All those Linus quilts

Here we all are with our Linus quilts! The guild is going to send the photo (hopefully with a little cropping first) to the magazine that published the pattern. It was so much fun to make the quilt!

Val's Quilt is DONE!!

And here it is!! I can't believe it! Tomorrow I will call the quilter and will have it all done by the time Val gets home for spring break. Hoorah!

Val's quilt - almost there

Hoorah! The two side borders are on Val's quilt! I have most of the top and bottom borders already pieced. As soon as the piecing is complete, I'll attach those final two borders and be DONE. A professional quilter will do the actual quilting. This quilt isn't going to look good with stitch in the ditch, and I can't do anything else.

Autumn bargello fabrics

Here are the fabrics for my autumn bargello that I'm making in my Quilt University class. It was interesting to me that while I think of autumn as my favorite season, I don't work in autumn colors on my quilts. But I do like this color run. The fabric running along the center is my fracture fabric, a tiny strip of which will run between all the other colors. Right now it looks like a tree, which is good -- I was thinking autumn tree when I put it together. I am going to try to structure the bargello to keep the look of trees. I ran the idea by Ruth Blanchet, my instructor, and she came up with a good way to do that. I'll give it a try and post my results!

Here's the summer bargello I made for my Quilt University class. It looks like summer to me! This time the bargello matches at the seams (the spring one was staggered), making it harder to put together.

I haven't chosen a border for my spring bargello yet, but I'm considering a pencil thin, peach border next to the summer bargello, with a bigger purple border. I'll do "broderie perse" with the flower fabric on the border, letting some of the flowers come onto the bargello. (Broderie perse is Persian embroidery, where you applique a design that is cut from a fabric.) Here's a closeup (blurry, sorry) of a section of the bargello so you can see the fabrics. The flowers are all cut up in the bargello, but I'd like them in the border because they're pretty. I'm also posting a photo of the flower fabric.

Spring Bargello

I'm taking an online course at Quilt University called Bargello Seasons. It's great! We're making a different type of bargello for each of the four seasons. Here's my first. Some of the colors are from the fat quarter packet I received when I joined the guild, and then I supplemented with other fabrics. I have my summer color run, but haven't started sewing on it yet.

Check out Quilt University if you haven't seen the site yet. There are lots of great classes taught by world class teachers. It's terrific!

Do You See What I See?

I was one of 12 people in a Project Linus swap. We were given the same pattern and border fabrics, but then we each bought 5 fabrics and cut strips of them for 12 people, giving us each 60 fabrics to work with for the quilt squares. We also supplemented a bit from our stash. Click on the photo to enlarge it and you will have a better idea of some of the cute fabrics in this quilt. I'm in the process of quilting it right now. Thursday night we are all bringing our quilts to the guild meeting and will have our photo taken to send to the magazine that printed the pattern. The quilts will be donated to Project Linus. They are so cute! It was really fun to make. Jocelyn did most of the cutting and some stitching, and both JJ and Val helped with the layout.

Val's quilt top pieced!

At last! It took me awhile to get up the nerve to stitch the blocks together, but it worked. I still have to add the pieced border, which needs to be laid out on paper first. I am hiring a professional quilter to do the quilting. Goal: Have it back, all quilted, so I can give it to Val over spring break.

Val's quilt Dec. 29

Yay!!! I finally got back to Val's quilt. I was intimidated by the number of pieces -- most of them triangles -- per block, and I was concerned about getting all the fabrics in the right spot (16 fabrics swirl around), so I kept putting off starting to sew all those little pieces together. But I now am sewing in the basement, which gives me lots of room to lay out a quilt, and so I finally started. It's working! Here you can see only the layout (most of it), but I have now sewn 9 blocks. And guess what? It's not that hard! I love it! Will post a finished block soon.

Project Linus Barbie Quilt

Here's a quilt kit Jocelyn and I (mostly JJ) made for Linus. There were some Barbie fabrics in the stash, so we found coordinating prints, including both a pink and a blue with shiny silver stars, to make a kit. Jocelyn cut the whole thing out. The Linus committee makes kits and then members of the Illini Country Stitchers Guild take home a kit and turn it into a quilt.

Jocelyn's MoMA quilt

I am waaaay behind in my posts! The kids are home for winter break and have taken to quilting. In her first two days home, Jocelyn made this quilt! Over Thanksgiving we were in New York and saw a painting at MoMA that looked like it would translate easily to a quilt. Jocelyn wasted no time in doing it. The painting is by Ellsworth Kelly, Colors for a Large Wall. Check it out on MoMA's website, where they have conveniently made it into an ecard.

We currently have the local Project Linus stash in our basement, and amazingly Jocelyn found almost all the colors among the donated fabrics. We purchased a couple colors. She's donating the quilt to Linus. They get lots of quilts for babies, not too many for teenagers, and we think an artistically inclined teen might really like this one.

