My Long Term Scrap Projects

Well today I thought I would share my long term scrap project with you. I am in love with civil war repro fabrics and just love civil war utility type quilts. I love the ones women would make for heavy use - your daily ones. Not the fancy smancy best company ones - well those are lovely but - there is something about the daily use ones that tugs at my heart!

So this summer 2 friends and I decided to go through our stashes of civil war repro fabrics (or civil war repro "like") and cut 4" x 20" strips and swap! So I now have 180 4" strips to play with! I"m having such a fun guilt free time playing with these fabrics. Somehow if I cut a strip off a big piece to work on them I feel so guilty that maybe I "need" that extra strip later. But now that they are cut - no worries!

Any way I have 4 projects planned with them. As I go through the strips I'm cutting for all 4 projects, but have only started sewing the first one - my kaleido quilt. This pattern is not really a traditional civil war style quilt, but I've always wanted to make one and it worked just so well with the strips I decided I was going to go for it.

I've always loved how this pattern makes those circles pop out at you and dance around. And I also get to play with my new kaleido ruler I bought at the Chicago Quilt Festival last spring to make it! I'm loving it. It is the Marti Michell Kaleido-Ruler - only I have the smaller size one, not the large size one here:
http://tinyurl.com/9vf5u
My other 3 quilts are going to be a basic one-patch tumbler, a strippy set 1000 pyramids type quilt and a teeny-tiny 9-patch scrap quilt. I saw one of those teeny-tiny 9-patch quilts at the Chicago Quilt Festival at one of the vendors booths and WOW - it was simply amazing. Now it may take me forever to get this quilt to any size, but it was so beautiful. The squares in the 9-patches finished to 3/4" square! I"m going to up mine to 1" square just for ease of cutting, but was it awesome. I wish I would have asked if I could take a picture. I still regret that.

So that is about it for todays post - which by the way, don't get to used to daily posts! It just so happens that this week is a bit slow so I have time to play. And since my blog is new I've got tons of subjects to chat about. But there are going to be times where I'm so busy I may not post for a week! Just wanted to warn you!

The things we do for our kids!

So my oldest daughter who already has a beautiful pieced and hand appliqued (first hand applique I did - and it took me forever to do) quilt for her bed at home, and a fun signature quilt for her bed at college, now decides she needs a Purdue quilt for those cold, cold football games she is going to go to! Last year they froze their butts off! So being the good mom that I am I told her I would make her one, and also one for her roommate!

A friend from our guild had this really easy fun pattern for college quilts made with bandannas from the school. So last spring when I picked her up I searched the campus stores and finally found 2 for the start. Of course I didn't work on them at all this summer - wanted to work on fun stuff for me! So this weekend I was in a Purdue quilt top frenzy. I got both tops done, and made each just a tad different so they could tell them apart. I think they turned out pretty good. And the fun part is I found this cool Purdue polar fleece this summer for the back. I thought this would make a really fun back as well as be warm and really cozy!

So I didn't get anything really fun accomplished this weekend, but I did get these tops done. I was going to quilt them myself since they are not too big - but now I'm getting scared because of the polar fleece back! And of course I hadn't scheduled time with a long-armer because I was going to do it myself. I think I"m going to have to bite the bullet and just do it! Any of you ever machine quilt with polar fleece or minky on the back with a regular machine?

A Taste of Dear Jane

OK, mostly I'm playing and trying to figure out how to get a picture with my profile. So I choose my Taste of Dear Jane quilt for now. I made 3 of these! Was I nuts or what! But 2 were gifts and I really wanted one for myself. I love the Dear Jane quilt but knew I was never going to make those 250+ blocks (or how many there are) so just wanted to do a small amount - this mini version was perfect for me!

Here is my version and one of the gift versions. They are quilted to death with micro stippling I did myself and some feathered designs in the empty areas. I am so happy how they came out!

Here is a swag I want to post so I can try and use it at a divider on my home page. We will see if I can get it to work! This graphic was obtained from countrysidehaven.com which is no longer online.

Tonya MADE me me do it!

OK, so I've drooled over Bonnie's web page and blog for months now, and enjoyed Tonya's blog and even had something to say about pearle cotton and quilting (I've tried crochet cotton and swear by it) and debated and debated putting up my own quilt blog.

I'll tell you all right now - I am not a writer! But I love playing with computers (to a point) and love, love, love quilting!

I've been trying to quilt more quilts myself on just my home machine. Lap size or smaller I've gotten pretty good at. Larger ones - that is tougher so depends on how fancy I want it!

I have quilted some by hand, and this whole thing got started because I told Tonya about a quilt I hand quilted but outlined the applique with black crochet cotton! So here it is (if I can figure out how to post the picture)! Guess I got it posted. Jumped to the top - so I'm not sure if there is another way to put it in the middle?

Anyway, I love how the black around the applique sets it off! I also used crochet cotton in the flowers and on the border, but you can't see that in this picture.

I'll keep this short - want to try it all out first.