Gifting the Delightful Stars Quilt

 

 

 

 

Here are my sister-in-law and her husband opening up their quilt for the first time. They loved it--sent photos to friends and relatives and had the next-door neighbor come over to see it. She loved it too. I value her opinion since she is an artist--she said that I have a really good color sense. For someone who thinks she has no talent for drawing or painting, I am thankful to know I have some artistic sense. :)

Sandra and John are going to purchase a new queen-sized bed in the near future and will use the quilt on their bed then.

 

I brought some sewing work to AZ with me--some placemats to sew, a one-block wonder to work on, and some embroidery.

 

I also have visited 3 quilt shops in the area--each different, of course--and purchased something at each one, of course. :) One of the shops must have 10,000 bolts and all fabric is $7 per yard. Wow! I might go back next week when they are having a sale...

More Gifts

I made 2 sets of placemats for our daughters: the first picture is one of the set for Sarah (photo is sideways--forget to fix it) and the 2nd shows part the set for Natalie. It was a table runner pattern that I used half of to make placemats. I just quilted over the seams with gold decorative stitching.

 

 

Sarah sent this photo of Hailey in her bed with the new quilt I made for her and the matching pillow. I think she likes the quilt. :)

 

This is the Delightful Stars quilt, all done. It is laying on our king size bed on top of the king size quilt I made several years ago. I had to take a photo from the side in order to show the borders.

 

I used my home machine to do all the quilting and really had a wrestling match with the thing (the quilt, I mean). Per Michele's (of Quilting Gallery, the designer) project, I quilted straight parallel lines all the way across, at a 30 degree angle to the patchwork. I elected to quilt all one direction and not go back across. Despite plenty of mistakes, the overall effect is a good one, if I do say so myself.

However, I will NEVER (repeat NEVER) quilt an entire large quilt top like this on my home machine again. I did our king size quilt in 3 sections--much easier to manage.

 

Here is the label on the back. I decided to give it to my sister-in-law and her husband in honor of their 45th wedding anniversary and she told me she would love it. We will be taking it to them later this month. Since I just finished it this month, I attached another small label, saying that it was finished in January, 2015.

 

Last night I aligned some fabric in order to start on a One Block Wonder quilt. It will be a small quilt and I don't know if I chose the best fabric, but I wanted to try one (have wanted to do so for at least a couple of years). This will be a test. I have it ready to cut strips and then triangles to sew into hexagons. Exciting!! I'll try to post photos when it's done.

Some pictures of presents

 

I decided to put up some photos of a few of the presents I made for Christmas.

Below is a photo of our 3 granddaughters with matching skirts. I made another set for all 3 of them and another matching set for the 2 girls that are sisters.

This shows Matt with a lap quilt I made for Sarah and Matt. I used a Missouri Star Quilt Company pattern that I got from one of their Block magazines, and a layer cake. The stars are made with some fabric I already had.

 

 

 This is a lap quilt for Natalie and Todd. I just did the jellyroll race. There is some stitch in the ditch and some decorative stitching (both quilts have some decorative stitching for part of the quilting).

 

I also made sets of placemats for both daughters but those pictures must still be on my phone.

 

I finished quilting the Delightful Stars quilt--what a monster that was--and it was a reminder to me to never try quilting such a huge project on my home machine again!!! Pictures another day.

 

I spent yesterday cutting up scraps into squares, rectangles, and strips. Some of my bins are getting pretty full so it must be time to use some of those squares. :)