Tuesday Archives - Christmas Quilts

It's been awhile since I've linked up with Val for Tuesday Archives. 

Since I'm off work this week, I actually have time to write a post.  For some reason, Monday's are always manic and I just never get a post pulled together.  

This week's archive topic is Christmas Quilts.  I've only finished one Christmas quilt and I wrote a post about it when Val's Tuesday Archival linky party  #12 was for Christmas quilts.  You can click here, to see Charming Christmas Cardinals.  

There are two other Christmas quilts on the UFO list.  The first is Poinsettia's, which has been my leaders and enders project for the last couple of years.  It's also been my Let's Book It Project, a linky party hosted by Vroomans Quilts that encourages us to use all those quilting books on the shelf.  The last post showing progress is just a few weeks old. You can find it here.

The second Christmas UFO has been hanging around since July of 2013.  The most recent blog post on that project dates from November 2013.  I haven't touched it since then.  Here's the original plan for Christmas Angels:

The green and beige 4 patches are all made and the star points are all made.  I just need to finish the angel blocks.  Hopefully I'll get back to this one sometime next year.  

That's all my Ghost of Christmas UFOs has to show.  You can find more eye candy for Christmas over at Val's Quilting Studio.  

Tuesday Archives - Two for One Sampler Quilt

This week's topic for the Tuesday Archives is "Sampler Quilts".  I've made a few sampler quilts over the years.  The first sampler quilt was made from 1930's prints and it was the subject of a previous Tuesday Archive's post on BOMs.   So it makes sense (at least to me) to post about the second and third sampler quilts out of my sewing room this time around.  

I'm including both sampler quilts because both came out of the same BOM program at the local quilt shop.  That BOM was one of the most fun and challenging I've ever participated in.  It was called the Brown Bag challenge.  The first month everyone brought in a paper bag with enough yardage to make 12 blocks and then went home with someone else's bag with instructions to make any block we wanted so long as it finished at 12".  Since these blocks were going to other quilters, many with a lot more experience than I had, I decided to pick a few of my fabrics to make "test" blocks before I made the block that had to go back in the bag.  That way I could figure out the instructions on my block and then not mess up the block that had to go back in the bag.  The plus was I'd get enough blocks from this BOM to make two quilts.  Here's what my blocks and the blocks that went back in the bag looked like.  

The block on the left of each pair is my block, the block on the right was made from the fabric in the bag I brought home each month.  It was quite a lesson in color theory.  It was a wonderful chance to work with color combinations that weren't really my style.  It was a lot of fun.  Here's the quilt made from my blocks. 

Paisley Roses finished in February 2011

I was pretty happy with how it worked out. This quilt now lives at my sister's.  

Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed when I got my brown bag back at the end of the year.  My bag was short a couple of  blocks and a couple of the blocks in the bag had significant construction problems that required some rework before they could be used.  I made another 3 blocks for a complete group of 12 and then set them together.    

The Brown Bag Quilt finished in May 2011

The Brown Bag Quilt stays up in the closet till Drama Teen has a sleep over. Then it's used for cuddling while the girls eat popcorn and watch movies.  

I didn't intend to end up with two pink and green quilts, that just sorta happened.  Both quilts were wonderful learning experiences, not just in making the blocks but in coming up with setting options. 

That's all from my archives this week.  You can see more quilty history over at Val's Quilting Studio.  

Tuesday Archives - Original Patterns

It's Tuesday so it's time for the Tuesday Archives over at Val's Quilting Studio.  

The topic this week is "original patterns by you".  Before I could pick a quilt to highlight, I had to ask what is an "original pattern"?  Is that a quilt made without following a pattern published by some one else?  For it to count as a pattern does it have to be published some where?   Since Val didn't give more particulars, I'm going to highlight the first quilt I made on my own with out using any type of pattern.  It's another project that I can't find posted elsewhere on the blog.  

When Drama Teen was just a little thing, she developed a liking of stuffed tigers. She has quite the collection.  Her favorite was a white tiger she named Siberian.  

Drama Teen when she was just a kiddo of  7 or 8 with Siberian who was "stealing" breakfast

Siberian pretty much went everywhere with her.  Siberian even flew to Washington State with us on vacation one year.  She was quite happy to reside in the overhead compartment during the flight, much to the delight of several younger flyers seated near us.  

