Love Hugs Back

Posted on June 29, 2022 by jeanswenson

Love Hugs Back
June 2022

First a disclaimer: I did not make this quilt, my daughters made it as a surprise birthday gift for me! They began earlier this year, working in tandem, using my husband as a courier to pass cut fabric pieces and finished blocks between their two homes. All the while, I never knew that anything was going on — yeap, totally oblivious — which is quite amazing considering we are at each of their homes to hang out and play with our grandkids every week. Also, as a quilter who often tracks random threads from my sewing room all across the house, I am impressed that there was not one thread that gave away that they had been conducting clandestine sewing activities in their homes.

Some of the blocks were designed by my grandkids, some were blocks I’ve made in past quilts, and some are ones from Tula Pink’s City Sampler: 100 Modern Quilt Blocks that they liked. Considering neither of them have made a quilt from start to finish before, I’m in awe of how small some of the pieces are, of how most of the points are pretty dead-on, and of the geometry in some of the blocks, which would give even the most experienced quilter a headache!

I’m going to go ahead and bore most readers with a list of the blocks, as while perhaps not important for others, I want to document it for myself and my family. The blocks were typically not intended as exact replicas of the original quilt, but to provide a resemblance to the original quilt.

Top row, from left to right:
- Plumage, July 2021 – gifted to Kimi and Tracy
- Quiet Start, January 2021 – gifted to Jeff and Miguel
- #20 Crosses, Tula Pink’s City Sampler: 100 Modern Quilt Blocks
- Ivy’s design (used tangrams to design)
- Sticks and Stones block, June 2002 – gifted to Amber (college quilt)
Second row
- #7 Crosses, Tula Pink’s City Sampler: 100 Modern Quilt Blocks
- Phillip, September 2020 (row 5, column 1)
- Hoplon, March 2019 – gifted to Jamie
- Country Fair, September 2015
- Aurora, August 2020 (row 2, column 2)
Third row
- Phillip, September 2020 (row 5, column 2)
- Yellow Lava Pinwheels, October 2013
- #40 Triangles, Tula Pink’s City Sampler: 100 Modern Quilt Blocks
- Fancy Fox, July 2020 – gifted to Nolan
- Persistence, July 2020 (row 6, column 3)
Forth row
- #2 Crosses, Tula Pink’s City Sampler: 100 Modern Quilt Blocks
- Nolan’s design
- Palahdee, September 2019 (adjusted version)
- Pocket Full of Monsters, August 2020 – pandemic distance project with Amber & Felix
- #3 Crosses, Tula Pink’s City Sampler: 100 Modern Quilt Blocks
Fifth row
- #55 Triangles, Tula Pink’s City Sampler: 100 Modern Quilt Blocks
- Firsts, June 2021 – first quilt I ever made, for my first love
- Opening Day, December 2018 – memory quilt gifted to Ryan
- Further, May 2021 – gifted to Amber & Skyler
- Persistence, July 2020 (row 4, column 1)
Sixth row
- Sticks and Stones, December 2012 – gifted to Lynn
- Confused Cupid, November 2012 – gifted to Cathi
- Felix’s sailboat design
- It’s a Jungle Out There, June 2014 – gifted to Felix
- Onshore Breeze, August 2020 – gifted to Ivy

They chose the name. They said that the quilt represents many of the quilts that I’ve made for others, and they wanted to return the “hug”. As I finish writing this post, I am choked-up and tearful as this is the most beautiful and thoughtful gift I have ever received. I’m so thankful for the wonderful family that is mine.

24.5554° N

Posted on June 11, 2022 by jeanswenson

24.5554° N
June 2022

The inspiration for this recently finished quanket came from Kate Spain’s block #8 which was part of Moda Block Heads 4. The center of each of the four 22″ blocks was fabric given to me many year’s ago by a family friend. I had been waiting for just the right block design to use these very special pieces, as I did not want to lose the beautiful floral designs by cutting them. While the block design was intended with a white center, these sample pieces from the iconic fashion brand, Key West Hand Print Fabrics, were the perfect substitute into the center of each ‘wild geese’ block.

