this quilt, and tried to put a sense of humor into it, as I know Jed is funny, and enjoys humor.

This book mark is a view of the book, “The Mouse in the White House”

In between all the big items I’ve been doing, a number of small projects have been happening. (1st) I made an apron fashioned after one I used in my ceramics class. It was funly quilted but not neatly finished off in a very good way. This was back when I first started all my quilting, and I didn’t have any other sewing skills. I often tell people, “I don’t know how to sew, I only know how to quilt.” And this is true. I never really learned to sew at all. Sometime I may try to finish up the apron nicer, tie up the loose ends and stuff, but for now I use it as is, and not many folks see it anyway.

(2nd) I had a friend who was having a birthday so I threw together 4 place mats for her. She was moving away, so I thought it would be nice to do something hand made for her new life in the midwest. They were quilted, and had a dark green backing which came together pretty nicely.

(3rd) I was getting ready to make a trip to Romania to visit our friends there who we miss very much, so I wanted to bring them a little sample of some of my work. I was experimenting with these mountainy designs which I saw in a book given to me about “fast-patching.” It was called Nifty Nine-patch and there was a lot of messing around, and cutting on the bias, and putting things back together, and cutting out and matching different strips. The mountainy designs that resulted were very cool but a lot of trouble. Sooooooooo, I used my experiments with this design to make some table center pieces, and/or couch decorators. I made borders for them, and backing, and quilted them together. They turned out pretty great! I made about 4 or 5 small pieces for that. I would do more of that kind of design, but it was too much trouble for now.

(4th) I made 2 lap quilts using the Delectable Mountain pattern which I also really like, but it is a bit of trouble also. Especially because I didn’t have a lot of directions, but had to do a lot of it without extra help. I really enjoyed using plaids for this which the pattern requires. The plaids make the mountains really look cool. I collected a bunch of plaid, but also already had a bunch. I made one of these, and then liked it so much that I made another for a friend/co-worker of Sonia’s who got married around that time. It turned out awesome, and she really liked it. Besides the plaid, I incorporated colors from her wedding. I would do more of these quilts, but it was a bit painful doing the Delectable Mountains design.