Aubrey's Quilt

This is my beautiful girl, Aubrey....my 'mini me', poor thing! She loves horses, so her quilt is horsey inspired. The fabrics in the pinwheels have daises and horseshoes on them so they are mildly girlie but not too girlie so that she would hate it. She picked the pattern and I picked the fabrics.

The border fabrics have not only beautiful quarter horses on them but also cowgirls. Again, slightly feminine but not tooooo much,

This quilt was the first one I did with custom quilting, don't look too close. ;) It is quilted with daises and corresponding abstract block filling designs. The back of the quilt is pink with more beautiful horses and cowgirls on it. It fits perfectly on her bed...now if it is ever neatly made, I will take a pic of it in use and post it...don't hold your breath.

A Quilt for the Mom-in-Law

Lorraine's Quilt

Patty's Petals Design

If you have never been on a shop hop, you are missing out and you should feel sad. Shop hops are LOADS of fun! Even when you drag 5 kids under the age of 10 with you for 2 days of nothing but driving and going to fabric stores. That is exactly what I did last year. I justified all of this driving and shopping with the idea that I could make 'sales calls' on all of the local stores in my area. So we packed up with car with snacks and cd's and went driving. About 400 miles and an unmentionable amount of fabric we were through. The kids liked the idea that the shop owners all had treats, that would have been enough to keep them under control (enough) but I also gave them an assignment...'pick out fabric to make a quilt for grandma'. That made them TOTALLY involved and actually wanting to keep going. I told them to pick out pink and purple fat quarters from each shop they went to, each of them go one piece from each store, there were 18 shops! Eighteen shops times 4 fat quarters at each...you get the idea...that is alot of fabric! we actually ended up with enough to make 2 quilt tops. Anyway, about half way through this process of picked fabric I realized that the pink and purples were getting a might boring so I told one of them to pick yellows and one to pick greens and that broke it up enough. Then when we got home, I pulled out about 6 different patterns that were fat quarter friendly and they had to vote on which one to use. This would be for the grandma that belongs to my husband. He said to make it 'kind of girly', since apparently my quilts tend not to be. ;) I then quilted it with a pattern called Patty's Petals with a pink thread. This was the end result.

Challenge Blocks

I am a member of the mountain piece makers quilt guild. A few months back we were asked to bring a baggie full of 5 inch squares of fall color fabrics. At the meeting, someone divided them up and we were given the challenge to make something with them. The rules were that we could add one fabric to the pattern as well as a background and a border fabric. These are the fabrics I started with.

I blankly stared at them for oh a month or so...Then about a week before it was due to show at the meeting, I started on it. The pieced blocks are paperpieced (not very well I might add) and the solid pieces are a cream on cream feather print fabric. The border fabric is a piece that I have been sitting on for a long time. Not until I took it out to work with it on this project did I realize that it is a very poor quality of fabric, I am pretty sure it is not even cotton. :/ Anyway, this is the end result:

Tianna's Quilt

 I had been quilting for about 4 years when I moved to North Carolina. I left MANY very special people whom I miss very much. Not the least of these is my 'sister' T. She came to visit me less than I year after I moved. She  pointed out that I had not yet made her a quilt. I was like 'D'uh'...I would have loved to whip her up something great right then and there. However, I was BROKE! So I made her a deal that if she bought the fabric, I would make her anything she wanted. So I handed her a stack of books and said 'pick something out and then we will go shopping'! She picked out this pattern that was a beautiful blend of blues and browns, very subdued. And we blew that up, with the brightest colors we could find. I loved that this pattern because it has the french braid pattern in the borders, that is one of my favorite details. I wish I had more close up pics of the details on this quilt, but alas I do not. I do however have a picture of Tianna with her quilt...isn't she beautiful? This is a pic of her kickin it on my couch with it.

And yes, I did make her come visit again so she could have it. ;)

Butterfly Quilt

Yes, I know, its BRIGHT. But hey, I don't like boring! One of my favorite things to do with quilting is to mix traditional techniques or patterns with very non-traditional fabrics. This is an example of a traditional Dresden quilt: 

These are 'butterflies' made with partial Dresden plates with alternating light and dark pieces. The quilting got a little out of control but I was having fun with it:



Lynn and Dave's Quilt

We rent our house. Well, actually we 'rent-to-own' our house. We have the most amazing Landlord EVER. We had about a week to find a house, get married, enroll the kids in school and move in. Luckily we found a bout we both loved in about 2 days. We moved in in August but didn't meet the people who actually owned the house until the following year. They had a rental company charged a ridiculous amount of money to do nothing, collected the rent and maintained the home. Since the people who own the home live out of the country, this seemed like a great arrangement for all. After renting the house for 2 full years, the owners have decided to lease-to-own the home to us. They are very generous and kind hearted people. They even send us a gift every year. We thought all of that deserved a thank you. So, the man picked out a pattern and the both of us rummaged through my stash to find fabric that would work. I couldn't get out of the house for a few days due to a blizzard so I made the whole quilt in about a week. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you are a prisoner to you home. ;)

Wish you could see the qulting...it was great!

Sample of one block.

NB Elementary School Donation Quilt

It is safe to say that I HATE SCHOOL FUNDRAISERS!!! Especially considering that I have 5 school aged kids that all bring home the same packets. One can only buy so much cookie dough, wrapping paper and coupon books. And considering that when I buy that $20 tub of cookie dough (that is not even close to as good as my own) the school actually sees about $2 of it. That being said, I do understand and appreciate that the schools do need parental help to keep our school supplied and staffed in a way that is best for the kids. So, last year I decided that I would make a quilt and donate it to the school and they could do what they like with it in whatever fashion they thought would do the most good. They chose to put it into a raffle basket (mind you wadded up and shoved in the back where all you could see is one square and people probably thought it was a pot holder). People could buy tickets for whatever basket they chose and then there was a drawing for each basket. I am not sure how much was raised and I hope that whomever got it enjoys it. Here it is:

Paulina

 I have decided to go back and add in short clips of quilts, either old or new, that I have finished but not blogged about. So the next few posts will be short and sweet and hopefully have some decent pictures to them.

Where we started

This quilt is a sort of 'turning twenty-esq' sort of pattern. I got all the fabrics from the sale table from my favorite LQS, or out of my stash . This quilt is done with the orange color palate. I also picked up fabrics that are the same line but in a pink palate, but haven't decided what their final destination will be.



Quilted with orange thread in the 'spice market' pattern.



I LOVE this backing fabric

Finished Quilt