I was fortunate enough to attend the Houston quilt festival in 2005. During the festival, a fat quarter packet with several tiger prints caught my eye.   Those fat quarters just had to come home with me. DT (aka Kiddo) absolutely needed a tiger quilt for Christmas.    I really wanted to let the tigers take center stage so the idea of using simple squares came from that.  One early problem was that one of the fat quarters only had enough tigers in it to make two squares.  So I took pictures of some of her stuffed tigers, including Siberian, and printed those onto fabric.  From that Kiddo's Tigers Quilt came to be.

Tigers designed by Kate

DT loved that the quilt included her tigers on it, especially Siberian.  At the time it was the perfect size for her to cuddle under on the couch.  She has since outgrown it, so it sits in the closet waiting for the next little one.  

It's certainly not a perfect quilt.  I had to piece one of the tigers to have enough to make a full square.  But at age 6 Drama Teen wasn't the quilt critic she is now, the fabric photos were the coolest thing to her.   It was a fun quilt to make.  I really enjoyed figuring out how to use the fabrics to the best advantage.  Credit for the setting fabric choices has to be given to one of the ladies who worked at the local quilt shop.  She suggested the orange fabric for the sashing and the black fabric in the border.  I had my doubts as they just didn't seem like the fabrics to use for a 6 year old.  But they were exactly right.

That's my blast from the past for this week.  You can check out more archival posts over at Val's Quilting Studio.  

Tuesday Archives - The Never Ending Quest for Organization

This week Val is featuring Ohio Stars and/or Organization Tips for this weeks Tuesday Archives' topic.   

I don't have any Ohio Star quilts in my history, but I do have a few blog posts where I've made an attempt at organizing my stash.  It's an ongoing battle, but I've had some luck at taming bits and pieces of my stash.  Back in the December of 2011, I finally got around to buying shelving for my closet so I could stack my fabrics rather than have it hidden in a bunch of plastic totes.  I wrap my yardage around a 8.5" ruler, then fold it in half and stick it on the shelves.  It makes it a lot easier to find and makes pretty good use of my storage space.  I first blogged about that here.  I don't see where I ever linked back to the tutorial where I first saw that fabric folding technique.  If you are interested in it, you can find that here.  

I do have one new tip if you have wire shelves.  I found that the weight of the piles were causing the bottom fabric pieces to end up with creases from the shelving wire.  Last month I found rolls of plastic shelf liner at Lowe's.  

I've started adding that to the shelving units and it seems to be eliminating the creases in the bottom fabric pieces.  

The other tip in that June 2013 post is to use file folders and a file cabinet to "file" your fat quarters and half yard cuts. I cut the hanging file folders in half and add a piece of acid free tissue paper between the fabric and the file folder.  It's a great way to see what you have at a glance. Plus it seems to make the most of the space available in the file cabinet. 

Based on what I could find online, the file folders are acid free, but the box doesn't say that, so the acid free tissue paper was added as insurance.  You can buy large sheets of acid free tissue paper through archival supply sites such as Familyarchives.com and Archivalmethods.com.  

For more of the Tuesday Archives check out Val's Quilting Studio. 

Tuesday Archives - A Quilting Restart

Do you ever go back to your early blog posts and reread them?  I did that this week as I was trying to find a post for this week's Tuesday Archives.  

I'm still doing a weekly stash report and linking up with Design Wall Monday, so not much has changed in my posts other than when I started bogging Drama Teen was referred to as Kiddo.  I'm not sure if I should to be concerned that little has changed in terms of what I blog about or to be encouraged that I've at least been consistent.  

After a bit of unsuccessful searching for a post that included the 9-patch quilt for this week's archives post, I consulted my digital quilt catalog.  Only to find that the desired subject for this post had never even made it to the blog, it was finished well before the blog came into being.    It always surprises me when I find a quilt that has never had it's shining(?) moment on the blog. So in the interest of fairness to that early quilt here is Spring Snowball. 

This quilt started off my current string of quilt projects. In 2001 My Guy suggested I sign up for a learning to quilt class at the newly opened quilt shop in town. I'd made one quilt top 14 years before, but I hadn't pieced anything since.  The class was so much fun, I enjoyed every minute of the 4 sessions it took us to get to the finished flimsy.  I was hooked and have been piecing since.  

