Amanda's Quilt

Quilt top rescued at estate sale for very minimal price. Sewed an extra strip along side of quilt and hand-quilted it to match the rest of the pattern. Sewed binding to edge of quilt and was able to finish it in time to give Amanda for Christmas. It was already a beautifully hand pieced and hand quilted piece of work, but since it hadn't been finished it was in like-new condition. We already have too many quilts in our house, but I know she would appreciate it.

Superhero capes

A couple of capes made for a birthday party this weekend. There is only 1 birthday boy, but I thought, what fun is a cape without someone to be your sidekick, so I made one for his sister. They are personalized with their initials.

Velcro closure for easy-on and off. Made from half vintage and half M & L fabric.

Quilt for J

This quilt was made for one of the girls at NH. It was so much fun to make something for one of our girls. She just turned 16 this July and she has such a heartbreaking and inspiring story of her own. She was brave enough to share part of her journey at church and I was inspired to make a quilt for her. I wanted to do a collaborative quilt with butterflies as the theme, and initially approached my quilt group to see if they could help. Since this is vacation time, a lot of them were going to be out of town and unavailable. My next idea was to approach the youth to see if they would be interested. Girls much younger than they have learned to embroider and do it well in the past. I was surprised by the overwhelming response.

Both boys and girls from the youth group responded to make squares for her. I think we had 10 kids and a few adults make squares and I made 5 more to fill in the gaps. It was fun to put a project like this together and see how proud the kids were to give it to her at her surprise birthday party.

RH Quilts 34 &35

Sorry for the bad picture quality. I had to try to photograph these quilts on the windiest day of the year and so decided just to do it inside. I think this one is #34. We managed to use up all of the quilt blocks with none left over and I think our combinations still look nice.

Another crazy thrifted sheet for the back.

A few of our "Thanksgiving" and "Christmas" blocks made it into the quilt. Lovely. =)

I love the pansy thrifted sheet on the back of this quilt. I'm going to miss having an excuse to grab every vintage sheet in sight. I'll have to think of another reason to hoard these great sheets.

Shelley and Abby's quilts

This quilt was made for Shelley. In our haste to put it together, hers didn't get any batting, but since it will probably spend a lot of time in Hawaii, it might not matter. Most of the blocks incorporate the hula cow fabric she got at a yard sale in Hawaii, so it is fitting that this quilt should go to her.

We also made a quilt for Abby, our pastor's wife. Hers was made up of our favorite squares and there is batting in this one.

More quilting

I didn't get nearly enough pictures of our last quilt night. I didn't realize that we are almost finished and won't have this opportunity much longer. Here we are putting together one of the last quilts with our very last quilt squares. We had exactly 48 squares to work with and Manna and Shelley managed to make them work to create 4 quilt tops. So now we have no more squares left.

Amy is doing a good job supervising.

RH # 32 &33

We are nearing the end of the journey. I can't believe that we are almost done with our project. It has taken us almost 2 years to complete it and we will have completed at least 35 quilts along the way! Amazing. Thanks ladies.

These 2 quilts are still an eclectic mix of our estate sale fabric, M & L and JoAnne's. As always, they are backed by my trusty supply of vintage sheets. That pile never seems to diminish no matter how many quilts they are used for.

Triplets!!!

Here is a set of quilts made for a set of triplets soon to join our church family. I collaborated with a couple of girls from the RH quilt group to make these quilts. They were based on patterns from Quilting for Peace. (Now I know what kind of crafting books I like!) The blue quilt on the left was largely done by Gioia, but I contributed the binding and the backing.

Amy and I worked on this pinwheel quilt together. It was fun to do a quilt that required a lot of piecing. The end result is stunning, but it was a lot of work to figure out the pattern.

What ties all three quilts together is the fun yellow backing that they all share. I got this from a vintage sheet found at one of my estate sales. I really love this sheet and am happy that it is going to quilts that I really love and may even see around sometime.

The third quilt is a simple strip quilt, but it was fun to find fabrics that complemented each other. Most are from my stash, but one of the fabrics is from Amy's Nana Norma fabric. A couple of these quilts use fabric from ladies who are no longer with us, but we feel that they would be happy that their fabric contributed to these happy little quilts.

Labor of Love

I got this pattern from my Quilting for Peace book which I received for Christmas. It has been the best crafting/sewing book I have received to date. I think I have already attempted 3 other quilts from this book already and it's not even the end of February. One thing I love about quilting is the fun of putting together different fabrics and making a pleasing whole. I also enjoy using fabrics and sheets that I have gotten at estate sales and giving them a new life. Finally, I just love the fact that I'm making a quilt which is something that can be used for years after I have sent it off to it's recipient. This particular one is dear to my heart for many reasons. First of all, I love all of the fabrics and materials in it. I am so happy with the way they all came together. Second, I quilted it using free-motion quilting on my machine which is a new method for me, but one that I have been wanting to try for a while, and I believe it will be something I can attempt again. The final reason is that it is for an amazing girl that I just met recently, but whose courage and bravery in the face of great adversity astounds me. If you want to read more about Meghan's story, you can find out here. My hope is that my flower garden (that's what I'm calling this one) will be able to brighten up her days.

RH # 30 &31

I really like this top. Unfortunately the sheet on the bottom had a few holes. I think I'll be able to patch them up and make it work.

This was our desert quilt. It was made up of all of the sandy and tan colored squares. They chose the blue backing so that it would contrast with the brown front.

RH #28 & 29

2 more done. These tops were completed before Christmas, but with all of the craziness we haven't gotten a chance to bind them until now.

#29. We should have been finished by now, but 5 (or maybe 6) of the first quilts were given away to the firsts girls at Refuge House, so our quilting project continues.