u/bonnienorman

WIP post from earlier, with story behind this: https://www.reddit.com/r/quilting/comments/1ud3hax/gift_for_a_birth_sister/

I don't prewash fabrics (not even batiks, like this one). Warm wash, medium heat, enzyme-based detergent - I want the recipient to know they don't have to be gentle with a quilt I gift to them.

But I DO use Shout Color Catchers to catch that loose dye! Picture #2 will show you just how much dye would have attached to the white fabric. Crazy.

I swear I love that moment taking a finished quilt out of the dryer, checking that the binding integrity is good, and declaring it done. On to the next project :).

I'm a reunited adoptee, having found my birth family about 30 years ago (before DNA databases, so it was like a real life game of Clue). A sister closest to me in age is one of my closest friends. We've spent many hours walking the beach, looking for sea glass, and talking about life.

This quilt will be a gift for her, not for a birthday or any other special occasion. Just in recognition of the role she's played in my life :). It's her colors, it's the color of the sea glass we have picked up over the years, and I'm excited over how it's turning out.

Title says it all: I made this reversible table runner pattern (pattern by Jennifer Sampou) & now it lives on my sister's table. Not my table. Hers. So I'm currently cutting fabric to make another one. For me.

The good news is it is not particularly difficult & I highly recommend making one, even out of non-ombre fabrics (you can buy ombre fabric kits in diff color combinations from her website, if you're unsure of how different ombres will work out).

There is no binding, you just turn inside out after sewing the two sides together (obviously leaving room to turn it). I chose not to use any batting because I didn't want it too thick & then covered it in matchstick quilting.

I purchased the fabric for this probably 2 years ago, the pattern about the same time (find it in Jen Kingwell 'Quilt Recipes' book. I finally decided to get it out of my unfinished project box about a month ago.

It feels good to have the unfinished box a little lighter & allow myself to think of the next quilts I want to make:).

I was pulling fabric from my stash for another quilt & ran into this untouched fat quarter.

I'm pretty sure someone was looking for this specific fabric in the last week, but I can't find their post.

If this is the fabric, either reply here or send me a message and we'll work it out.

This quilt top took way longer than I was planning, but the top is done!

I'll spend the evening watching a movie & clipping stray threads on the back (my god this fabric likes to fray). Maybe a glass of wine or two.

And tomorrow I'll make the quilt sandwich & then start start quilting. Yay.

I love that Daylesford (pattern by Jen Kingwell) is a sampler of different quilt patterns within a log cabin pattern. Recursion for the win.

I'm using a bunch of ombre fabric (you can see how the colors change on the crosses & pinwheels, along with a lot of other pieces. It would be a great pattern to use up scrap - maybe if I make it again. I've avoided patterns with a lot of points, this one forced me to get over it.

I'm hoping to finish the quilt top tomorrow (still have a row of churndashes & another one of bowties to do, along with the solids), and then it will be put away til later next month to sit down and quilt it. I may get serious about FMQ on this quilt, I'd love to do each section with a different quilting style. Suggestions welcome!

I started making stuffies from my granddaughter's artwork, after my son told me NOT to mess with her construction paper animal on the fridge (as if I would, but it was his favorite & he was making sure). You can see a photo of it in the first pic, next to the stuffy I made of it.

Another one, Char, is in the next photo (along with her original drawing). Some of these were construction challenges - like she used feathers for arms in this first one! I ended up sewing several layers of flannel together thru a center spine and then fraying it all.

Obviously I took some artistic license (flannel fabric color choices, misc details), but it's clearly her work. Our collab :). For the faces, I enlarged her drawing & printed it to water soluble embroidery stabilizer, slowly went over her lines with a tight/wide stitch on my sewing machine, then rinsed off the stabilizer and let air dry/ironed before cutting the head. To be honest, most of it was 'figure it out as you go'. No pattern other than her inspiration.