Between 1962 and 1985, prolific textile designer Suzie Zuzek created over 1,500 designs for Key West Hand Print Fabrics in Key West, Florida, which were used by Lilly Pulitzer. Suzie Zuzek’s design contributions were on exhibit last year at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City. The eclectic patterns Zuzek designed defined a uniquely American style, often spotted on fashion icons such as First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

While I had every intention to donate this for a child in foster care, I had a change of heart and instead gifted it to the family friend that had given me the Key West Print fabrics. She had acquired them from her daughter, who had passed away at a young age from cancer, #cancersucks

Can You Teal the Love

Posted on May 22, 2022 by jeanswenson

Donation Blocks for Can You Teal the Love
May 2022

When Kate over at Tall Tales from Chiconia announced that she is making an Ovarian Cancer charity quilt this year – after a two year pandemic hiatus – I knew right away that I wanted to contribute to this quilt project. The last one I had participated in was Go Teal it on the Mountain, back in 2018. The theme this year is love, with hearts being the feature element in the blocks’ design. To keep things interesting, she expanded the colorway from teal (predominant) and ivory, to include pink (in small amounts) this year.

I knew right away that I wanted to represent these colors in a dove, using hearts for the wings. While the pink is not intended to represent breast cancer for this quilt, the teal and pink together is meaningful to me: my sister passed away late last year from breast cancer, and her sister-in-law passed away in early 2020 from ovarian cancer. How befitting that I could combine these two colors in a dove, a symbol of love.

The final quilt (shown below) was assembled by Kate and donated for The Trudy Crowley Foundation fund-raiser in September 2022, to help support the work of the newly-opened Trudy Crowley Center. The center provides a safe space, conference room, self-care and advice haven for those with ovarian cancer and their families.

Bubblegum

Posted on May 4, 2022 by jeanswenson

Bubblegum
May 2022

Here’s another quilt I made as part of this year’s Hands2Help Challenge that I will be sending to The Little Lambs Foundation in Utah. The challenge is being hosted by Mari over at The Academic Quilter.

This quilt incorporates a lot of “pieces of the past”. The fussy cut zoo animal centers were from my 2014 quilt, Balancing Hippopotami. The pink polka dot fabric is some from my Granny that has been in my stash and has made numerous appearances in my quankets for several years now. Another blast-from-the-past fabric is the backing fabric. I repurposed a twin sheet that was from my daughter’s college dorm days. It was still in excellent condition, and worked and looked perfect for the backing.

I enjoy using pieces of fabric, that I’ve either inherited or previously used in quilting projects, in some small way in my current projects. It sometimes makes me nostalgic, and oftentimes fills me with many great memories while I sew.

Play Ball

Posted on May 2, 2022 by jeanswenson

Play Ball
May 2022

I used this printed panel to make a quanket (quilt + blanket = quanket). It will be donated as part of this year’s Hands2Help Challenge. The challenge is being hosted by Mari over at The Academic Quilter.

While I typically tie the fleece-backed quankets I make, I decided to try something different with this one, and quilted it on my machine. I had tried quilting on a fleece-backed quilt years ago, but became frustrated when the fleece bunched, and looked a mess no matter how many pins I used to hold it in place. However, between then and now, I have discovered the wonders of basting adhesive, which I use for all my regular batted quilts. The spray worked great at holding the fleece flat and in place. I quilted baseballs and gloves in the maroon sections, and outlined the bats, the playing field and many of the other elements.

This will be going to the Little Lambs Foundation in Utah.

Sisterhood

Posted on April 6, 2022 by jeanswenson

Sisterhood
April 2022

For this recently completed jeans quilt, I used my and my sister Cathi’s old worn jeans. I had been wanting to make a jeans quilt for some time, but hadn’t found any designs that interested me. I had seen one that was made similar to this, except the folded over piece had been radiused, resembling a cathedral block. I wanted a more modern look so left the folded piece squared off, and mitered the corners. Since the back, or inside, of used jeans can be quite plain looking, I used Annie’s Craft Store’s Magical Winter 5″ charm squares on the inside of the jeans fabric, under my folded over piece, and then topstitched the folded over piece using a decorative stitch.

I constructed the quilt by starting with 7″ squares cut from the legs of the jeans. For most of the jeans I had, 7″ was about the widest I could get making the most efficient use of the fabric. I then cut a 1″ square from each corner of the 7″ squares. I first joined the squares to create my rows, using a 1″ straight seam, sewing from cut corner to cut corner. Next, I attached the 5″ charms using temporary quilters spray adhesive. Once I had a row assembled, I would seam down the flap portion just along the edges that had already been sewn, using a decorative stitch.