Spring Snowballs  wasn't finished until 2010.  I have always planned to learn how to quilt, but with an active kiddo, a traveling spouse and a full time career of my own I just never found the time. So the flimsy lingered in the closet till I met Trudy, who has quilted all my projects since this one.  

That's it for my trip down memory lane this week.  You can see more quilt archives over at Val's Quilting Studio.  

Tuesday Archives - Mystery Quilts

When I read Val's prompt for this week's Tuesday Archives I completely blanked on the name of the first mystery quilt I made.   That made it a bit hard to find on the blog. I read through all my blog labels, but nothing seemed to ring any bells.   I finally had to go back to my digital quilt catalog to figure out what I'd named that quilt. 

After a bit of scrolling through the document I finally found the right page.  

Oh yeah, I remember now, Old Fashioned Mystery.  Armed with the name, I found the original blog post (here).  This quilt was finished the during my first year as a blogger.  Old Fashioned Mystery ended up going to a niece for her 21st birthday.  I was stitching the binding on when were were home for Thanksgiving and she commented how much she liked it. Little did she know that with those words that she was offering it a good home.  She was pretty surprised when she opened it later that year, but she was quite happy with it.  She promised me that it would be her cuddle quilt when she was reading.     

For more historical quilting perspectives, check out this week's Tuesday Archives Post over at Val's Quilting Studio.   

Tuesday Archives - Flying Geese Medallion

I'm always surprised when I find a quilt that hasn't shown up on the blog.  Why that is I'm not sure, I've been quilting a lot longer than I've been blogging.  I went looking for an older medallion quilt to reflect on for today's Tuesday Archives link up. 

There aren't a lot of medallion quilts in my portfolio.  I found four, which is 2 more than I thought I'd made.  Of course those 2 are on the UFO list, so they aren't exactly finished.  My first medallion quilt was started in my third "learn to quilt class".   The lessons were on using a product called "Sew and Fold on a Roll" , which basically turned out to be paper piecing of flying geese blocks. 

Pattern is "Geese Fly Round" by Anne Dutton
from "Sew and Fold on a Row" 

There certainly are a lot of flying geese in this one.  I didn't have a fabric stash in those days, so pretty much bought the fabric for the project when I signed up for the class.  So my palette was pretty much limited to what the little quilt shop in town had on their shelves.  That was back when my commute to work was one hour each way, the work week was usually 6 days long and I had a 3 year old at home. So searching for the "right" fabrics was usually something  I didn't have time for.  The inspiration fabric that decided the other colors in this quilt is the floral in the center and corner squares.  Here is a better picture of the focus fabric.  

In hind sight it probably would have been better to use the pink in the corner blocks and use the floral print as a large border.  But at that point, I was still learning the basics, so modifying a pattern was a bit beyond my capabilities.   Still, I learned a lot by making this quilt.  Plus looking at it reminds me of all the fun I had in those "learning to quilt classes".  They were a dose of sanity in what at the time was a very hectic and stressful period in my life.    

That's it for my look back at my early days of making quilts.  Check out all the other archives over at Val's Quilting Studio.  

Tuesday Archives - Log Cabin Blocks

It's been awhile since I've linked up with Val's Quilting Studio for the Tuesday Archives. 

Most of the time I just don't have appropriate archival subject matter to blog about, but probably just as often there hasn't been the time to write the post.  Since I'm off work this week, I was able to do a bit of digging into the blog archives.  Unfortunately there are no log cabin quilts in any of my posts.  The only place any log cabin blocks make an appearance on the blog is as a border in a medallion quilt. 

The pattern is Back to Square One by Judy Laquidara who blogs at Patchwork Times. This was a mystery BOM she hosted in 2013.  There is one more border that includes log cabin blocks mixed with friendship star blocks.  I finished a few of those star blocks before this quilt got put away in favor of working on Bonnie Hunter's 2013 mystery quilt. The last post noting any progress dates from December 2, 2013, so this quilt is definitely on the UFO list.   

Back to Square One is probably the closest to being finished of all my UFOs;  so it's a candidate for my 2015 UFO hit list.   But I have 10 UFOs that are older on the list as well.  So I'm trying to decide between focusing on the older ones first or working on the ones closest to being completed.  How do you decide which UFOs to work on?  

