The Girl Scout Quilt

My daughter was in Girl Scouts this year and when it was our tun to lead the meeting, she choose sewing as the badge she wanted to teach. I quickly taught myself how to hand sew, then taught her and off we went to the meeting. I took along my box of 5" scraps that I have been cutting and saving for several years, ( I knew they would come in handy!), needles, thread, my sewing machine and quilts in various stages of completion. Each of the girls choose 4 squares and my daughter and I taught them how to hand sew two pair of them together. Then we sewed a basic 4-patch using my machine for the final seam. The girls did a fantastic job of listening and all of them did really well on sewing the blocks together.

Originally we had planned on donating the finished quilt to an area hospital but it turns out that our troop leader is not going to be able to lead anymore. I contacted everyone and we all agreed that giving her the finished quilt as a thank you and a memory would be a wonderful thing for the girls to do. I squared up all the squares and cut them down to the same size and then started yanking from my stash to see what fabric I should use as sashing. I wanted the blocks to pop so each individual square could be admired. I finally settled on a yellow polka dot and finished it off. I ended up doing a 1 inch qrid for the quilting to make sure that the hand sewn seams wouldn't come apart. All in all, though, it stayed nice and square with almost no puckering. I think they will be very pleased with it.

I can't wait to start quilting again!

We moved across country last year, from Georgia to Washington state. I have this wonderful area that is all set up just for me! There's a big window on one side of the room. My quilting machine fits in it just fine up under the window and out of my way when I'm not using it. I have my shelves set up and my stash unpacked, just sitting there mocking me. The sewing machine is tuned and ready to go. My ironing board and iron are in just the right place, and I even have my table and machine facing through the hallway so I can keep an eye on the kids while they're in their TV room/play room. Sounds like heaven, doesn't it? Well, it's not. Every time we go to unpack a box that is full of things that we aren't sure what to do with, I just say "put it in my quilting room" while I figure out what to do with it. It's my fault. I know it. See, here's the thing . . . we haven't been able to sell our house in Georgia in the last 18 months, which mean we haven't actually closed on this house here in Washington. I'm superstitious enough that I refuse to unpack the last few boxes until we close on both houses. Finally, we have gotten a signed contract on our house and hope to close in January. We only had to drop the price 79,000 from the original asking point. That's not even the worst part. We had to go below not only what we originally paid for it 5 years ago, but we had to go below the mortgage payoff! We're going to be taking money to closing.

Now that it looks like the end is near and this house will officially be ours in a month or so I'm absolutely itching to get my fingers on my stash. I'm going to do a scrappy log cabin with 30s repros. Or maybe a Double Irish Chain from the Mardi Gras fabric I've had for a couple of years now. I don't care if I just sew squares together, I'm going to do some sewing!

But not yet . . . after I unpack the few remaining boxes and hang pictures on the walls. (That's another thing I won't do until we officially own this house. Superstitious or not, I don't want to take any chances!)

You Are My Sunshine

This is for my friend's second daughter, Kyla. I knew I wanted yellow and I knew I wanted scrappy, so I bought two fat quarter packs, then stared at them for a while trying to decide what to do. That happens a lot. The middle medallion is made of one inch squares which I set on point. I added a small yellow border, and then stuck it on my design wall and thought about what to do some more, because obviously that little bit wasn't big enough. Since I was about to move across the country, I took the easy way out and went with the theme square I had going on. I didn't want this quilt to be square, so I grabbed some yellow from my stash to add top and bottom borders. I used binky on the back so it didn't need to be quilted. However, I had left the white around the medallion originally to quilt so I went ahead and did some free-motion quilting there. I got it done before we moved, and was able to hand-deliver it since we were moving to the same town as them.

It's the first time I've ever used binky, and I recommend it highly, especially if you're in a hurry and don't have time to actually quilt something. It doesn't even require a batting and is also softer than fleece or flannel. I may actually make a quilt for myself using binky for the backing, it's so comfy.

Caribbean Sunset

This quilt was very difficult to make. It's called Caribbean Sunset and was made for my brother-in-law Michael. He was diagnosed with liver cancer and I made this as a hug since I lived so far away. It got its name because shortly after being diagnosed, my sister and he were able to take a cruise in the Caribbean and turned out to be his last vacation.

When I mailed it to him, I enclosed a note that I was hugging him from afar but that I also wanted something for my sister that had a part of him that would comfort her when he was gone.

He died June 15, 2005. My sister now uses this quilt as a hug from him. We miss him very much and he was not part of our family nearly long enough.

Elexis' Quilt

I made this quilt for my grand-niece who lives in Michigan. I used a nine patch and snowball block set in the traditional pattern.

It's been so long now that I can't remember how I quilted it, but it was done free-motion on my tabletop machine.

Elina's Quilt

I made this quilt for my friend's daughter Elina. I crazy-quilted the background squares then appliqued free-hand cut hearts on top. Then using a wedge template, I cut border strips to set the blocks wonky. Then I pieced it all together.

The border is just free-motion quilting of hearts and loops that I made up as I went along.

I am currently working on finishing another baby quilt for friends who are adopting a baby girl from Guatamala. It's almost finished, and then I have to get right to work on another one, since they found out that they would actually be adopting two little girls. The first is 12 months old, and the second is her sister, who is due to be born in December. I also have two other quilt tops that I need to quilt, and then I hope to be able to make one for myself: a Double Irish Chain made from Mardi Gras fabric!