Ready to Quilt

I'm ready to quilt. The baby gifts are all done and my mom is back home after a 2 day visit. I trimmed these half-square triangle blocks to 6½ inches just before Mom left this morning and have them on my design wall ready to stitch. I think this is a barn raising setting. I'm too lazy to verify that just now. It's also another way to use part of the never ending package of purple squares.

I spent a few minutes pin-basting the one-seam flying geese quilt after my mom left. It needs a few more pins and it is ready to quilt. I want to finish it before our Project Linus group this Sunday. Knitting club met this afternoon, so I didn't have time to finish the pin-basting.

Today and tomorrow are JudyL's July Quiltathon. With no club meetings, house guests, or errands tomorrow, I should be able to quilt for 2 or 3 hours. I think that qualifies as a mini-quiltathon.

Quilting Done and In Progress

I made this quilt top of framed purple squares in April and prepared it for tying by our 3rd Sunday Project Linus group. Our large group of people tying blankets haven't come back to visit, so I brought it home and quilted it this week.

Time to Bust a UFO

For my next project, I'm quilting this attic windows quilt top that I finished last July. I'm using a flannel back on this approximately 60" square quilt for a bright/cuddly baby/child's quilt.

Over the last 2 mornings, I've pieced the backing fabric to the correct shape, pressed everything nice and flat, taped the back to the floor, and added batting, top and lots of safety pins. This picture shows one corner, taped to the floor and full of pins. Here is a link to a picture of the entire quilt top.

Patience is Rewarded

I returned library books and DVDs today and checked to see if any of my requests had come in. Whoo hoo! I came home with Crazy Aunt Purl's Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair: The True-Life Misadventures of a 30-Something Who Learned to Knit After He Split by Laurie Perry, better known as Crazy Aunt Purl.

Last year, before the holidays my library's online catalog showed the book was on order and I put my name on the waiting list. Little did I know it would be 8 months before the book would be available for checkout. Guess what I'm reading this weekend! I read Crazy Aunt Purl's blog and I've read the book excerpt on its' Amazon page, so I'm anticipating reading accompanied by laughter.

Motivated Quilting

I drove 150 miles to visit with friends last Saturday as they were driving through on vacation. Wanda's mom gave me a package of precut purple squares (pictured in New Year, More Charity Quilts), so I was motivated to make a couple of quick tops last Thursday and Friday to have some show and tell with those squares.

On this top, I made half the blocks by adding green strips, then purple strips and the other half by adding purple, then green. When I stitched the blocks together, the fat T's in green and purple appeared around the purple squares. I'm still trying to think of a clever name for the quilt. This week, I layered the top with purple flannel, no batting, and finished it for a light weight summer blanket to be turned in at our Project Linus group tomorrow.

I cut the strips narrower on this top and made all of the blocks alike. I call this top "Meet Me at the Corner."

I made this sashed 9 patch top in 2006. The fabrics are all ones that Wanda's mom gave me a few years ago. I pieced the back for this top last September. I finally cut some Warm Blend batting (a needle-punched cotton/poly blend) and finished this quilt. I quilted a diagonal grid through the blocks. This Project Linus quilt will be turned in tomorrow also. The photo below is the pieced back that I used.

A visit with good friends and our monthly 3rd Sunday Project Linus blanket group motivated quilting results.

Project Linus - Third Sunday Group - April

Our third Sunday Project Linus group met at JoAnns last Sunday and I was there. I'm slow reporting about it, but I was there. However, I did not take my sewing machine. I took my computer. More about that in a minute.

Jodie arrive with a finished blanket. This is a 3 dimensional pinwheel quilt. I think she won the kit as a door prize at one of our big Project Linus events. She finished the top with a flannel back and skipped the batting.

Here's a closeup of a pinwheel block. The points are a square of fabric folded on the diagonal twice. The raw edges are included in the seam between 2 background squares. Some child will love this quilt.

Louise and Lucille had fabric cut for more (not so Amish) Bars quilt tops like we made last month. There was also fabric cut to make super-sized 9 patch quilt tops. Two new volunteers came and sewed along with Lucille, Louise, Anita, Christy and Jodie. Debby brought a crocheted ripple afghan to work on. Our new chapter coordinator arrived with her new Janome sewing machine and worked on layering some tops with backs and batting. Laurie tied quilts, but arrived with none of the youthful helpers she brought last month.

I brought my laptop computer, a revised brochure and some of the granny squares I was coerced into bringing home from National Make a Blanket Day in February. I'm working on a new design for our chapter website and brought the laptop so I could show a mock up of the design and get input.

I got some really good inputs on the website and now I need to create my page templates and start creating the new pages. I've also been revising our old tri-fold brochure and got inputs on that also. There was no way I was dragging both a 10 pound computer and a 25 pound sewing machine to JoAnns, so I took the granny squares to work on when we weren't discussing the website.

We expected some of last month's blanket tying helpers again this month, so I brought 2 quilts ready to tie and one that needed topstitching around the edge to make it ready to tie. Since Laurie arrived with none of the younger helpers, she tied blankets alone. Below are pictures of the blankets I brought to be tied.

This is one of my "Easy X" quilts. 10 inch squares of each fabric are cut on both diagonals to make the triangles. The red print has bears in different outfits and poses.

The bears in this print would have been unrecognizable in an Easy X block, so I only cut the squares once to make this quilt with 4 giant pinwheel blocks.

Another top featuring those squares of large purple and tan floral fabric. I framed the focus fabric with 2 different fabrics for a quick top. I was running low on the coordinating fabrics after making this top, so I went fabric shopping while I was at JoAnns. Conveniently, the calico fabric was on sale, so I got 5 different fabrics, about 17 yards total. I've got a lot of those purple squares left.

New Year, More Charity Quilts

50 finished Project Linus blankets and 50 quilt tops for Project Linus in 2008. That is my goal. I plan to count both, because when I'm working with our third Sunday group we don't always finish our own tops and I frequently quilt tops made by someone else.

At our third Sunday Project Linus group in December, more Dancing Squares tops made by Ruth had appeared. I finished quilting this one last weekend.

On my visit to Albuquerque last May, Wanda's mom gave me 2 packages of precut 7 inch squares from a Hawaiian quilt shop. These purple squares are cotton. The other package is light green rayon squares. I'm sewing the cotton first.

I made this top last year. I sewed 3½ inch strips of lavender and tan around the purple squares to make 13 inch squares. I cut the 13 inch squares into fourths and rearranged them.

This top is just the purple squares sewed randomly together and a border added. I put the border on it this week, so it counts as a top finished in 2008. I've still got a 4 inch stack of squares, so there will probably be more tops made like this.