D for Done!

As promised, I am back to show you my first T-shirt quilt now that it has been received by this sweet young lady graduate! 

This special lady has graduated from HS and will be off to Hope College in the fall. She is a very close family friend that I have know all her life. 

She has already accomplish quite a bit in her young life! 

Besides academic and leadership accomplishments, she is an accomplished dancer, specializing in tap. I am so proud of her!

I used the puzzle technique to put together the quilt 

(pieces vary in sizes to fit together like a puzzle) 

You can read more about how I put it together here. 

 I used a white flannel for the batting and a pink and gray plaid flannel for the backing. 

I bound the quilt with a gray and white stripe print. It finished at 54" x 65"

I named this quilt Remember When... because there are so many memories packed into this quilt. 

I also found some time (not sure how I managed to squeeze it in) 

to quilt and bind this quilt!

This is Sea Gems and is a result of the cut offs created by my Regatta quilt. 

I love the colors!

For the quilting, I randomly picked a point (offset from the center) to start straight lined quilting along the diagonal. This basically cut the quilt into quarters for easy quilting. (It is hard to see but you can see it best from the back in the solid colors.) 

For the backing, I pieced more left overs from the Regatta quilt! 

The middle print is what was left of the backing on the Regatta and the solids are cuts of the Kona solids used. No new fabrics purchased for this quilt! 

It is like getting 2 for 1!

This quilt finishes at 35" x 47"

I'm linking to Main Crush Monday @ Cooking Up Quilts

Full Steam Ahead!

My friend Joy is a quilter (no blog) and she creates beautiful quilts! Her colors are blues and purples. Another love of hers is Kaffe Fassett and batiks! We were together for a charity flea market (you may remember that I made repurposed jeans items) and she had made some mug rugs and other small things. BUT she also brought her scrap bin and baggies for people to fill a bag. 

I looked through her bin for blue and white fabrics for my scrappy little houses quilt (here and here). I will give an update on the neighborhood soon!  While rummaging through I found a string of 30 HST. I thought for sure that she accidentally put them in there but when I attempted to give them to her, she shrugged me off and said that they were left overs.  So I rescued them and made them into this little Mini KF quilt! 

I arrange them into pinwheel and square in a square blocks. The remaining 6 HST are on the back.

I used some batiks from my stash that were left over from the quilt I made after we went to Hawaii. Simple straight line quilting with a FMQ braid in the borders. Yay! Another finish even though it is a small one!

My son-in-law's sister is expecting a baby in October and my daughter asked me to make her a quilt. She said that she is really into Harry Potter 

(which I know very little about) and started to text me some ideas. 

This is the one that was her favorite.

So using letters from Lori Holt's book Spelling Bee,

I pieced together this quilt.

I used the 6 1/2" blocks to make the quilt bigger. Although I don't know the context and meaning of this quote, taken by itself, I think it makes a cute saying for a baby quilt. I kept it light and colorful using scraps from my stash. The background is Kona Ash. 

In keeping with the theme, I pieced the back but it is a secret I can't reveal yet. 

It is now waiting to be sandwiched and quilted!

But this one comes first and this happened today!

Sandwiched and pin basted! 

We leave for vacay in a few days. Not sure if I'll be back here until I get back in a couple of weeks 

(except to maybe reveal the graduation T-shirt quilt as the party is this weekend.) 

Hope you are enjoying your summer!

Linking to Can I Get a Whoop Whoop @ Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Midweek Makers @quiltfabrication

Another finish!

I have been steadily working on getting my UFO's finished while still moving forward with new projects and ideas! 

I'm happy to tell that I have another quilt finished!

Do you remember the red letter quilt that I started in the spring? 

It came up as my next quilt to sandwich and quilt. 

(I try to do them in order of being finished but sometimes I have a few waiting.)

Last week I was able to take time to sandwich it and then start on the quilting.

I quilted around each letter in the ditch and did some FMQ in the negative space between the rows of the lowercase letters. I also did some straight line quilting in the borders. 

All the letters are made from different red fabrics from my stash 

(mostly from my scrap bin.) 

The backing is a red apple print from my stash. I still need to label it.

This quilt finishes at 32.5" x 47.5"

So what is next you ask? 

I have 2 more quilts waiting their turn. The left overs from the Regatta quilt

and this one.

I finally cut into one of the first fabric lines that I bought after starting to quilt (so many years ago!) This line is called Blush by Basic Grey. The backing is pieced with most of the remaining pieces from my collection with a few coordinating pieces from my stash. 

You will just have to wait and see which one speaks to me next. 

I also have a few more piecing projects in the works. I'm thankful to have the summer days to spend working on the many ideas in my head. 

I'm linking to Let's be Social @ /Sew Fresh Quilts

and Midweek Makers @ Quilt Fabrication and Can I Get a Whoop Whoop @ Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

Time Is Flying!

I can't believe how fast the days are flying by! 

After Spring Break, school tends to get very busy as we head to the finish line. To add to the busy schedule, my daughter made an unexpected but much loved trip home for a long weekend. Her BFF since birth was turning 30 so she came in! Naturally, we spent as much time as possible with her and packed in the activities! We took a walking tour of some local street art with 2 of my daughters.

The following weekend was another packed with activities. The International Quilt Festival was in Chicago/Rosemont! It is very close to where I live. As always, it did not disappoint! Here are a few of my favorites!

I like the colors of this quilt.

I love the indigo color of these vases and the details in the stitching!

I like the Cherry blossom fabrics used as the background for the Chinese letters.

I have seen colored pencil quilts before but I loved the idea of a child's doodles in the negative space!

This quilt reminded me of my blue houses quilt! I love the story behind this calendar quilt.

I have been working on a few things in my sewing room, too! 

It is April and the color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is yellow! 

These blocks have been done for a bit however I haven't had time to blog about them. 

I'm linking up to SoScrappySaturday.

My knitting club knits for a local hospital and here is a blanket that I recently finished. 

I have also been playing with all the cut offs from the Regatta quilt and I finally settled on this layout.

It is still in flimsy form as several quilts are ahead of it for finishing! 

That brings me to Friday Night Sew In which snuck up on me! Stay tuned!