Oh, my...has it been another year already? Another year where I didn't really get as much quilting accomplished as I wanted to? Another year where I started a bunch of projects and didn't really finish any of them?
My love of quilting has spread throughout my family as well. I even helped my sister Blythe start one (and if she's anything like me she has yet to finish it!). This was a gift for her soon-to-be sister-in-law, blue and orange because she is a big Chicago Bears fan. Arthur, after coloring a quilt pattern of his own, insisted upon making his own quilt. I had hopes that we were going to finish it before Winter Break was over but we did not. Oh, well. It was still fun to show Arthur how to use the sewing machine without sewing his fingers, iron without burning a hole in the ironing board, and pin without pricking his fingers too much. His preferred activity was sewing. He didn't care for ironing and he loathed pinning. Can't say that I blame him; pinning is a repetitive task.Actually, I am surprised I managed to finish as many as I did - five quilts, hooray! Several more were started and finished but remain unquilted, so I will have to wait until next year to show them off.
There were a few other things that happened this year. My Aunt Joyce
caught wind of my interest in the Civil War and called one August day asking if I would be interested in joining a Civil War quilting club at Attic Quilts, my local quilt store. It sounded kind of fun but I was worried that the members would be a little too serious about quilting...which I am not. I try to have fun with everything I quilt because if I went back and made everything perfect...well, it just wouldn't be fun anymore. It would become tedious and frustrating. I'd rather have imperfect seams and scrappy colors than tears. The ladies are a lot of fun (despite the thirty-year age difference!) and have the same quilting philosophy: HAVE FUN!
Even though this has nothing to do with the club, I received Civil War Legacies and Civil War Legacies II for Christmas. I am so excited to begin some of these lovely quilts (and there are so many pretty ones that I can't decide which one to make first!).
The unfortunate part of being part of a club now is that I am expected to create something. It took me five months of membership before I actually finished something. The scrap fabric came together perfectly and I had just enough to finish the quilt. I will probably make another one (in different colors) and send them to my lovely nieces just because.
Finally, I have stumbled upon something called "leaders and enders." I see this term thrown around a lot on various quilting websites but had no idea what it was until I did a bit of research. It's actually an ingenious method: take some scraps and sew them onto the beginning and ending of a chain. The scrap blocks are eventually sewn together to make another quilt. Obviously, this process takes time but the idea behind it is that with a bit of sewing here and a bit of sewing there, a whole new quilt is made with minimal effort! It's such a great idea that I'll probably give it a try, though I know I'm such a quilter that I'd need to have an idea in mind before I sew up a whole bunch of scraps.
Quilt #1: Basic rectangular nine patch. A few year ago, my friend Mona had spent some time in Hawaii. She returned and brought me some lovely blocks precut into rectangles. I made her a quilt with most of those blocks and decided to make the rest into a wedding quilt for my college roommate. She had gotten married in February of 2013 (oops!) but I reasoned that since seven years had not yet passed, I was probably okay. (Right?) I bought an especially vibrant Hawaiian print for the sashing but decided I hated it as soon as I got home. I isolated it to a thin border and the binding. It worked, though I still had so much of that fabric left over. Ugh. At least my friend loved it!
Quilt #2: Pineapple Blossom. This quilt was, quite literally, years in the making. I had originally set aside green, brown, and orange strips to make this quilt for a good friend who had moved out of state. He had picked it so I knew he would like it. Well, then life got in the way and the quilt was never started. Then he moved back. Then we moved out of Alaska. Then he announced he was getting married. Out came the giant bag of scraps and I finished it in about four months - a record for me! It was quilted and sent a few months after they were married. I'm not the biggest fan of the original quilt but I happen to love the mix of earth tones in mine.
Quilt #3: My Blue Heaven with additional sashing. I made a quilt similar to this one for a friend who had gotten married but the original quilt was so big...I quit. I had so many extra triangles I put them in my triangle bin and forgot about them. I even had one block leftover that I couldn't fit into my friend's quilt so I saved it. (Why not, right? A quilter is good at making new quilts from old blocks!) A friend from college was having her second baby - a boy - and I started cutting blocks for a quilt when I realized that I had almost everything for another My Blue Heaven already! The quilt came together (no cutting and very little piecing!) in no time and my friend loved it.
Quilt #4: Leftovers from Pineapple Blossom. One of my favorite things about Bonnie Hunter is that she knows how to use extra pieces from her quilts to make new quilts. This pinwheel quilt was pieced entirely with extra pieces from my Pineapple Blossom quilt and a just-under-a-yard remnant I found at Jo-Ann's. I believe that this is the first quilt I've made that I turned leftover pieces into a whole new quilt. Most of the quilts I've sewn involve digging through my scraps or buying new fabrics. It was actually a really fun process and I hope to do it again - perhaps even making a leaders and enders project of my own! (My 2-inch and triangle bins are overflowing...hmmm....there's got to be some fun triangle and square blocks out there...)
Quilt #5: Faux Log Cabin. Another friend of mine had her second baby but when she discovered she was having a girl, she wasn't very excited about it. Not because she didn't want a girl; mostly because she was not crazy about pink. Or about the possibility of having a princess. Or a diva. But, purple was fine. So I went through all of my scraps and found enough purple to make this fun quilt reminiscent of a log cabin. The quilt ended up being too narrow, so I sewed a border on two sides from the leftover green and brown pieces. The quilt came together quickly even though I felt like this thing sat around for a while. She loved the finished product! (But who doesn't love a green-brown-purple combination?)I said last year that I'd be making a quilt for myself. Well, that didn't happen. It was started and now I've decided I don't like the pattern I chose. I do have something else in mind which I think will be absolutely marvelous! There's also a possibility I'll be able to reuse some of the blocks I've already started making. (Don't you just love the frugality of quilting?) Happy quilting!
Blessed be!