That's it for me today.  Check out Val's Quilting Studio for more archival fun.  

Tuesday Archives - Layer Cake Quilts

I'm a bit late linking up today, I had to leave early this morning to take the car to the shop and wasn't able to wait till Val had her Tuesday Archive post up.  It's been awhile since I've had a project that fits into the weekly theme of the Tuesday Archives.

Though I'm not sure it's exactly wise to share this particular piece of my quilting history.  I've only made one quilt using a layer cake.  Moose on the Porch offered a Layer Cake Quilt Along starting in September of 2010.   I had a layer cake that had been purchased for a special project, but I ended up not using it.  So this quilt along seemed ideal to make use of that left over layer cake. I don't remember the fabric line, but it was one of those that had a lot of color lines that didn't necessary all play together really well.  But I was game. 

Layer Cake Quilt Along
Moose on the Porch Quilts

The blocks aren't too bad, though some of them don't really have enough contrast.  But I think it was the border fabric that led the whole project astray.  That border print was one of the fabrics in the layer cake, so I just assumed it would work.  The narrow teal borders work and had I used more of that color, it would have calmed the quilt down.  Oh well, live and learn.  

This top hasn't been quilted.  I was saving it to practice my free motion quilting on since I wouldn't be upset if the quilting wasn't perfect.  It has lain in the "to be finished" pile for the last 4 years, so it's probably time to use the left over layer cake pieces to make the back and then get if off the pile. 

That's it for my dive into blog history.  For more archives, check out all the posts over at Val's Quilting Studio.  

Tuesday Archives - The First Quilt

It's been a while since I've linked up with Val's Quilting Studio for the Tuesday Archives.  

The topics this week are Irish Chain and Fall Quilts.  I don't have a Fall quilt, but I have made an Irish Chain quilt.  It was my first pieced quilt.  I'm not sure who offered the class, it wasn't a quilt shop.  It was the summer of 1987 and my graduate school class load was pretty light that year.  My grandmother quilted and I had long wanted to learn how.  So I signed up for that summer class.  My fabric came from Hobby Lobby as did the rotary cutter.  The teacher offered a set of plastic templates which could be used to cut strips from fabric (I have no idea if rulers even existed at that time).  I actually finished the flimsy in class.  

Quilting the top was a whole other issue.  The flimsy got folded up and stuck with my unfinished embroidery stuff.  The top moved with me from graduate school to my first job, with me when we bought our first house and made the trip to Texas when the job took us in that direction.  Then one day, my 3 year old found it and asked me to finish it so it could live on her bed.  

By the time my Irish Chain was quilted, I was taking quilting classes again at the local quilt shop. They helped me make the back and showed me how to prep a quilt for quilting.  I handed it off to the long arm quilter at the shop.   That first quilt was a UFO for 17 years.  This quilt never did live on Kiddo's (aka Drama Teen) bed, by the time it was finished she'd come up something else she wanted me to make for her bed.

I supposed it's fitting that my 1000th post is about my first foray into what prompted me to start blogging in the first place.  To celebrate, I have a set of polka dot fat quarters to give away.  

Just leave a comment about which is your favorite Tuesday Archive posted this week over at Val's Quilting Studio.  I'll pick a winner this weekend using Mr. Random Number generator, so be sure I have a way to contact you if you are a no reply blogger.     

Tuesday Archives - Fussy Cuts

It's been an interesting 12 hours at our house.  We had massive thunderstorms roll through last night with 70 mile per hour straight line winds.  This storm did some major damage in our small community.  School is out because there is no power.  They just released everyone from work because there is no water pressure as the city water plant also lost power.  To top that off we lost a couple of rows of shingles off the roof and with the heavy rains this morning, there was a nice puddle of water in my sewing room.  Thankfully it was in the middle of the floor and not over my sewing machine, fabric, or books.  However, now we are scrambling to find a roofer and  are desperately hoping for a few days with no rain. 

So I'm writing a post as we wait for a roofer to call us back.  We've done all we can do till it stops raining.  I think the rest of my day may be spent dealing with wet insulation. 

