Heirloom Quilt

 My Granddaughter is only 8 months old but I'm already making her wedding quilt. I made an heirloom quilt for each of the grandsons, "Betty B's Bouquet" and Mary Mannakee, which are stored away for when they get married. Who knows if I'll be here for any of their weddings and I may not be able to quilt years from now so NOW is the time to make those quilts.

 This double wedding ring pattern is based on a old issue of McCall's, reworked to use paper piecing and offered as a pdf for free at McCall's website. (I did find the outside pattern was 1/2" too small to fit the arc pieces.) I still had some scraps from my mother so I included as many of those as I could. There are 7 different combinations for the rings, 6 blocks across and 6 down for a king size. I really don't like to do paper piecing but the accuracy for the arcs made the joining of pieces so easy.

I started this quilt last September. Once it was ready to hand quilt I worked on other projects, picking it up intermittently. I looked through all my books and on-line for suitable motifs and decided on two that were compatible.

 All the center motifs are done and most of the arcs and almond shapes. I hope to finish before the year is up.

"SECONDARY COLORS"

My cousin's son was recently married to a Thai girl. The wedding took place with her family in Thailand but they met, work and live in Hong Kong. They are visiting family in California and on Saturday there will be a reception for the newlyweds. I wanted to make something personal rather than buying a gift. 

 This pattern called "Zipper" comes from a great book, the Modern Quilt workshop by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr. I have made two other quilts from this book, "Treehouse" and "Outside the Box", and plan to do more.

I machine quilted it with a Japanese wave pattern as shown in the book.

All the fabrics came from my stash, even the backing. I generally do not buy more than a yard of fabric without a plan but I actually had enough of this matching fabric adding extra rectangles to get the desired width.

Retirees

Ten teachers retired this year from my old school. We started the tradition of making a quilt for each person who left us 9 years ago when our principal retired. The four of us continued even after I retired 4 years ago.  We made this one 2 years ago when Betty was originally retiring but only finished it this year.

This year the district offered an incentive at the last minute that could not be passed up and so we were in trouble.  With the help of our VP who also quilts (she made these two and offered one from her stash.)

we completed 10 quilts in time for the closing of school. I was involved in most of them, making the tops for 5, quilting 5 and the binding of some.

My good friend Marsha (who is the only one of our group who isn't retiring) helped with the one above right and made these two, with me quilting the cat quilt.

Whoo!

Love of Travel

My latest inspiration is to make a memory quilt of our travels.

We have visited over 50 countries and more to come.

I have collected fabrics and needlework samples from a number of those countries.

I want to design a quilt that features as many parts of the world as possible.

I found this panel at Hancock that I'll cut up to show our love of cruising.

I purchased these fabrics to supplement my stash.

I appliquéd these stacking dolls to represent Russia.

I want to also appliqué a maple leaf for Canada.

I'll post more on my progress as I plan and start piecing. I don't want to move too fast as we have a upcoming trip to Africa in the works.

Ready for binding

This quilt was a collaborative effort of my teacher friends (3 + me) for our beloved secretary, Betty, retiring this year.

We went into our stashes and put together this design in Betty's favorite colors. We strip pieced squares tying in the "white on white" background.

The appliqué, suggested by the pattern, was turned with fusable interfacing.

I did a combination of machine quilting, in the ditch and free motion, on the colored parts with hand quilting in the white background.

Now its Debbie's turn to put on the binding.

Raffle for Women's Retreat

Every year my quilt group at church has made a quilt to be raffled at Women's Retreat in support of Women's Ministries. This year we decided to make individual items so more women would have a chance to take a quilted item home and hopefully sell more tickets. These are my contributions.

"FLOWER GARDEN"

lap size

SPRING/SUMMER

reversable runner

(Sorry I haven't responded to your comments. I got a new computer and I'm having trouble with my email. Its on my list of to-dos but this involves one of my sons giving me some time.)

"BIG BROTHER" & "LITTLE BROTHER"

"BIG BROTHER" "LITTLE BROTHER"

My daughter-in-law saved my grandsons' "baby" clothes in hopes that I would make a quilt for each of the boys. They are now 5 and 3 years old. The challenge was to blend a variety of colors, deal with various fabric types and include key logos in both quilts i.e." DUKE" and "OXY".

I started by cutting and reducing the bulky clothing into usable "squares". As I was cutting up the T-Shirts, I realized that the brand labels and printed sizes inside should be used too. I also found that I could leave the ribbed neckline, pockets or the snap front from some body suits.

I laid out the various size pieces on the floor, distributing colors to repeat throughout. The remaining fabric was cut up and used for sashing and additional squares.

I did a lot of stitch-in-the-ditch and diagonal grids but I also had fun doing free motion designs that reflected the image in the logo. Since so many of boys clothing is made of plaids and stripes, it was natural to use plaid and stripe backing fabrics.