Tuesday Trunk Show

Here's another oldie - this one was made for my in-laws back in Dec 2000/Jan 2001 for their 50th Wedding Anniversary. I don't actually know what's happened to this quilt now - perhaps one of my brothers-in-law has it; wherever it is, I hope it's happy!

Again, the quilting is very basic, as I didn't really know how to machine quilt yet!

Something else with wonky four patches

I showed some of these wonky four patch blocks in a double four patch setting yesterday; these remaining blocks will get bordered with some neutrals to make larger blocks (which will then eventually get assembled into a top).   Here's the start of it - haven't got very far yet!

Some more of that blue batik

Not a lot of it left - but with the smaller bits which I did have, I made some double four patch blocks, using some small wonky four patches. Haven't had a chancen to stitch them together yet, but that will come!

Rectangular Blocks - and blue batik

... not to be confused with the aqua blue batik from before.  And that's it for these rectangular blocks, at least for the time being!

ATC Friday

A couple of Round Robin ATCs which I started, and which have now come back to me finished. Starters are always fun, as you never quite know what direction the card will have taken by the time it comes back to you...  These blue and brown cards came back with musical kittens, for instance.

And these dictionary pages have come back all saintly...

Rectangular Blocks...and aqua blue batik

Just like the top the other day, except not bright orange. Quite a difference, but equally effective.  One more to come!

Cross Stitch Update

Slowly but surely... I finished the banner across the top, except for some white dots in it, and the tag, which will say "Eat Me" when I do the backstitching, which I'll do later. The little cake is nearly done as well. Progress, though I wouldn't call it speedy!

Tuesday Trunk Show

Another oldie - it's fun working my way through my old quilt book. I can't take a photo of this one in person (though it's probably still at my mom's house somewhere, so perhaps I'll try to photograph it this summer when I visit). I made a note that it was made in part to go with their downstairs, where one room had a burgundy wall. 

Not much in the way of quilting, but this was the old days (for me), so it would have been mostly straight (or not-very-straight) lines, stitch-in-the-ditch and so on.

I did, however, put a label on it, so at least I know it was finished in December 2000.  (Actually, I have a note that it was a Christmas present that year, so I would have known even without the label...)

More rectangles

Here's a couple of other fabrics I'm going to use with the rectangles. Both have served as borders for Linus quilts already; this is what's left over. Might be able to get another border from it, might not - but they will certainly serve to alternate with these log cabins...

Rectangular Log Cabins with Orange Sunset

Well, I think the setting fabric looks like a sunset... so here's the rectangle crumb log cabins set with some orange alternates. There are more of the rectangle blocks, though, so another quilt top (or two) are in the making...

Rectangular Scrappy Log Cabins

Starting to do something with these scrappy blocks- there are loads of them, so I think they'll be around for a while.  Still, it seemed too good to miss out on, that I had some 6.5" strips of this variegated orange print (I used it as a border, but there wasn't really enough for another border) - same width as the log cabins!  So, I'm pairing them up and setting them alternately in rows. Should be a nice top when it's done.

ATC Friday

Two more sets of Round Robin ATC cards - once again, these are cards which have been sent to me to finish off. The sail away cards didn't need much as they were not only quite full, but also nicely balanced; I just added some text (something which often works well, at least in my books!)

These were very different - but again, didn't need a lot. I had some nice vintage floral heart papercuts which matched well & threw in a couple of words for good measure.

Bordered Linus Top, Take 8

...and as promised, another top with the same border fabric. This one is slightly larger, with 16 blocks instead of 12. Blocks are from the same master set as the others, though.

And that's all the bordered tops, for a while at least. I have two more tops paired up with suitable fabrics, but btoh will want to be mitred, so they will probably wait a while until I feel up to the slightly additional effort.

Cross Stitch Update

Only a little done recently on the cross stitch - a single cake. Because the girls are both revising like mad for their upcoming exams (one down today: Sarah's C1 Maths resit (she took it last year but wants an A or A* on it, rather than a B, so she's taking it again); one coming up Friday; Olivia's Spanish GCSE) we are watching almost no telly in the evenings; this really eats into my stitching time!  Anyway, maybe more next week, who knows.

Thanks to those who were interested in the cross-stitch patterns; I'll be in touch soon!

Tuesday Trunk Show

The next in my series of virtual trunk show pieces. This is a really old quilt; it's probably the very first one I made when I took up quilting again as an adult (I did a little in university). According to my book, it's from 1999. Apparently the pattern was from a book called Easy Log Cabin quilts or something like that. Not a book I have any more, despite my enduring love for log cabins.  Anyway, here it is, pictured on my bed, and the photos below are scanned from my book. 

