Friendship Wreath - January 2015, First Finish

First finish of 2015. The quilt is machine pieced and hand appliqued. I did start to hand quilt it but quickly grew frustrated with the whole process. The quilt sat, waiting to be finished, for probably two years. I decided that the background was so busy, hand quilting would not show anyway! So the quilting was finished by machine in a somewhat echo stitch. Glad it does not show in the photos as it is not very good. However, the binding is finished and the finished quilt is hanging in the living room. And it does look lovely on a cream wall!

       

 Title - Friendship Wreath

           Quilt Kit from "The Quilt Collection"

Finished Size - 37" x 37" 
Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts,  finish it up Friday, 1/16/15.

21 to Finish . . .

O.K. - no more starts. It's time to start to finish the works in progress. I'm not sure how this happened but . . .  I have counted 21 quilts that need to be completed. And there is at least one that I know of which I was unable to locate -- it must be hiding amongst the fabric stash. I am not sure of the order that these will be worked, but the goal for this year is to complete all . . . or maybe just most of the following . . .

1. "Friendship Wreath" Quilt Kit - from the Quilt Collection

2. Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville Mystery 
"Grand Illusion"
  

3. Kaffe Fassett's "Facet"

4. Grandmother's Flower Garden

5. Narragansett Bay Quilters - Block of the Month

6. Baltimore Beauty - Felted Wool

7. The Colors of Sweet Pea's

8. Beach Beauty

9. Irish Chain

10. Tumbler Charity Quilt

11. Spider Web

12. Tumbler Charity Quilt

13. Cardinal Wall Hanging

14. Hunter Star

15 Butterfly Beauty

16. English Christmas 

17. Stars and Apples

18. French String 

19. Kitty Wedding Ring

20. Lone Star Dreams in Red

21. Green to Yellow, Mile-A-Minute

. . . Now . . . where to start!
Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for finish it up Friday, 1/9/15.

Quiltville's "Grand Illusion" Mystery Revealed

The bits and pieces now have a road map to the end of the mystery. Bonnie Hunter has revealed the layout and the final quilt. I have just a few bits and pieces put together and hope to continue this in between work and everything else. The mystery certainly was a lot of fun to follow along with, especially in the middle of the hectic Christmas season.

Bits and Pieces of the Mystery

Block 1 completed

 

 

 

Block with borders on 2 sides

4 Blocks up on the Design Wall

Lots more to do before I can call this finished!  Linking up with Bonnie Hunter's 2014 Quiltville Winter Mystery, Grand Illusion!

 

Hawaiian Applique

On August 13, 2014, I was able to take a class on Hawaiian Hand Applique with Janet Elia of Janet Ann Creations ~ Quilts and more. The Ninigret Quilters guild in Westerly, RI hosted this event. The monthly guild meeting was treated to her trunk show. What a wonderful speaker and teacher. She was funny and personable and is very gifted.

I was able to complete the applique fairly quickly, however the echo quilting seemed to go on forever. I was able to complete three rows before I called this finished.

The backing is black velvet with a hidden zipper.

The pillow finished at approximately 19 inches square.

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it up Friday 

Merry Christmas . . . .

A Happy and Holy and Merry Christmas . . .

Little White Elephants

I was invited to a baby shower for the daughter-in-law of a wonderful friend. The colors for the soon to be little princess is pink and gray and the theme is elephants. (When did newborns have colors or themes??) One of the shower gifts was a wonderful wicker elephant - not sure if it was for storage or possibly laundry.

 Anyway - the mother-to-be was all aglow and the grandmothers are just tickled --- PINK!!

And, of course, it was time to make a baby quilt. I was able to find some lovely fabric that matched the theme - pink and gray and elephants - and it was flannel. I love to back baby quilts with flannel. It just makes it so warm and snugly. The quilting started as a pantograph of interwoven hearts in a medium gray but it just looked too fussy so I removed the stitching and settled on an overall meander stitch in white. I worked much better.

 
The pattern used was from a Crazy Mom Quilts tutorial. It was wonderfully easy and really sewed up quickly. I love the look of the zig zag without any half square triangles.

The finished size was 41" x 45".

This little photo shoot was lots of fun. Photos were taken just outside of Wickford Village.

Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it up Friday  and also TGIFF at Quilt Matters.

Grand Illusion Part 2

Step 1 - Completed

So far I have completed 61 parts for step 1 - just 49 to go!

Just completed the 100th block for Step 1!

Now onto step 2 -

 Lots of Cutting - I choose Option 3 - Sew & Flip Method resulting with lots of bonus squares!

21 units completed - lots more to go.

Time to link up for step 2  at Quiltville's Quips & Snips.