Nuts and Robolts Quilt

So I finally finished my son's robot quilt.  I got the pattern from a Fon's and Porter magazine from about two years ago.  The fabrics are from P&B Textiles.  I also made two matching pillowcases.  I actually have a few more scraps so I'm toying with making a throw pillow for him as well.

Here is the front of the quilt.

And another picture.  This one is meant to give a little life to the picture.

And the back:

Here is a close up of the label:

Oh, and here are the scraptacular quilt blocks I made today.

Cheers,

Dionne

Another UFO NOT Finished in Febuary

Ok so my Febuary UFO didn't get finished.  This month my brain was not in the game! I had one project I was working on that gave me so much grief!  And the funny thing is that my project ( a little old runner no less) was actually a beginner, easy-peasy project!

Oh well, maybe March will be a little better for me.  I did have two finishes in Febuary.  One was the runner mentioned above (I wrestled it into submission, but there is no denying the distortion that resulted in all my stitching and un-stitching!)

I also finished another quilt for Quiltmaker Magazine.  I can't show you that one yet, but here is the sneak peek!

Oh, right, I almost forgot. This post was supposed to be about UFOs. Now my UFO List looks like this:

1. Road to California

2. Christmas Bauble Runner

3. Around the World Cottage Quilt

4. Old Tobacco Road

5. Kaleidescope Quilt

6. Flannel Crazy Quilt DONE! My January Project! This crazy quilt started as a few finished blocks and several bits and pieces. It ended as a flimsy. You can see a picture of it HERE. If you go look at it, let me know if you think I should put a border on it!

7. Cameron's Calender Quilt

8. Greenpiece - This needs to be finished, quilted and bound.

9. Robot Quilt

10. Rhapsody in Bloom NOT DONE! This was supposed to be my Febuary project!

11. Cinder's Best Day

12. Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll

Cheers,

Dionne

Snowy Night is Finished

You know how snow falling can look like fluffy little balls? Well, that's what I pictured the border would look like when I bought this fabric. Sometimes things don't look in reality like they do in your head. The border fabric background is too dark and the fluffy balls of snow just look like polka dots (nothing wrong with that... usually) Yeah, the border still bothers me, but it's done.

Here is some detail of the quilting I did. I used a metallic silver to machine quilt snowflakes. I've never used metallic thread before so there was a learning curve!

I used my Accuquilt cutting system to cut all the pieces and the applique snowflakes and machine appliqued them on the quilt.

This picture shows some closer detail on the appliqued snowflakes.

I think I'll add more quilting, and perhaps outline the snowflakes in the metallic thread and then I'll be done. I'm pleased with the results, but I think it looked a lot better in my head. Seems to be a running theme with me!

Cheers,

Dionne

Some Finishes from the year.

Here are a few finishes I don't think I posted this year. It's hard to remember what I blogged about. It was a roller coaster year, and the end of last year as well. My father had so many illnesses, he was like the energizer bunny really. The end was hard for me though.

Yowza!! I didn't mean to go there! Here are a few of my finishes from the year:

This is one that was published this year, but most of the photos I took I sold the rights to in conjunction with an article I wrote this year. The picture is of my daughter with the quilt in my front yard:

This is a quilt I finished sometime this year. I can't remember when... I call it Garden Path. We use this blanket for warmth, so it sits on a random bed at our home, but not on top where it will be seen. Currently it's on my bed underneath the quilt we have on top - the one on top of my bed is one I made last year called Botanical Shop Hop Quilt. (if you follow the link to see it, you will need to scroll about half way down the post) but the one I finished this year is here:


These two pictures are of the Batik Spice Market quilt I made for a friend of mine, I did the piecing and binding, but sent out the quilting to the longarm quilter:

This quilt I finished for the daughter of a friend of mine, come to think of it, I finished a quilt for all three of her children, but it seems I only snapped a picture of this one:

This is my picnic quilt, that we've used several times, but it's never seen the out of doors! I know you've seen this before HERE:

This is the second quilt I made identical to this. I made it, then realized I sent it's twin to the same cousin's last baby. I can't have two siblings with identical baby quilts, so now it sits on my shelf without a baby to belong too:

This is the replacement quilt I made for my above mistake. This one went to baby Gavin:

This quilt went to my good friend, whom lives so far away now.

Well, that's all for now!

