Four Generation Quilt

This oddball wall hanging is the lemonade from a recent post.  The binding is all finished and buttons added to corners.  It's a pretty silly piece because it's so haphazard, but I still love it because it is my step mother's first try using Terpsichore and I went back and filled in empty spaces with little background feathers and such.  The colors are right for my soon to be grandbaby's nursery, so Great Grandma and Grandma signed the corner and dated it and it will hang in the nursery until my poor daughter can't stand it any more!

Overdoing It

I'm going on a quilting retreat this weekend with a friend.  Just an hour or so from my home, not a major trip, and just for an overnighter.  But starting last week I collected several projects-to-be at the sewing table and started kitting them up to take along.  I wanted a variety of things to do - some hand sewing, some piecing, some pressing, no quilting though because I do all that on Terpsichore and she HATES to travel.  Anyway, I guess I got a little carried away because now I have maybe ten different projects each in their own little zipper bags ready to go.  Wanna see?

Two pictures of the first one so you can see what the quilt will look like and see the focus fabric.

      

 The second project is a pine cone purse from Kumiko Sudo's Omiyage.  I just love her stuff.  :)  The picture has one finished pinecone and one partially assembled one.

 

Haha!  This next picture just looks silly.  It is a border for a quilt.  I'm going to fill this border with all manner of vines, leaves and flowers, but it is so early in the game that all I have is about 20" of the base vine appliqued in.  I work on this project about 20 minutes a month I think.  Don't hold your breath on it coming back from retreat finished!

I'm really looking forward to working on this one.  The first picture is just a shot of everything in the bag along with the basic quilt pattern.  The bottom picture is the reason I'm making the quilt.  A friend had worked these fabrics as much as she cared to (she made a quilt and several pillowcases and maybe even a second quilt but now I don't remember) and still had some paired up 2 x 6.5 strips left over.  She asked if I wanted to do something with them.  :)  Friends. :)  I'll probably get all the pointy paper piecing done on this one during retreat and bring the rest home to fiddle with.

This one for sure will come back a finished top.  Queen sized, it only has 16 blocks.  Muah hahahahaha! (that was my evil laugh)  This top will take about an hour to sew together not including maybe an hour of squaring up blocks.  The second image is an EQ6 sketch of the quilt to be.

The picture below doesn't say much for my color matching ability and the EQ6 sketch below that shows the layout but not the exact fabrics.  So maybe just take my word for it that all this will look ok when it comes home.  Mostly 40's looking kitchen prints.  Another super easy top.  I like super easy for retreats.  More brain power reserved for chatting and snacking that way!

This is a salvage operation.  My mom stopped quilting in the middle of this one.  Decided her eyes weren't really good enough anymore.  It was challenging to me to figure out how to turn her 12 blocks into a quilt.  I made up 12 more blocks and layed it out as per the EQ6 sketch below the photo.  I really like her color choices.

This is a lemonade.  I was showing my stepmother how to use Terpsichore and we were chatting about how she is going to be a great-grandma and I am about to be a grandma and we decided to turn the scrap into a wall hanging for the nursery.  Kinda cool not because of the spectacular talent involved or anything but because it is a 4 generation quilt.  Anyway, I'm bringing this one along so I'll have opportunities to tell everyone how I'm just about INVENTING grandmotherhood oh and of course,  to get the binding sewn down.

This last one is still in the works.  I'm in the middle of pressing the fabrics.  In the same family as my Random Boxes quilt, this one is called Splotchy.  The blocks will look pretty random but are fairly easy to assemble.  You can get something of a preview of the block assembly in the first shot and the second is an EQ6 rendering.  Look for this pattern to be on my quilting tutorials site soon. 

So wish me luck!  Honestly, I figure if I can come home with any two of these projects completed I'll be right happy about my progress.

Creativity, Ingenuity, Kits

A customer recently brought me this top to quilt. I love the color combination. Brights tempered with lighter shades of the same tones, log cabin variations have long been a favorite of mine too. The floral prints in the centers tie the colors together nicely.

This quilt isn't on my blog because of the quilting I did on it. That's just a simple end to end pantograph (leap frog by Norma Sharp) in American and Efird's Old Gold (30 weight). I've put this quilt up as an example of how even a kit quilt can show off an individual's creativity. Through some vagary of fate, these blocks didn't come out the size that Michelle expected them to so she added the skinny outer layer to each block which subtly changed the overall geometry of the quilt. When it was all assembled she decided it needed to be bigger for the purpose to which it would be put so she came up with the border idea herself. It echoes the flavor of the piecing without being redundant. Overall this created a really unique top that turned into a beautiful quilt.

Way to go Michelle!

Making Lemonade

Not long ago several of my quilting friends gathered at my house to sew and chat. We do this regularly. At one point a few of them expressed interest in how Terpsichore does her work so we trooped upstairs and had a go. I loaded a couple of pieces of non-descript neutral fabric and a piece of batting. Darcy chose thread colors (pink and red) and I demonstrated the basic functions of the machine by drawing a triple heart outline. Each of the others took a turn making hearts too. It was fun. Everyone caught on quickly and enjoyed the lesson. Later that day when everyone else went home I looked at what we'd done and decided not to throw away the "scratch quilt" but rather turn it into a little donation item.

This post is mostly for Darcy, Suzette, and my Mom. Here's what we made gang! It will be donated to project Linus through one of our local quilt guilds. Thanks for helping me make it!