The quilting is very minimal, just straightlines down the blocks, but in a spiral to the centre of the log cabin blocks. I actually forgot I had this quilt, so it's nice to see it again (it's in a pile which are in Sarah's room). 

Bordered Linus Top, Take 7

Here's a small top made from some of the many brown blocks I had knocking about; the border is a brown and blue dot with little birds in it. I have enough for another border as well, so you can perhaps guess what you'll see if you stay tuned a few days...

Bordered Linus Top, Take 6

These are the same sort of blocks which appeared in the quilt top I showed yesterday, but this time, I've partnered them with a bright orage print, so the end effect is quite different. Both nice, just different.

Bordered Linus Top, Take 5

Here's another one from the Linus box, with a blue batik border to help make it a good size and finish it off. Not done yet - there's still more to come before I run out of tops which have border fabric waiting.

ATC Friday

After a few weeks of other work to show, it's back to my main ATC occupation: round robins. These were both cards where I was the third person to work on them, so you can see how they looked after two players, and then finished.  This one has a soup theme, 

and this one has a Christmas theme.

Bordered Linus Top, Take 4

Here's another top for the Project Linus pile. The purple half-square triangle blocks were made shortly after I attended a Project Linus day last year; it's taken a while to find a good border for them.

Pattern Giveaway

Doing some decluttering; here are a few cross-stitch patterns which I no longer need. If interested, leave a comment.

(I only scanned half the pattern, but the whole thing is there - I got this one for free & I like it, but I have two copies...)

Trunk Show Tuesday

So, after I posted about my little talk at the local library, I had some positive comments (thanks!) - as I am always looking for thing to blog about to make this blog an interesting place to read (and write), I thought it might be fun to do a virtual trunk show of my quilts. It's not going to be a tutorial or even a link to patterns (though it might sometimes be), but more, what I'd say if I was talking about the quilt to people who weren't necessarily quilters - just some info about when I made it, why, what inspired it, and any interesting bits and pieces. Hopefully it will be fun!

This first piece I've chosen because it's one of the older quilts I've made, which I still have.  Or rather, in the case of this one, I have it again. It was made as a gift for my husband's parents back when we'd been married only a few years - I don't know exactly what year, but definitely pre-blog. [Hang on, I do have a book where I used to keep notes about quilts I'd made, back in the pre-blog days...*]

OK, this one was a gift for Christmas 2001, apparently. I found it in my book, and I found a photo of it on my in-laws' bed (reflected in the wardrobe mirror). I wasn't a very sophisticated quilter in those days - these days I am much better with free motion stuff (though most bigger quilts, I have longarmed anyway). So this one is just attached together with stitch-in-the-ditch (between the blocks) quilting. [The reason it came back to me is that Geoff's parents are both now gone; when his mum died, his brother offered us the quilt back - she'd had it with her in the care home where she lived towards the end of her life.]

It's made with many different fabrics, including a variation in the neutral squares, and it's just two traditional quilt blocks, alternating with one another. 

Great for using up small pieces of fabric. I really like this quilt, and I'm glad it came back to us. We use it a lot in the living room (though as it's been washed many times, it actually needs a few repairs; I should do that!)

*Actually, there are a lot of quilts in that book which I no longer have access to - lots of photos as well - I might do the trunk show from there for a while, as those quilts won't have been shown on this blog before!

Bordered Linus Top, Take 3

...and here's the next top. As usual, this has photographed poorly, but it is a kind of pale purpley blue and a pale purple; the centres of the blocks have ABCs on black or on blue backgrounds, so it's a very child-friendly piece. Some of my scrap quilts are a bit more grownup as I don't really tend to collect novelty fabrics (unless I set out to do so). 

Bordered Linus Top, Take 2

Here's the second of the promised tops - this one went really well with a rather in-your-face rose print which Liz (the Project Linus Coordinator in my region) had in her Linus stash. The pink and black blocks are quite girly, lots of shoes and shopping prints in the centres of the blocks...

Bordered Linus Top, Take 1

Some sewing time this weekend prompted me to match up some Linus top centres for which I had allocated border fabric, with those borders. Partly, I have no real space for cutting or organising as my daughter is using the table to do art in the lead up to her GCSE Art Exam on Monday and Tuesday. Borders need a minimum of cutting and whatnot. So, here is the first of those - a greeny blue scrappy thing with a green border.  Please excuse the papers in the background - my entire house is covered with bits of revision - two children undergoing major exams this year creates a lot of paper!