Quilts Are For Kids

In my early quilting years, when my son was in elementary school, I collected novelty fabrics everywhere I went. At first I had no idea what I would do with them, I just thought they were fun and colorful.


In 2001-2002, I made three "I Spy" bed quilts from some of that fabric. The first one was for my son, the second for the elementary PTA to use as a fundraiser for the school's reading program, and the third for the Green Free Library in Wellsboro to use as a fundraiser. The first two had the same blocks and the third was just a bit different. I quilted all three on my sewing machine -- it was about that time when I started thinking that there had to be a better way to do the quilting...


Here's Nick with the PTA quilt (his identical one was on his bed back then and still is to this day -- don't tell him I told you) ...

...and here's the one for the library...

Even after making three of these fun quilts, I had oodles of fabric left over, so I used it last year to make nine more smaller quilts (using a different pattern) for the young kids on my husband's side of the family... I'll post photos of those at a later date...

Check This Out

For another reason to visit the Mountain Laurel Quilt Guild's exhibit in September, check out my friend Susan's blog and her post from yesterday, August 10th...

In addition to quilty stuff, Susan often posts some yummy recipes...

Sunday Block

This seems appropriate for a Sunday -- it is "D-5 Cathedral Window", an intermediate-level paper-pieced block. I wish they were all this easy, but I know there are a lot of tough ones coming up...

This almost looks like a stained-glass window, don't you think?

Wild Fabric

Boy, I seem to have some wild fabrics in my stash...

This is "B-4 Chris's Soccer Field", a beginner-level paper-pieced bock. Just start in the center and work your way to the outside --all on one piece of foundation. No sections to join and it turns out to be 5 inches square perfectly!

Sneak Peek

In between making DJ blocks, and helping with 2 charity quilts, and being my son's apprentice with the guild's website, and planning our guild's September exhibit...I'm trying to finally quilt my quilt that I plan to enter in the exhibit...here's a sneak peek...
If all goes well, I hope to have the quilting finished by Saturday so I can sew the binding on by machine on Sunday and then take it with me to finish up the hand work on the binding when my family takes a short trip next week. Let's hope all goes well with that plan...

Scraps Are Fabric, Too

Some quilters throw their scraps in the trash, but since I am a child of refugees who had some very lean times in their lives, I have a lot of trouble wasting perfectly good fabric. Today, my habit of saving scraps came in handy for this next block, "B-13 Four Corner Press", a beginner-level block that I chose to paper piece, but it could easily be done using rotary cutting. The dark blue pieces with the watermelon seed-shaped spots you see on the right of the above photo were just what I needed for the 4 corners of this block. The strip was just barely wide enough, but it worked.

When I first saw the photo of Jane Stickle's block, I thought she had somehow managed to cut the diamonds out from the center dark piece and applique that onto a piece of the lighter striped fabric which she also used for the long side pieces. At that point I was almost ready to give up on my idea of making this quilt...I figured it would take me weeks just to make this one block.


However, when I read Brenda Papadakis' book, she said that the large center piece of fabric in this block is a "cheater cloth" made to look like 2 different fabrics. So I found a fabric with diamonds on it (sort of) and used it to whip this block up in no time... I believe this is one of the few blocks in the original quilt that uses more than 2 fabrics.


I think I'm up to 35 blocks now...

We Have a Website!

Just a quick note to announce that my local guild, the Mountain Laurel Quilt Guild, now has a functioning website! Take a look sometime...we have a great quilt exhibit (with free admission) coming up in just one month.. Wellsboro is a gorgeous place to be in September (actually, it makes a great impression any time of year).

The guild's raffle quilt is pictured on the side bar of my blog and here are a couple of closeups of the magnificent quilting on it...one of the front and one of the back.

The website is still a WIP (work in progress) and won't turn into a UFO (I promise)...I must say that the website looks great...but then I'm guilty of being biased...my son designed it and will be maintaining it for at least the next 2 years as his high school graduation project...