Today's picks for the Tuesday Archives sponsored by Valerie over at Val's Quilting Studio are Flannel and Fussy Cuts.  I've yet to make a flannel quilt, but I do have a couple of quilts where I fussy cut my center squares.  One is Charming Christmas Cardinals which I blogged about back in May.  But there is another fussy cut quilt that I've never blogged about.  It was my second finished quilt, the first where I adapted a pattern to fit the fabric I was going to use. 

Back when Drama Teen was just a little Kiddo, she loved The Little Mermaid.  She was the only Disney Princess DT liked at all until Mulan came along a few years later.  I had just started quilting  when she asked me for a quilt for her bed.  When the Little Mermaid fabric appeared at one of the quilt shops near my sister, I knew just what to make for her.  

The Little Mermaid
Modified from the pattern Triple Rails
by Ursula Reikes published in the book
"Even More Quilts for Baby"

DT (aka Kiddo) asked for an all blue quilt, but Arial's red hair just begged for for the addition of that narrow red border.  She opened the quilt as one of her presents for her 6th birthday.  

As you can tell from the picture, she was very happy with the new quilt for her bed.  Her love affair with this quilt lasted till she was about 9.  At that point she decided she was ready for something a bit more sophisticated.  For now, The Little Mermaid is put up in the closet waiting for the time in the distant future when DT has her own little tomboy.  

I have about 12 inches of binding to stitch and then the label to add to the second quilt I've made for DT's bed.  Jigsaw should be done today, maybe.  I'll definitely need something soothing to do after wrestling with insulation.  

Tuesday Archives - Fat Quarter Quilts

I've been enjoying Val's Tuesday Archives.  It's been fun to look back over the quilt's I've made trying to find one that fits the week's theme.  The process has reminded me of the stark terror that used to accompany a trip to the fabric store to pick out fabric for the next quilt class.  Looking back, I can see that maybe there was good reason to be terrified, my choices weren't always wise.  That's OK, I still love those older quilts.  

Case in point is the first quilt that ever lived on our bed.  The class instructions said to pick 24 fat quarters.  No other guidance, just pick 24 fat quarters.  I'm guessing that you could buy fat quarter bundles at the time, but I didn't know what such things were.  So I came to class with my set of fat quarters and eventually ended up with my first "scrappy" quilt.  This is as close to a "random" design as I've ever gotten.  I had to put all the block parts in different bags and make myself blindly choose the components for each block.  It was a really good learning experience.  

Spring Break
from the book Spring Cleaning published by Atkinson Designs

I love all the fabrics used in this quilt, the border print is still one of my favorites.  My Guy isn't fond of floral prints, so this quilt didn't remain on our bed for more than a couple of years before being replaced with with a T-shirt quilt he particularly liked.  

That's it for me this week.  Hop over to Val's to for more Tuesday Archives.  

Tuesday Archives - Favorite Quilts

It's easy to forget that I've only been blogging for about 4 years, while the quilting has been going on for about the last 13 years.   So it's not surprising that there are quilts that have never shown up on the blog.  But for some reason it always amazes me when I come across one that hasn't.  Val's Tuesday Archive theme for this week is "Favorite Quilts".  Looking back through all my finishes trying to decide on what were my favorite quilts, I came across a project from one of the first quilting classes I took.

Carpenter Star
Pattern by Debbie Maddy for Calico Carriage

Carpenter Star was probably my first experience with half square triangles, I definitely started big with those.  I had no stash in those days, so bought fabric for each project from the quilt shop in town.  That always limited my choices, but I still like this quilt even though if I were to make it now the color choices would be quite different.

There was supposed to be a class to make another of Debbie Maddy's stars.  I bought the pattern and fabric for Evening Star, but not enough people signed up for the class so it was never held. Finally in 2012, I decided the fabric had sat around long enough.  

St. Isadore's Star
from the pattern Evening Star by Debbie Maddy

I finally finished this one last May, 8 years after Carpenter's Star.  This isn't one of my favorites, but it is one of My Guy's.  He was a bit sad to see it gifted to one of Drama Teen's middle school teachers.  

It's the first day of school, so I need to get moving on making lunches and getting Drama Teen up and going.  Check out all the other fun historical posts over at Val's Tuesday Archives.  

Tuesday Archive - EQ Designs

Every Tuesday over at Val's Quilting Studio you have the opportunity to look back at your previous posts and bring one up to date if you like.   I'm a little late getting this post together, between getting the trash out this morning and getting Drama Teen out the door for volleyball camp, I didn't have time to get a post put together.  Hopefully I can pull this one together over lunch.  

