Inspired by the Red and White Quilts

After seeing photos on-line of the fabulous red and white quilt exhibit in New York, I had to make my own.  I used lots of scrappy reds, everything from almost orange to almost purple, with a scrappy white to gold background, framed it in black and bordered it with more dark red.  The stars are 8" blocks, there are 11 across and 11 down, with a 1" black frame and a 8" red border.  I plan to bind it in red too.  It ended up being 98x98" but will shrink up some with quilting and washing.  I think I will quilt it with a simple grid pattern across the stars.  Next week...   

Blues

I have finally gotten the Blues quilt on the long arm.  I'm doing an all over swirly pattern and although it's a practice piece and for our bed, which means the dogs will be on it, I think it's going to look good.  I haven't done anything on the long arm since K's quilt in May, so I had to look up all the directions again.  But...in a couple weeks, H and I are attending the classes that came with the quilter and I needed to get in some practice.  The funnest (I know, I'm making up words) part of this was that I couldn't find the perfect backing fabric so I bought something and then dyed it the color that I wanted it.  I'll take a photo of the backing when I get it off the long arm...    

A Wacky Bird

I took a class with Suzanne Marshall in Ann Arbor last Friday on hand appliqueing.  I made a wacky bird using one of her patterns and then embroidered a swirly tail, head dress, and eye lashes to dress him up a bit.  I took it with a friend and it was alot of fun.  The background for this is one of my hand dyed pieces of fabric that I made a few weeks ago.  I'm pleased with him.  I think he will make a cool bag or pillow.   

Blues

I had such a good time with the blue piano key border on the Liberated Round Robin that I bought a couple more 1/2 yard cuts of blue batik and made a window pane style quilt top.  I saw the inspiration for this in one of this month's quilt magazines.  This one is bigger, 102 x 102", since it is for my king sized bed.  I needed something that the dog hair wouldn't show on too badly.  The sashing, which looks black in the photo, is really 4 shades of dark navy blue batiks and the panes are different shades of blue and blue-green batiks.  It is more modern looking than I intended, but since my room is painted a fairly deep yellow and I have woven denim rag rugs on the floor with cherry shaker style furniture, it looks good.  I started it Sunday afternoon and finished it last night.  It will sit on the quilt rack until next week when I have time to put it on the longarm and get it quilted.  I'm thinking that I will do a freehand all-over leaf pattern for quilting.  I intend to tightly quilt since the dogs will be sleeping on it at night.  I'm pleased with it right now.  We'll see how the quilting goes, I haven't had time since May to do anything with the long-arm and I am really looking forward to the long-arm classes in August.   

Lib Quilters Round Robin

My liberated quilters round robin is starting to take shape.  I deleted some of the triangles and added log cabins.  I needed a border and added some more color.  So far, everything is from scraps and the stash.  I cut way too many strips to start with and then made too many log cabins too.  I originally thought I would put cabins all the way around, but I really like this design better.  So in order to get this much quilt top...I have extra pink triangles (and the triangles that I made and didn't use), extra log cabins, extra pink strips, and extra blue piano keys.  Hmmm... enough for another quilt.  I always seem to do everything twice.   

Row x Row and Round Robin

I am doing two completely different versions of small quilts.  Talk about differences in style.  The first one is for my guild.  We are doing a row by row challenge and passing it to someone different each month for 4 months.  We had the option of choosing our fabrics or letting the others choose for us.  This is my challenge for this month.  She wants me to use these background fabrics and her theme is stars.  It will be a challenge for me as these are not my colors and I will have to be different.  Hmmm.  More to come. 

The second photo is the Liberated Round Robin for my on-line group.  We started with a center block of our own design, some were simple and some very complicated.  You can see check out others on this blog http://liberatedroundrobin.blogspot.com/.  This round robin is different than others because we each do our own rows following directions given to us.  This month was triangles.  I liked these colors and the simple word, but since it is supposed to be design as you go, I didn't really think about colors for the next row.  This is the second set of triangular blocks that I have made.  The first were very cool, very liberated, but much too dark for the off-white background of the center block.  I have saved them and may use them later in the quilt.  I'm still not terribly pleased with my start, but have to trust that it will come together in the end.  On June 10th we find out what the next round should look like.  I need more colors next time... and more liberated...    

And the Quilting Journey Continues...My New LongArm

I know, it's huge.  A new Gammill Long Arm Quilter with a 12' stand.  I can do free motion, meaning self-guided, and follow pantographs (stencils) with a laser.  We bought a few pantographs to try it out on, but so far, I have finshed and bound the 2 baby quilts (and given them to the twins, who are ADORABLE!) and finished the spiderweb that is on the quilter and have only done free-motion.  I did daisy type flowers on the baby quilts and big spirals on the spiderweb.  It is very easy and quick to do fairly big, all over designs, but to have any real style is going to take some time and lots of practice.  I have a few more practice quilts already made and am starting a couple more soon, in between doing the big applique and hand quilted projects. 

Lots of things are going on, but if it doesn't stop raining soon, I'm not going to get to do a garden this year.  I can only imagine how wet the field is where I put the garden last year and even my flower beds are saturated.  Flint has gotten 8.19" of rain this month and that is 5.5" above normal.  Stunningly, we are at the historic high for the month of May and it is only May 18.  The little woods behind our house is completely flooded out. 

Tonight we are heading out for Vermont to help my niece celebrate her graduation from UVM.  I'm pretty excited to see my sister and her family since we weren't able to get together after Christmas this year.  AND Monday, I'm going to the Shelburne Museum to see the antique quilts.  You can't get a much better weekend than that.  I hope your weekend is lovely too.