Category Archives: Quilt Projects

Humpty’s Tulips

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Humpty’sTulips
December 2023

This year has been a year of many changes. Back in January, my Dad relocated to an assisted living facility that is 200 miles closer to me than where he had previously lived: he’s now about 15 miles away. With him being closer, I now not only get the time to hangout and visit with him more often, but I’m also available to help him with his doctor’s appointments, which are abundant. As such, my time has become much more limited this year for my hobbies — sailing, sewing and gardening.

But, this wasn’t the only “change” for the year. At the beginning of September, while doing some landscaping with rocks* to create a border in my garden, when positioning a rock, it unexpectedly shifted on me, and it ended up crushing the distal bone in my right ring finger. Yeap, unfortunately, I’m right hand dominant. So, no sailing, no sewing and no gardening for over two months. Yikes, that’s an eternity.

Five fragments broken off the distal bone required two surgeries and five pins to put Humpty back together again. And, lots of occupational therapy, which still continues. I was able to begin <slowly and carefully> sewing and gardening in November, and in addition to this quanket, I was able to get some tulip bulbs planted in my garden.

I decided to create a memory of this year’s journey, and tie my love of gardening and sewing together by making this tulip quilt. It’s not a bad memory, but just a “life happens” memory that I want to document here in my blog.

Most of the fabrics I used are from my scraps bins. Some, including the heart fabric used in the top and bottom borders, was some I received from Jocelyn over at Happy Cottage Quilter. I finished this as a fleece-backed quanket and it has been donated to the Good Shepard Shelter, a long-term treatment and education-based shelter for women and their children who are healing from domestic violence.

I also want to acknowledge all the help that my husband provided during the time that my right hand was out of commission. He took on the full roll of being chef and sous chef – we usually work together as a team to get dinner on the table. He was also great at taking instructions on gardening chores that needed to be tended to – if you’re a gardener, you understand that some things need to be done, regardless if your hands are working or not.

And, fret not, we returned to sailing in November as well. We won’t have as many ‘sail days’ as last year, but heck, that’s okay. I’m always thankful for any and all the sail days we get!

*rock or boulder, that is the question – it seems that boulders are rocks that are >50 pounds. I believe my “culprit rock” is somewhere in the 40-50 pound range. I’ll never know, as I have absolutely no intentions of handling that rock any further to determine its weight!

Seashore Treasures

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Seashore Treasures
June 2023

I made this Simply Serene quilt using scraps from my scraps bins and scraps that I had received from Jocelyn over at Happy Cottage Quilter. While I missed the cutoff to include this quilt in this year’s Hands2Help Challenge, hosted by Sarah over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, I plan to include this with the other three quilts I’ll be sending to Little Lambs Foundation in Utah. Little Lambs Foundation provides backpacks full of comfort items for children from newborn to 17 who are transitioning into foster care, emergency shelters, or hospitalization. This year’s Hands2Help Challenge generated over 625 donation quilts!

The backing fabric is one I’ve had in my stash for a long time. It’s a beautiful turquoise color with seashells printed in white. The manufacturer name on the salvage is Leon B Rosenblatt Textiles LTD. The company dates back to the 1950’s and appears to still be in business, based out of NYC. I inherited this fabric from my Granny and would guess that it is from the late 1960’s – early 1970’s, but that’s just a guess.

Poppy

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Poppy
June 2023

This quilt has been in process since late 2021, when I began hand embroidering the flower design on the red poppy print blocks. In early 2022, I completed piecing it (on sewing machine). Since I wanted to hand quilt it, by the time summer came around, I had little interest in having a quilt draped on me while hand quilting. By October, the weather had cooled enough, but it still took a few months to get it across the finish line. I finally finished it earlier this year, but hadn’t taken time to write a post about it, as I was more anxious to see it on the bed for which I had intended it!

During the hand quilting stage, I made a makeshift quilting frame by attaching a curtain rod to the wall (immediately below the window in picture). I used my ironing board to other side to create the side-to-side tension. Being the first time doing hand quilting, I had no frame of reference (nor quilting frame – haha) for how to go about hand quilting, but I thought my makeshift set-up worked pretty well and I was happy with it.

The red poppy print fabric was some that was handed down to me from my Granny. I’ve had it in my stash for many years, knowing that I wanted to make something special with it. I’ve also wanted to make a redwork quilt for several years, and this seemed to be the perfect place to use the fabric. I purchased Kona cotton in wine and ivory colors to compliment the print. The quilt pattern was part of a 2014 Quilt-a-Day calendar, and is called Underground Railroad Quilt by Debby Kratovil, © 2013. While the calendar had the pattern notated as such, I personally wonder if it had been a typo, as it doesn’t look like a traditional Underground Railroad Quilt, but closer to a modified version of a Jacob’s Ladder quilt.