Tip: To stuff those long narrow tubes, I used a hemostat to grab stuffing & push down the tube.

And of course, this has all guaranteed I'd be swamped with new drawings :). And I'm good with that.

I like to get favorite t-shirts from loved ones & turn them into quilted pillows. I especially enjoy bringing a favorite t-shirt back to life that was ready for the rag bin. These are considerably faster than a t-shirt quilt & I love how they all turn out.

One side is the t-shirt, the other side is just a quilted pillow. Kind of a mullet 😂 pillow, with party on one side and just a pillow on the other. I usually try something new I need to master on the non-shirt side, like curves or whatever I've been avoiding.

UPDATE: A little more history from the owner of this quilt. "Lell was my great-great grandmother's nickname, short for Luella; she's the maker. Her only child, my great-grandfather, worked for the St Paul Pioneer Press when he was very young--I think 14 or so. She was a single mom who supported them as a milliner. She sent his father away around the time Guy was born, with a promise he wouldn't contact his son for 20 years. And so it was- my great grandfather met his father when he was 20 years old."

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I was visiting friends in the Midwest recently & a cousin-in-law hauled out this vintage quilt that has been in her family. We assume that all the pieces are milliner scraps, since that was the maker's profession.

Wow.

This quilt. Ugh. II wasn't going to post it, but decided it was worth sharing just because YES I got it done. And it definitely inspired me to go full color on the next quilt (I posted that one yesterday here).

I fell out of love with this early on in the project, but forced myself to keep going and get it out of my project box. And now, while it isn't my favorite one by any measure, it IS the one I reach for when I need something cozy. Because of the fabric, it's heavier than most quilts. And just comforting.

I had a large-ish collection of Japanese fabrics & thought I'd make a quilt to show it all off. A simple quilt made of identical blocks of the different fabrics. I made a TON of those blocks (Pic #2).

After laying them out, it was ... boring (Pic #3). So boring. This was the point I fell out of love with this quilt.

I decided to pull a handful of blocks and replace with some larger sized/diff shape blocks to add some interest.

Still not in love, but kept going. I had thought stitch-in-the-ditch would make it all pop, but it was still ... boring.

So as the rest of the photos show, I just picked different blocks or groups of blocks and quilted in different ways. Channel quilting, waves, matchstick, angles, whatever I felt like.

I'm glad I didn't banish it early on to the 'never to be finished' project file, I'm glad it's done. And I still have a large pile of Japanese fabrics in my stash.

I usually go thru a love-active dislike-growing on me-love again with each quilt I make. But this one I've loved thru the whole process. It makes me smile each time I see it.

Fabric management (81 colors) was a challenge, but I'm happy to report my seam ripper came out only a couple times.

-- 68" x 76" after warm wash/dry
-- Pattern by Messygoats
-- Cherrywood hand dyed fabric (omg love - hardly any fraying due to high thread count)
-- backing is Tula Pink Best Buds in Fog

I'm sure a lot of you recognize the flannel backed vinyl tablecloth that I used to lay out the pieces. If you don't have one in your quilting supplies, get one! Fabric pieces stay put, you can roll it up if you make sure the vinyl is on top of each piece as you roll. It's a cheap solution that works sooooo well.

This is the only quilt I've ever made that has been totally unplanned. Not the pattern. Not the colors.

I purchased a charm pack on sale (Kona pastels) & made a stack of HSTs for my granddaughter, who always loves to arrange different blocks she finds in my scraps. I totally missed the mark! Zero interest.

I decided to play with the HSTs myself and see if I could use them in a quilt. And I'm thrilled over the result.

Are the points perfect? Oh not even close, since I never intended these to go into a quilt. Would I have ::married:: the colors together differently if I had a goal in mind? Absolutely. This was beyond random. I prob couldn't repeat it if I tried.

But somehow it all worked out.

(Last photo is the embroidered binding on the back, with a baby name and DOB.)