Quilts and Books

This has been a very productive year so far for me on the quilt front. I've finished 4 projects that I began before the new year. For the record, those would be the Frieda Anderson small wall quilt, two lap quilts that were donated for cancer patients, and the Blooming 9-Patch.
I've continued to plug away on the Block of the Month (BOM) project, although I am officially behind again (I was briefly all caught up in January!). Now the year is over and I still have several parts to do: I need to make a gazillion "flying geese" rectangles for the border and there is filler to go around the central medallion. I'll have a picture of that soon.
I made one baby quilt in two weeks!
I made another baby quilt that I finished last week. I was hired to make this one by a co-worker for her great-nephew who was born in early February.
Those polka-dots don't photograph very well in the picture above, but the close-ups below might give you a better sense of the colors and desi…

This is from the Maple Island BQ2 pattern, and measures around 52" x 65". Not exactly a "baby" quilt, but it is for a young couple about to have their first child, most likely a girl. The new baby's grandmother is one of my best friends and I remember when S. was 7 years old. In fact I babysat for S. and her brothers more than once. So it was pretty exciting to make this for her.

This pattern is also darn easy. I finished it in less than 2 weeks; in fact I put the final stitch in the binding about an hour and a half before the baby shower started. I'd say there's a total of only 15-16 hours in it. I showed off some of the machine quilting here. I can show it off again, though!


This is the second time I've made this pattern for a baby. Here's a smaller version, about 36" x 45" and the blocks are laid out in a different pattern. I made the one below about 2 years ago.

When I need to whip out a quick gift, I love my ARDCO circle square templates. A good friend just moved to a new home. And my church was looking for some items to use as door prizes at an upcoming event. Each one of these only take 2 hours or so to put together. They are approx. 18" across.



I think the backs look pretty cool, too.



And speaking of gifts, I finished the binding on the baby quilt for my coworker. I showed you closeups of the quilting here a couple weeks ago.

The guild's UFO rules are quite liberal. We are allowed to list as UnFinished Objects quilts that haven't been started, designed, kitted, or that exist other than ephemerally -- as in "I'm going to make something." And I have one of those ephemeral ones on my list. I knew back in February I'd want to make a baby quilt for work colleague L. who is expecting her first baby in June. Now that it's May, it is time to get started.

Going in I knew L. is expecting a girl. She told me that she likes bold, bright colors. Having enjoyed the process of making the Happy Rainbow Quilt I started to wonder if I could make something similar, yet much, much simpler. And limit myself to pink and purple. Doing that would be a study in value as opposed to a study in color. And this time I did have to buy a few fat quarters of purple, because for some reason my purples are too grey-ish.

I ended up cutting 4.5 inch squares and it took awhile to come up with a combination I liked.…

I was in my late 20s when I started quilting, and not surprisingly, many of my friends & relatives were busy popping out babies. Naturally, as a quilter I wanted to supply baby quilts. But back in those days I only worked by hand and it took me about 6 months to crank out a quilt. I wish I could have gifted more of my friends and family with baby quilts, but it simply wasn't possible. Here are 3 of the half dozen I made between 1986 and 1990. (Sorry if the images are fuzzy; these are scanned photos.)



But by 1995 I had a new sewing machine and I was putting tops together within a matter of weeks and learning how to use my walking foot to machine quilt straight lines across a quilt. When a co-worker and very close friend found herself pregnant with twins I actually managed to crank out 2 quilts AND finish them within weeks of the twins' birth.
Check out the Elvis fabric in this first one. My friend is a huge Elvis fan. The old world map fabric in the 2nd quilt was to celebrate…