Cheers,

Dionne

Sisters Quilt Show - Part Two

Here is the Lap Quilt Swap IV that I made as part of the Lap Quilt Swap. You can't see it on this picture, but all the participants were listed on this tag, and on the label sewn into the back:

Here is the front of this spectacular quilt. It was such a great swap! I was really pleased with the results. I'll have to get a better picture to highlight all the blocks. I try to do that next week.

Blocks for this quilt were made by me, by QuiltDad, Quilty the Libster, Stitchalicious, Rita, Whoopdedoo, Oh That Ashley, AudreyPawdrey, and several others that don't have blogs.

There was a fabulous display of 'postcard' sized quilts that were on silent auction.

I can't remember what it was a fundraiser for, but there were several that were spectacular.

I bid on several but won none. They were all wonderfully matted and framed.

There was also a block competition.

Anyone interested is eligible to participate. This year the parameters were to use only solid colors.

There were probably forty or more entries.

This adorable giraffe baby quilt was one of the ones for sale.

This vintage quilt was also for sale ~ its the same one I posted yesterday, but I promised I would post a close up of the fabrics.

I think all of the squares measure 1 inch or maybe 1.5 inches.

Cheers,

Dionne

D9P

First of all, I must print a correction. I had erroneously ASSUMED that Diane Gaudynski did her brilliant quilting on a Long-Arm machine.


Kathie at Inspired by Antique Quilts pointed out to me that she (Diane) actually does her fabulous work on a Bernina. This makes her work even more impressive (to me) than it already was.

Also, I find this error rather ironic on two counts. At my Day Job, I never ASSUME anything ~ as a software quality assurance engineer. It's my job to catch the mistakes other people make because THEY'VE made false assumptions!

And I actually provided a link to Diane Gaudynski's website which clearly states that she uses a Bernina. When I went to the website, I got so distracted by all the pretty pictures, I didn't actually read the text. Silly Didi!

Ok, now on to other stuff.

I took a short break from my forray into the world of Applique to finish another lap quilt. It's yet another quilt built from swap blocks. Yes, I am forever swapping!

This swap consisted of 12" Nine patch blocks. I'm not sure what the other participants did with their blocks, but I knew I wan't to do a Disappearing 9-Patch. I like how the black border and binding framed the deep predominantly jewel toned colors.

And because I didn't ~ and still don't (poor me) have a lovely Bernina capable of super cool embroidery, I went over to my LQS (Quiltworks Northwest) and had them make this beautiful label for me. I think it's really fabulous.

I put the label on the back before I did the quilting, and I realize that I didn't even think about placement. Oh well!

Cheers,

Dionne

Mini-Cupcake Quilt

I spent my Saturday evening reading through Learn To Applique With Pat Sloan and Teapots 2 to Applique by Kay Mackenzie.

Have you ever listened to a lecture, or begun a project only to realize that you don't even know enough to know where to begin or what questions you need to ask?

That's how I felt after all my watching and reading. All that information was a bit overwhelming so I decided dump all the directions and jump right in and mess about with a practice quilt ~ a Mini Cupcake Quilt.

I started with a framed background of black with white dots. I was going for something rather freeform and organic.



I added some simple quilting and a few cupcake shapes.

I used raw edge shapes with a satin stitch. I also did a small bit of decorative stitching on the cupcake cup.


Finally, I topped the cupcake with a red button cherry. I did a very simple self binding, I wasn't really sure I would finish off the quilt at all actually.





The back shows my applique outline. I'm not sure if machine applique is supposed to show the outline on the back or not. The whole Mini-Quilt is approx. 5 inches square.

Now that I've done a bit on my own, next I'll follow the directions, and work on technique.

Cheers,

Dionne

Some more ramblings, and a finish.

I was working on a purple and green flannel baby quilt ( a version of THIS Christmas quilt that I made for my son). But I tried so many new techniques while making the purple and green quilt ~ not to mention the fact that the purple and green flannel I was making it from is prone to... ahem... flexible sizing, shall we say!

Well, in the end, it really wasn't something to send off as a gift. So I'm going to keep it and finish it off for the practice, trying out new techniques on each square.

Instead, Baby Gabriella will be getting this simple Quilt as you go Flannel stripe quilt.