I started using EQ in 2009 after  Microsoft's introduction of the Vista operating system made my QuiltPro program just about useless.   I wasn't very happy with EQ, it wasn't as intuitive as QuiltPro was.  It wasn't until about a year later in 2010 that I finally figured out how to use EQ to do some fundamental quilt layouts.  I had just completed all the blocks from a 2006 Buck A Block program from the quilt shop in Texas.  With the blocks done, I was looking for a way to set them.  The original post is here.  Looking back those initial layouts were pretty awful.  I was trying really hard to use all the finishing kit fabric I bought with the blocks.  I finally realized that just wasn't going to work and raided the stash for something else.  This was the working design I used to set the blocks together.

I ended up changing the final border in the finished quilt, it didn't work up on the design wall any better than it did in the EQ version. 

Texas Twilight
Buck-a-Block in a self designed layout

I was pretty happy with the final quilt, though that final photo is pretty bad.  My photography skills have definitely improved in the last 4 years.   This ended up as a Christmas gift for my sister-in-law who lives in Texas.  

I love playing in EQ.  I've designed a couple of quilts since.  Even when I'm making a project from a pattern, I'll draft the blocks in EQ, scan in some fabrics and play around till I've got the colors right.  It usually saves me from having to make a fabric change after the first block is made. 

Check out the other vintage EQ designs over at Val's Quilting Studio.  

Tuesday Archives - My Christmas Quilt

I've been enjoying participating in the Tuesday's Archives over at Val's Quilting Studio.  

It's been fun to look back at older quilting projects.  I'm still surprised when I find a project that I've never blogged about.  I feel like I've been blogging forever, (Is that a good thing or a bad thing?) so all my quilts should have showed up somewhere on the blog at some time or another.  However, I'm finding that's not the case.  

This week's archive topics are Chevrons and Christmas Quilts.  I've yet to make a Chevron quilt, though I've seen a few that have sparked my interest.  There are a couple of Christmas quilts in the portfolio, the first of which I kept for me.  

The pattern is How Charming by Anne Dease for Quilt in a Day.  The local quilt shop was going to offer a whole day class to make this quilt.  But not enough people signed up for the class.  I'd already selected the fabrics and was already to go when the class didn't make.  So I just had my own solo class.  The quilting is a simple meander with green thread done by Lesa Foreman.  Lesa used to own a small quilt shop not far from me, but due to family circumstances she needed a more traditional job with benefits, so she had to let the shop go.    

I didn't start out intending to make a Christmas quilt, several other fabric selections were considered before deciding to make use of some Christmas fat quarters that were sitting in the stash and pair those with one of the cardinal fabrics I was hoarding.  The green and red paisley border was one of those fabrics I didn't really want to cut, but it works so well with the rest of the quilt.  

  

This was the first quilt where I ended up working with diamonds. The cardinals needed to be cut on the bias in order to get them to sit right in the blocks.  That's when I learned you are supposed to starch the fabric before you cut the pieces.  There were a few problems getting the blocks to lay flat at first.   I finally ended up cutting the red framing strips a bit wider than specified and trimmed the cardinal blocks to size afterwards.  

This quilt was finished in August of 2010.  I didn't start blogging until September of that year.  Another thing that became obvious as this post came together is that my quilt photography skills have improved a bit (or maybe it's that I take more pictures now).  

For more on Chevrons and Christmas quilts, check out all the posts over at Val's Quilting Studio.  

Tuesday Archives - The Almost Charm Pack Quilt

This week's Tuesday Archives was a hard one.  This week's themes over at Val's Quilting Studio are "charm pack" and "chicken quilts".  

I've never made a chicken quilt.  Making one isn't even on my bucket list, though I've certainly seen some cute ones. So that leaves my history with charm packs as my topic for today's post.  The only problem is, there's really not much history.  I've never made a quilt using charm packs, though I fully intended to.  Like many of my quilting adventures it started off with something Drama Teen wanted.  Drama Teen's Girl Scout Troop made a very small quilt from charm packs when she was about 9.  The quilt was put up for silent auction to raise money for the DT's school.  We ended up with the winning bid much to DT's delight.