This Teal’s on Fire

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Donation Blocks for This Teal’s on Fire
June 2023

Once again, Kate over at Tall Tales from Chiconia is preparing an Ovarian Cancer charity quilt for the Trudy Crowley Foundation fund-raiser to be held later this year (in Australia). The theme for this year’s donation quilt is This Teal’s on Fire, a play on words of the Bob Dylan song This Wheel’s on Fire. The idea is to create the impression of a flicker of flame on teal ‘wheels’ across the quilt.

I’ve been wanting to try my hand at making New York Beauty blocks, so this gave me the perfect opportunity! I have to say, I got a lot of enjoyment out of making these blocks. I haven’t done curved piecing before – other than in garment sewing – nor have I had much experience with Y-seams. Both were a new and interesting learning process. I consider myself fairly proficient at math, but the geometry involved in arcs wearies my brain! The first block I created was the one that needed the Y-seams, so in addition to trying to get a handle on the geometry for the arcs, I also had to get the Y-seams lined up correctly. Yikes. There was a lot of time spent with Jack. However, this wasn’t the only block that required adjustments, and readjustments to the seams to get everything to work out. Alas, I have to say, I learned quite a lot along the way, and feel a bit more confident in making New York Beauty blocks.

I participate in this group quilt project each year in honor of my sister who had breast cancer and her sister-in-law that had ovarian cancer.

And, TADA! Here’s This Teal’s on Fire.

Raggedy Ann

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Raggedy Ann
May 2023

I made this quilt for this year’s Hands2Help Challenge, hosted by Sarah over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. During last year’s Hands2Help Challenge, Jocelyn over at Happy Cottage Quilter suffered a shoulder injury and asked if I would finish some baby quilts on her behalf. When she sent the baby quilt tops that I finished into Polka Party 1-4, she also sent a box stuffed full of scrap fabrics and remnant pieces. One of the remnant pieces was some Raggedy Ann and Andy fabric, which I’ve incorporated here.

Raggedy Ann (and Andy) are a fond memory of mine. When I was four years old, my Granny taught me to sew – much to the dismay of my Mom as she was concerned I would be impaled by a sewing needle. When I was around 12 years old, my Granny helped me sew the Raggedy Ann and Andy pictured below. After fifty years, aside from some thinning of the black fabric for their shoes, they’re in pretty good condition!

I will be sending the Raggedy Ann quilt to Little Lambs Foundation based in Utah, who are one of the handful of recipients of this year’s Hands2Help challenge comfort quilts. Little Lambs Foundation provides backpacks full of comfort items for children from newborn to 17 who are transitioning into foster care, emergency shelters, or hospitalization.

Apothocary

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Apothocary
December 2022

I began making this quilt sometime in mid-2022 as a Christmas gift for my son-in-law’s parents. The top was made with Lisa Audit’s A Country Weekend 5″ charms, a collection for Wilmington. The birds, butterflies, and beautiful flowers remind me so much of their home, which while close to the big city, is remote and so picturesque. It reminds me a bit of my Granny’s home when I was a kid: it has lots of fun garden vignettes to explore and enjoy, each unique and beautiful.

While this was gifted to them for Christmas, I am only getting the chance to blog about it now. With the hustle and bustle around around the holidays, a family skiing trip, and then helping my Dad with relocating to an assisted living facility, my January slid past much too quickly! So here is February, and I’m finally pausing a bit to catch up here on my blog. I think this is the perfect quilt to welcome Spring, even though Punxsutawney Phil says we have to wait 6 weeks. I can’t wait to see Fred and Becca’s garden when Spring officially arrives!

Regatta

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Regatta
October 2022

This is a ‘tummy time’ quanket for a baby. Simply place it on the floor with some toys on it, and it gives a baby a clean place to play while working to strengthen their arms, backs and core muscles.

As a sailor, I couldn’t resist the cute, and very colorful, sailboat fabric. I didn’t want to cut it up to turn into quilt blocks, so left it as large pieces, and made my quilting focus on the larger sailboats and the baby’s name, Myles. This is finished as a traditional quanket, with a pieced quilt front, fleece for the backing and then tied.

This was gifted to my sister’s nephew and his wife, who welcomed their son back in early July. I hope Myles grows to enjoy sailboats (and maybe when he’s a bit older, sailing too) as much as I do!