When it came time to join the rows, I opted to create two panels since jeans fabric is heavy, as it made it much easier to manipulate through my machine when it came time to do the final stitching down of the folded over piece between each row. I mitered the corners as I worked down each seam stitching down the folded over pieces. I used one of my machine’s fancy embroidery stitches, hoping to allow the raw edges to fray some, but not too much. Once it was done, I ran it through the wash to begin the fraying process. Overall, I was quite happy with how this one turned out, and I think Cathi would have liked it too!

I had originally planned to donate this quilt, but have been having a difficult time this year in finding a location in my county to drop them off for the kids in foster care. As the year ticked by, and many attempts at reaching out to Family Services for the county met with no response, I decided perhaps it was the cosmos’ way of telling me that this quilt was not intended for donation, but instead, for my eldest sister Lynn. I gifted it to her for Christmas, and she was very touched — Sisterhood ❤

Bloom

Posted on March 16, 2022 by jeanswenson

Bloom
March 2022

This quilt will be donated as part of this year’s Hands2Help Challenge. This year, the challenge is being hosted by Mari over at The Academic Quilter. She will begin the sign-up process soon, so if you’re interested in joining this year’s challenge, check out her blog.

The backing fabric, shown here, is a Mary Engelbreit design from 2001, and has been living in my stash for about ten years now. I think the fabric is super cute, but every time I considered using it in a quilt, I was not sure how to cut the fabric. The individual elements are so close to one another, that I was concerned that even fussy cutting it would lose too many aspects of the overall design. I finally figured that using it as a backing on a baby quilt was going to do it the most justice. The piecing on the front mainly uses scraps and small pieces from my stash, and the flower pot is done using a raw-edge appliqué technique.

Baby Quilts Up for Auction

Posted on March 11, 2022 by jeanswenson

Scooter & Tod

I have donated these two recently finished scrappy quilts to my grandkids elementary school for a silent auction that will raise money for school programs. If you are interested in bidding on either of these baby quilts, you can bid on Scooter (airplane) here, and Tod (fox) here.

Each quilt measures 40″x40″ and is made from 100% cotton outer, with 80/20 cotton/poly batting, machine pieced and quilted.

The auction is open from March 11-19, 2022.

Scooter

Posted on January 31, 2022 by jeanswenson

Scooter
January 2022

Every Spring, I try to participate in the Hands2Help Challenge hosted by Sarah over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict @fabricaddictquilts. This year I decided to get a jump start on making baby quilts for this great cause. Since I was working to deplete my scraps bins with my recent Tod quilt, I kept the momentum going and made these yellow and blue log cabin blocks with “mostly” scraps. I say “mostly” because I was being a bit too fussy about the colorway, and did go into my stash for some of the blues and yellows. I made the airplane using a raw-edge appliqué technique.

Why the name? Scooter was a super sweet pound puppy that my sister had year’s ago. While this isn’t a dog, I thought the airplane was super sweet, and it reminded me of my sister – she’ll know why.

This was donated to Friends of Short Avenue Elementary for a silent auction in March, 2022.

Tod

Posted on January 29, 2022 by jeanswenson

Tod
January 2022

While putting away my holiday scraps, I found that my reds bin was close to exploding. So, time for a red scrappy quilt! I kept this baby quilt super simple, patchworking 2″ blocks. As for the fox, I found a coloring page online, and then enlarged the image to the size I wanted, and traced directly from my monitor. I know all you techies are cringing, yes, it’s probably not good form to trace off a monitor, but I try to press only ‘very, very lightly’ 🙂 Typically, I either trace using my monitor, or against a window… of course, during daytime for using the window 😂 I made the fox using a raw-edge appliqué technique.

I often hear new quilters ask about the best way to store and manage their scraps. I hear some quilters suggest cutting into standard sizes before storing, and to only keep those pieces larger than 2″. My recommendation is to keep it all, and to not pre-cut it. Since I often dig into my scraps for appliqué projects, the size and irregularity of a piece is not a problem. I also enjoy the crumb block technique, which uses not only irregular shapes, but also very small pieces. Lastly, I sort scraps by color and use photo boxes to keep them in. This way, when the lid no longer wants to stay properly on the box, I know it’s time to do a scrappy quilt! If you are needing ideas for a scrappy quilt, check out Quilting is more fun than Housework’s blog.