However, I got a phone call late that evening from one of the auction organizers.  The quilt was never intended to have been put up for auction, there had been a huge misunderstanding and the owner of the quilt wanted it back.  Drama Teen (who was just Kiddo then) was absolutely crushed.  It's hard to explain things like that to a 9 year old, the quilt really needed to go back.  I promised her we'd make a quilt and we'd use pictures of her friends along with the charm squares.  I was really quite proud of her, she handed the quilt back to the owner herself and told the owner that she understood how much the quilt meant. 

I got as far as mocking a photo-charm quilt up in EQ using some example pictures and EQ fabrics that were similar in color to the charm packs in the stash.  

DT OK'd the design and the charm packs, but before I could get started on it, she saw a mock up of another project I had been playing around with for a class I was taking.  She asked me to use those fabrics and a similar layout for her photo quilt. This is what we ended up with.  

Friends Squared
self designed

 So what started off as a charm pack project ended up using yardage instead.  I tried to use the charm design for the class auction project I blogged about last week (here).  But that photo quilt also took a turn somewhere along the way and ended up as a medallion quilt instead. 

That's it for me this week.  Check out more "historical" quilting efforts over at Val's Quilting Studio. 

Tuesday Archives #10 - Cat and Charity Quilts

It's late Tuesday, but I think there is still some time to write a brief post for Tuesday Archives.  

This week's topics are Cat and Charity Quilts.  I actually have at least one of each.  Last year I made quilts for several of Drama Teen's middle school teachers, one of which was made from a pattern called Fat Cats that had been on my bucket list for a few years.  

To read about the start of what became my Keeler's Cats project, check out this post.  The finished quilt can be seen here.  

I just recently finished a Quilt of Valor, but it's not been sent off yet, so I'm not sure it counts as a charity quilt yet.  My first and second charity quilts haven't ever shown up on the blog. Both quilts were donated to the annual fund raiser at Drama Teen's school.  The first was part of the silent auction.  

Oklahoma Reds started as as "save my sanity" quilt.  We were in the process of moving back to Oklahoma and were living in a hotel during the week while we worked, but staying at my sister's over the weekend so we could do laundry and get away from the hotel. For a couple of hours each weekend, I'd work on these blocks.  When time came for the auction, it seemed like a good option to find this project a good home.  

The second charity quilt was the "class project" for the year. 

The auction theme that year was "Growing", hence the green and brown color scheme.  The art teacher worked with the kids to make the tree in the center of the quilt.  I collected photographs of the kids at various school functions from the parents.  Each child is in at least 2 photographs.  One of DT's classmates promised to give up her allowance for a whole year if her parents would bid on this quilt.  Her parents were the ones that ended up winning the bidding war.  

To see more Tuesday Archives, check out the links over at Val's Quilting Studio.  

Tuesday Archives - The First BOM

It's Tuesday which means it's time to take a look back at early, or even pre-blogging projects by linking up with Val's Quilting Studio for:

This week's theme is Boys and BOM.  Other than My Guy, we don't have any boys in the house, though I guess at some point Drama Teen will start dragging home a few boyfriends.  Thankfully, she's decided that boys aren't worth all the drama at the moment and she's not all that interested in them.  I'm sure that will change at some point.  

So since Boys is out as a theme, it will have to be BOM.  Looking back through my blog posts I realized that there are no posts about my first completed BOM.  Sometimes I forget that I've been quilting a lot longer than I've been blogging.  

That first BOM was started not long after we moved back to Oklahoma.  A few months after we moved back someone at work told me about a quilt shop the next town over.  So I signed up for their 2007 BOM which required 1930's reproduction fabrics and used block patterns that had been published in the Kansas City Star.  To be honest, I'm not a fan of the pastels common in the 1930 reproduction fabrics, so I had a hard time picking out a color palette for the BOM blocks.  I finally decided on red and blue. Thus was born the 1930's Red, White and Blue quilt (such an original name I know).

Block patterns from the Kansas City Star
Setting self designed

After not being so thrilled with the 1930's reproduction fabrics, I was surprised at how much I liked the finished quilt.  This one resided on our bed for a few years, but it was never a favorite of My Guy.  Now it resides in the closet only to be pulled out for the sofa bed when we have company.  

That's it for my walk down memory lane this week.  Check out all the other archival postings over at Val's Quilting Studio.