It really wasn't what I was planning, but I simply can't wait any longer. I'm sure my cousin will be happy with it.

~~~

One of my readers asked me why I put stuff up on my blog that turns out so terrible. Good question! But the answer is simple really. If I only put shared and talked about my successes, I'd have precious little to say. That and I really learn well by failure, its a great learning tool.

I have, for example, learned that stuffed animals are really not my strength!

~~~

Ricky Tims shared this link with me and it's so wonderful, I wanted to share it with you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

It's not quilt related, but this was such a shock and a 'feel-good' moment, that I had to watch it twice, with tears in my eyes!

Auction Success

The School Fundraiser finally came and the Animal Totems Art Quilt that my friend Seda and I made was finally auctioned off.

There are several "levels" of auctions actually. There are two silent auctions, the first for items donated by parents and local businesses.

There are always great items here because we have so many big companies in the area. Microsoft always puts up lots of their latest gadgets, one year there were several Zune Packages, Adobe has many, many software packages as well, I always like their Adobe Photoshop Software! And Amazon.com hosted an entirely separate auction called the 'Bid-O-Gram' which included their new Kindle 2: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation). I have the original Kindle and I LOVE it!

Then, of course, each of the teachers host an event that you can bid on. One third grade teacher would take your child to the zoo, stuff like that. There was also the perfunctory 'Principal for the Day'

And then it came time for the live auction. Now we don't live in the same neighborhood as Bill Gates, who is across the highway from us, but our school really puts a lot into this auction and it's held at the Westin every year. It's a big to-do, with everyone dressing up.

We had the local news anchor hosting the auction, a really nice guy with perfect hair and teeth! Among all the art projects there were big items, like a weekend for 8 at a lakeside cottage, a trip to Chicago for four to see the Oprah show live. That was the top bid actually, many, many ladies wanted to go to the Oprah show!

Our quilt was thrown in with all the other items in the live auction. There was one other quilt that was made this year, but the rest were things like benches, where the kids did tiles, and some really lovely artwork. I wish I would have gotten more pictures but I was volunteering during the event and my shift ended up during the live auction and dinner! (what lousy timing!)

Because of that I didn't get any pictures of the girls walking the quilt down the stage and our local anchorman celebrity talking about how wonderful it was.

But, we did get the second highest price of ALL the art projects! Someone paid $1800 for our beautiful quilt!

Tree of Life ~ Done!

Well It's finished! This is the first finish of the new year! Yahoo!



This was really an interesting quilting project, because I used a few different techniques. All in all, a great learning experience.

My Final Finished Christmas Quilt

I finished this quilt on Christmas Eve, just in time!!

My oldest daughter changed her favorite color to blue, so this quilt is a mosaic-sorta. With a meander/star quilting pattern.

On the back I have some fabrics from the Happy Howlidays line (she also loves dogs!)

Ina's Quilt Finished!

Well, I've finally finished Ina's Christmas quilt! I actually started another quilt for her, it was a floral pinwheel, but the pinwheels were very small and I knew there was no way I was going to get it done on time. So I decided to make this quilt instead.

I chose colors that were a bit more 'Christmas-y' but I don't know if she will like it. I almost forgot to take a picture, so this one is a bit rushed. The back is made from some large floral fabrics that I had in my stash. I had purchased them for her quilt when they went on sale. They went better with her last topthan with this top. Usually I don't try to get the back to match the front, but my MIL will be very concerned with this.

You've Seen these in process...

Did you Freda's Hive Today?
And if not, better get over there quick because today is the last day! Well, at least to potentially win a prize!

...well, here they are finished. I had meant to post these as I finished them. But, well, I put up so many pictures as I was making them that it hardly seemed worthwile.


Not only that, but it's winter in Seattle and there has not been even an inch of blue sky in eons! So today, I thought I would take advantage of a dry sky (if not actually blue).



The first, of course you've seen before is my little guys christmas quilt, the backing is just one big piece of fabric that he picked out months ago "If you ever make me a christmas quilt mommy will you put this on the back?" What could I do!



This second is for my middle daughter. Also featured here on my blog as I put the backing on it and did the quilting. I know she will love the back, because it has many fabrics with gold detail and she LOVES any and all bright and shiny things, including fabrics. For the binding, I found a technique on the internet that I thought I would try, but I wasn't really pleased with the result. Still, probably only I will notice.