Shark!

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Shark!
September 2022

Back in July, when Jocelyn over at Happy Cottage Quilter sent the baby quilt tops that I finished into Polka Party 1-4, she also sent a box stuffed full of scrap fabrics and remnant pieces. One of the remnant pieces was the shark fabric, which I thought was too cute to fussy cut, so I used it as bands at the top and bottom. I also used some blue scrap fabrics she had sent, and pulled a bunch of scappy blues from my scraps box to create the center section. The pieces to create the rows were 1.5″, 2″, 2.5″ and 3″ (unfinished).

I had read an article recently about quilting “rules”. I apologize for not noting down the author’s name, as it was one of those articles that you see go by, you do a quick read, and then move on to the next article in your feed. I then spent a bit of time reflecting on her take on quilting “rules”, which was basically that the creative process thrives with no hard fast rules. However, the creative process usually does well when there is a plan – that may include some tentative rules – at the outset of a project. For this quilt, in addition to using blues as one rule, I decided to use a pattern for the rows, as opposed to just placing them randomly. So, for all those out there that love to figure out patterns, what pattern did I use?

I will be sending this quilt to Little Lambs Foundation based in Utah, as part of the 2023 Hands2Help challenge comfort quilts being hosted by Sarah over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. Little Lambs Foundation provides backpacks full of comfort items for children from newborn to 17 who are transitioning into foster care, emergency shelters, or hospitalization.

Where Pink Happens

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Where Pink Happens
September 2022

Did you know that scientists question the existence of the color pink? I hadn’t really been looking for information on the topic of the color pink’s existence, but the internet seems to have many rabbit holes for one to fall into! It is actually quite a fascinating topic – one to tuck away for a potential conversation starter. My take away from the Scientific American article is that I’m quite happy that our brains provide us with the sensation of color, as pink has always been a favorite of mine. When my sisters and I were kids, my mother always dressed us in an “assigned” color. From my eldest sister down to me, we were purple, blue, yellow and pink. Family pictures were always so colorful!

Back in July, when Jocelyn over at Happy Cottage Quilter sent the baby quilt tops that I finished into Polka Party 1-4, she also sent a box stuffed full of scrap fabrics and remnant pieces. There were a lot of 2.5″ wide pink and purple scraps, that I combined with some of my pink and purple scraps to make the 5×5 scrap blocks. The white/stars and the lilac fabrics were also part of what Jocelyn sent, which I used to make the larger chevron blocks. I finished this as a quanket, backing it with pink fleece.

While I had intended this quanket to be donated to a foster child, sometimes life just has different plans. In mid-2022, my connection to CPS sort of just dried up. The facility I had been dropping my quilts off to, closed. I left many messages for my contacts with CPS, to no avail. So, the quilts were just sitting, waiting to find a home.

In early 2023, my Dad was admitted to the ER. It’s a long story. Anyways, Toni, a family friend, was a huge support to myself and my siblings, giving us the peace of mind that someone was hanging out with him, and advocating for him, while he was in the hospital, as we scrambled to make arrangements to relocate him closer to myself and my sister in Southern California. I gifted this to Toni as a huge THANK YOU, and as a remembrance of her time with my Dad.

Polka Party

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Polka Party 1
August 2022


Polka Party 2
August 2022


Polka Party 3
August 2022


Polka Party 4
August 2022

Here are four baby quilts that were designed and pieced by Jocelyn over at Happy Cottage Quilter. She had made these as part of this year’s Hands to Help Challenge, but had sustained a shoulder injury before she was able to quilt and bind them. She reached out to me to ask if I would like to finish them, which I did! I really enjoy quilting baby quilts, as they are a great way to practice and improve my quilting techniques. For Polka Party 1, I quilted straight lines, a 1/4″ on both sides of the seam lines. Polka Party 2 is quilted in large, overlapping circles. The third is quilted in a harlequin/diamond pattern, and Polka Party 4 is quilted in hourglass/wavy lines.

Why Polka Party as the theme across the names? As it happened, after I had done the binding on the first three quilts, I realized that I had unknowingly chosen polka dot fabrics for each of them. So, I kept this going and found another polka dot fabric to use on the fourth. I will be sending these to Little Lambs Foundation based in Utah, who were one of the handful of recipients of this year’s Hands2Help challenge comfort quilts. At the close of the challenge back in the Spring, there were a total of 562 quilts that went to the participating charities! Little Lambs Foundation provides backpacks full of comfort items for children from newborn to 17 who are transitioning into foster care, emergency shelters, or hospitalization.