Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Making progress on Old Tobacco Road


This was a mystery on Bonnie Hunter's website Quiltville.  I finished most of the top last winter, then my sister-in-law Carol helped me pick out the border fabric when we were in New Braunfels in April. I finally got around to attaching the borders today.  This is the largest quilt top I've made in years - it's a long queen - 84 x 104.  I guess I'll try to get around to making the backing and getting this quilted.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Gypsy Wife plus 2 Spinoffs

When I went to the Silver Thread Guild's quilt show in Creede a couple of months ago, I picked up Jen Kingwell's Gypsy Wife pattern. It looked like something that would be fun to make. It was!  You select your own fabrics - no directions are given for that - and you plug your blocks into whichever size spaces you want.  I like how there are 1 1/2" strips running vertically through the quilt that give it some continuity. 
Gypsy Wife



When I finished Gypsy Wife, I thought that Jen's concept would translate easily to designing more quilts like hers, so I grabbed some graph paper and planned out one that would use up some of my orphan blocks.  I'll be taking it to the longarmer's tomorrow, but thought I'd post a pic of the top.





As I was looking around on the web for sites about designing your own quilts, I saw this page, about making a crocheted blanket using different sizes of squares. I thought it would translate well to a quilt, and grabbed my bags of 1.5" strips.

I think that I can teach a class on doing this, so I'll be talking to my local shop folks tomorrow about that.   Wouldn't that be fun?

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Fabric Postcards - My Newest Obsession

Last month, our guild invited Judy Stevens to do a workshop (and then a trunk show the next day at our meeting) on making fabric postcards.  She moved to our area recently, and is in a different guild that I'll be joining next week. 

Her workshop was wonderful, and I'm hooked.  Now I have two obsessions - piecing and fabric postcards!  I've been exploring Pinterest and Etsy, as well as the blogging world, and have accumulated tons of wonderful ideas for cards.  Here are some of the first ones I've made.













More Charity Quilts Finished

While we were in Colorado, I made a lot of tops - I think the total was 10. Some of them have been quilted and bound. Thanks to a few friends from my guild, they were sandwiched and quilted, and then I did the binding. There are three others that have been handed off to friends, and they will complete the binding as well - so I won't have photos of them.
Peaks and Valleys from Scrap Basket Beauties (Kim Brackett)

Generations from Scrap Basket Beauties (Kim Brackett)

Start Struck - a Bonnie Hunter pattern from Quiltville.com

I call this one Rectangular Split 9-Patch Star

Yet another String Quilt

I call this one Split 9-Patch Medallion - I started with the star and then added tons of pinwheels to make it large enough.