By the way, Jocelyn's blocks match up PERFECTLY. No one would ever guess this was anyone's first attempt at quilting!

Christmas quilt

I've taken 3 classes recently, but this is the only one where I've taken a photo of the project. This is the first of twelve rows (eek! twelve!) on a holiday quilt. There is lots of machine applique, which is why I took the class. It's fun but time consuming and there is NO WAY I will finish this before Christmas, especially as I want to get down to serious work on Val's quilt. But it was really fun choosing the fabrics. I love the snow-like sky in the background, and the swirls in Santa's robe and beard. (If you click on the photo, it will enlarge and you can see things better.) I couldn't find good fabric for the face, but my friend Glennys had some great blotchy fabric that she fussy-cut for her Santa's face and she let me use some. You would never have guessed to look at the fabric that it would have worked out so well. I outlined the tree in metallic gold thread with a feather stitch, starting at the bottom and working up on each side so the feathers would all point in the right direction. I plan to outline the star in some way, too, and stitch gold swags on the tree. Isn't that a cool fabric -- decorations already on it! The Santa has yet to be outlined, but I've decided not to do basic black. I'll try to follow the Santa colors at least somewhat. I am thinking satin stitch for part at least, otherwise a small blanket stitch.

Done!!

Yes!!! Jocelyn's African Coins quilt is done and delivered! Here it is draped on the couch. The photo is sideways (I don't know how to rotate it), but you get the idea. It was delivered in October and JJ tells me she shows it off quite a bit. I shouldn't encourage that behavior, but in this case I don't mind!

African Coins top all pieced!

Hoorah!!! The top is done!!! I know all those exclamation marks make me seem like an 8 year old, but believe me, I am EXCITED. I think it looks great. I also took some photos of the back, which is also pieced, but the photos are so bad I won't post them.

What's tomorrow? Quilting day!

All cut up!!

I did it!! I got up the nerve to cut apart that big, beautiful piece of stripped fabrics. Here it is, all laid out on the family room floor. I need to cut the black sashing that goes between all the strips and also the black border. (Don't worry about that one backwards black square in the geometric piecing -- I will fix it!)

Been thinking about the binding, too. I was trying to decide which fabric would look best, and was thinking that I would have to wait to audition it, and then I had a brilliant idea! I will piece together strips of many (probably not all) the fabrics to make a multi-colored binding. Sound good? Let me know!

Backing for JJ's African Coins

Backing fabric for JJ's quilt! I can't believe my good fortune -- Sew Sassy has batik-look flannels! They match the African Coins quilt perfectly. This is a replacement photo for the one I loaded yesterday, but it's not a whole lot better.

Just think about it -- soft, fuzzy, warm flannel. I love it!

JJ's African Coins Sept. 28

I have been cutting and piecing the vertical strips that will run through this quilt. You can see one here, lying over the uncut horizontal strips (still haven't gotten the nerve to cut them!). The vertical strips will have black running down each side, which will separate the yellow design from the horizontal strips.

If you want to see a small photo of what the finished quilt will look like (and see the online directions) go to the African Coins Quilt instruction page on the Simply Quilts website by clicking here: African Coins Quilt. I like our color selection better! And that's the way it should be. At the Timberlane Quilters' Guild site you can see another version that I like quite a bit -- though still not as much as ours! It's "(5) African Coins"; click on the photo of it to enlarge it. I do love how we can all use the same pattern and yet individualize it to suit ourselves.

Val's Quilt Sept. 28

All cut out! It took a loooong time because there are lots of pieces, but in my unbiased opinion it was totally worth it. It will be a little while before I can sew the pieces together because I am working on other projects, but it will be ready when I am.

One thing I am concerned about is a name for this quilt. It may come as I work on it, but I'm open to suggestions.

Pattern for Val's quilt

As promised, here's the basic pattern in Val's quilt. This is a light teal pattern. Each "arm" is taken from a different basic bulding block of the pattern, so what you see are 4 quadrants of 4 different blocks that combine to make the pattern. I realize that this may be as clear as mud, so just click here to follow the link: Snail's Trail Quilt Block Coloring Page. This will take you to a page that shows one block colored in, then a quilt with just the basic block, and then the quilt colored in the traditional monkey wrench/snail's trail way. (I have since seen it called "ocean waves" also.) Isn't it amazing how coloring it that way changes the basic look of the block?!? This is one of the things I love about quilting!

Val's Quilt

Here are the fabrics for Val's quilt! As you can see, there are four groups of four -- light purple and dark purple, light teal and dark teal. She's chosen a snail's tail/monkey wrench pattern (I've seen it called both, and I've seen each of those names applied to another design, too, so her pattern is the one that goes by both names). If you are unfamiliar with the design, I'll post a block once it's made. It will look great with all these colors!


This photo has the four groups of fabrics with the backing fabric in the middle. It's a batik flannel -- with both teal and purple! How great is that?! It feels buttery soft to the touch, a really warm, cuddly backing.