Red and White Robbery

I really should not be thinking about another quilting project, but I just could not resist trying my hand at a two color quilt design in EQ7. I was inspired by the fabulous display of red and white quilts sponsored by the American Folk Art Museum in New York City during 2011 entitled “Infinite Variety:Three Centuries of Red and White Quilts.” I did not have the opportunity to see it in person, but there was tremendous internet coverage of the event. Anyhow, here is my first stab at a design:

The design uses my variation of the traditional quilt design, “Robbing Peter to Pay Paul.”

Another Quilt in Progress

My current big project is from “String Quilt Revival” by Virginia Baker and Barbara Sanders. String quilting is an old technique where strips of fabric are sewn to a fabric foundation. After enough strips are sewn to cover the block, the block is trimmed to some uniform size. In less affluent times, these strips of fabric were leftovers from other sewing projects or even harvested from used clothing. Now, of course, we have lots of fabric. For example, I have an entire drawer full of Thimbleberries fabric to use for this project. Instead of muslin as a base foundation, we can use ultra thin stabilizer.

Here is the first block I completed.

And the first three. Just these would make a lovely table runner with a nice little border added.

But, oh no, I have to make a quilt with 88 blocks. Here are the first three rows of blocks. Only five more rows to go! Wish me luck.

Thunder Bay Charm Quilt

A charm quilt is made up all of one tessellating patch where each patch is a unique fabric. I belonged to the Thunder Bay Quilt Guild when some of the members of the group did a charm exchange. Eighteen of us exchanged 10 squares of fabric in an assigned color range every other month for one year. Using these squares and adding a few from my stash, I ended up with 1089 unique 5 inch squares of fabric used in my charm quilt.

I used a tessellating whirly-gig type shape and arranged them in a Trip-Around-the-World configuration.

Here I am at the 2009 Michigan Quilt Network where the quilt won a 2nd place ribbon in the “Large Machine Quilted” category.

With the whirly-gig shape I used, there were little squares of leftover fabric, so I made this smaller charm quilt of squares using the same 1089 fabrics!

Purple Pineapple Completed

I finished the machine quilting and binding for the Purple Pineapple quilt about a week ago.

After quilting and binding, the quilt measured 99 inches by 99 inches.

First, I did a little practice piece of the quilting designs I intended to use. I determined how to quilt across the entire row of pineapple blocks without any additional stops and starts. By quilting just the top half of the “star” design quilting from left to right, and then the bottom half of the “star” quilting right to left, I was able to achieve this, making the whole process much faster and more enjoyable.

Here is a view of the quilt loaded on my relatively new Gammill Vison 26-10 on a nice sunny day.

Close up of star design in the pineapple block……….

……..and in the corner block.

Close up of the border……….

…….and the border going around a corner.

Close up of inside border quilting. I used Superior brand gold metallic thread on the inside borders. I used Fil-Tec Glide thread on all the other quilting.

Some views of the quilting from the back side of the quilt.

Some views of the quilting from the back side of the quilt.

I had some fun with the binding on this quilt, too. Since I was having such good luck with the metallic thread quilting the inner borders, I decided to embellish the binding with machine embroidery using the metallic thread as well.

There are no seams along the entire length of the binding on each side. The seams are actually mitered at the corners.

2011 A Year in Quilts

To view as a slideshow click here.

Books I Read in 2011

The Appeal by John Grisham
Thrones, Dominations by Dorothy Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh
A Presumptoin of Death by Jill Paton Walsh
The Attenbury Emeralds byJill Paton Walsh
The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson by Jerome Charyn
The Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
A River, A Lake, and Another River by Steve Amick
Pearl Buck’s China by Hilary Spurling
The Paris Wife- by Paula McClain
Menonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen
The Jefferson Key by Steve Berry
Among the Mad by Winspear, Jacqueline
Follow the River by James Alexander Thom
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maude Montgomery
The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Unbroken by Laura Hallenbeck
Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Linore Pruitt Stewart
The House on Riverton by Kate Morton
Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovitch
Smokin’ Seventeen by Janet Evanovitch
The Pirate King by Laurie R. King
Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichle
Still Life by Louise Penny
A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny
The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny
A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny
The Man Who Loved China by Simon Winchester
“V” is for Vengeance by Sue McGrath
Death Comes to Pemberley by P D James
Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny

Happy New Year!

Christmas Tree 2011