Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Cats in My Garden

Being a cat lover, I just had to do this quilt when I saw the pattern. Jeanne at Quilts & Fixins designed this pattern. You can order the pattern from their website. The hardest part was the darn cat faces. I'm not good at free hand embroidery and thought I would never finish those blasted whiskers. Some are very wonky and some are very short. I considered leaving them off but that would not have looked good. Jeanne agreed that drawing them on would be a good idea. Apparently I'm not the only one who whined about the embroidery.



Here is the back of the quilt. Quilts and Fixins always has lots of fabrics with cats on it, so I had a hard time choosing which on to use.

For quilting, I only stippled quilted in the green. The shop sample had large meandering quilting over the whole quilt.
It was a lot of fun to pick out the scraps from my stash to make the cats. I did buy a few new fat quarters for some of the cats. At least I don't have to feed all these cats!

Monday, December 22, 2008

I've been busy

I've been really busy the last few weeks with end of school semester, work and life. I also was finishing up some projects for gifts. Sunday my family got together for lunch and I gave quilts. Everyone seemed truly happy.

This one was for my parents. Later I called my mother and she said it was just the right size for wrapping on on the couch. She had been using two small afghans because neither were long enough.


This one was for my brother. The front is flannel.


This one was for my sister and her husband. I must admit I start on hers a long time ago. I refuse to discuss how long ago LOL. This one is bedsize and she immediately said it would look great in her guest room.




Friday, December 5, 2008

Fabric Bookmarks

A bunch of 'em! Tomorrow is a Christmas party and gift exchange with other crafty people. I made fabric bookmarks. I tried to make a variety of colors so everyone can choose what they like. I made 34 of these bookmarks.




I also finished up a bag for my mother to give to a friend of hers. My mother liked the bag I made for her that she wanted one for her friend. Her friend is a big fan of University of Georgia. I think it looks cute.



Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Antique Double Wedding Ring Quilt

Today I got an old quilt that I bought off ebay. The description said "some of the fabrics have deteriorated and the backing shows through." Let first say, I am very happy with my purchase but it is not what I expected.

Here is a picture of part of the quilt.


Most of the print fabrics look like this....
In other words, every piece of the "rings" are worn through. Yet as I was looking at it, I kept thinking something looked odd. Why way I not seeing batting or a thin piece of backing? Wait! I was looking at a quilted piece of material. Finally, I figured it out -- the rings were appliqued onto the large white quilt top! There is still a lot of quilt left, just very little of the applique pieces. It still looks beautiful.

This is a picture of one corner from the back. Can you see the lines of hand quilting?

Teeny, tiny hand stitches about every 1/2 inch. As you can see, many of those rows of stitching overlap. The quilt is about 68 inches by 80 inches. Thousands of tiny hand stitches! Each wedding ring has two rows of stitching inside the prints fabric and then rows of stitching outlining the rings. Here is another shot of the back. I think you can see the circles of stitching.


I should also mention it is very, very soft. Is filled with cotton batting. There is one edge that the binding is hanging off of and in bad shape.
As I was trying to examine the quilt and take pictures, THIS happened......

Queen Bailey decided since it was on "her" bed, that she could inspect it also. Silly cat!




Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Vintage quilt blocks

While browsing on eBay recently I found this set of quilt blocks for sale. Four patches sewn into strips. The price was great (less than $10.00) so I bid on it. The fabrics seem to be from the late 60's, maybe early 70's. I sewed the strips together to get this....



Here is a closer view of some of the fabrics. There are polyester blends in there and some fabrics I can't identify except to say "coarse and scratchy". The solid blues are a thin chambray shirting fabric.

Look, it's Dumbo! Or at least part of Dumbo. The squares that look like pieced triangles are really "cheater" cloth fabrics.

I think I'm going to quilt it on the machine with white thread using diagonal lines.
I'm now having to make myself stay away from ebay because I keep wanting to "rescue" more quilts, quilt tops and quilt blocks. This is a whole new avenue for my quilting addiction!