Finished Aging Out Quilts For the Record

The Most Fun I Can Have with my Clothes On

Today was reward day. Today, I have finished all my must-do’s for the week, picked up all our food donations for the big food drive ending at our church this coming Sunday, took care of house needs, took care of tiresome household chores. Today, I finally got to work on a quilt I have been thinking about for a long time.

My favorite nephew and his wife are going to have a baby, due date on January 1st, how cool is that? Always before I have gone with brights, but I am thinking New Year Baby, and I am also remembering how The Happy Baby LOVES black and white prints, it is like he has never seen anything so wonderful. He could actually focus for minutes at a time, trying to figure out my daughter-in-law’s zebra stripe couch cushions.

And I have been cutting out Snail’s Trail quilt patterns for a long time, but all that piecing has intimidated me. My nephew and his wife also have three cats.

Looking through all my quilt clippings, I found a Quiltmaker quilt that was almost what I wanted. With my handy draft paper, I worked around until I got what I wanted. . . a set of four sets of four cats, and my stash of black and white prints.

The first interlocked tails block comes out perfect:

Then, the first cat block, and it is a perfect 8 1/2 inches:

Cat plus snail’s trail:

I was having so much fun. This quilt took more thinking than it took putting together. Once I had it figured out, it just created itself, and I was having so much fun!

The first quarter; I forgot I needed to have the center block a different fabric so I later had to pick it out and replace it with the correct block:

No, it is not a black and white photo; it is a black and white quilt. I am planning to applique little red hearts on the white kitties and little white bow ties on the black kitties. I have to think of something to do in the center of the quilt, but I am thinking that is a good place to applique the baby’s name and birth date when he gets here.

Not all my imaginings turn out the way I imagine them. This one, I loved working on, and I love the way it came together. I love the way Snail’s Trail creates the circular motion and I love the way the cats create their own sort of modern border. I’m not even a big fan of black and white, but it’s fun to step out of the old comfort zone from time to time.

Seaside Cottage 2

You probably think I have gone stale, but what the Colors of the Sea quilt was something I had promised my sister long ago, and this quilt is the quilt I had started when she first asked, and I cut enough for two, finished hers, and then mine languished – for years – before I got around to finishing it.

This was my sister’s quilt:

Size, fabrics – everything is identical, only the appliques and a little of the quilting differ:

Bottom left:

Bottom Right:

I stuffed the sand dollars and the scallop shells so the quilting would have more definition:

I wave quilted part of it, and shallow-water-swirl quilted the other part:

This is not an original quilt, but I used shells for the borders instead of flowers, and used my own quilting ideas. I believe the most of the fabrics and the pattern were from a collection called Seaside Cottage by Moda.

I cut and pieced the quilt in Kuwait, appliqued and quilted in Doha, and did the binding and finishing hand quilting in Pensacola. Whew! It’s finished!

Seminole Graduation Quilt

This was one of my very earliest quilts, and looking at it now, I am in total wonder at how carefully I worked on it.

This pattern itself, sometimes called Bethlehem Star, sometimes called Lone Star (and more names, these are just the two I could remember!) is very complicated for a beginner. I used Quilts Quilts Quilts! one of my all time favorite books, to guide me in the making.

Then, I drew and quilted a Seminole in the bottom left quadrant, my son’s name, year of graduation and degrees in the bottom right quadrant, and some autumn leaves in the upper quadrants. Looking at it 8 years later, I am impressed at how hard it must have been for me, but I chose to do it. Woooo Hooooo on me! And hand quilting on black! Imagine!

Bordered, of course, with my first efforts at Seminole piecing. It is at the same time attributable (I couldn’t have done it without the guidance of Quilts Quilts Quilts) and utterly original, with all the Seminole touches.

In The Bleak MidWinter

This was another Kimberly Einmo Mystery Quilt when we were all in the Rheinland Pfalz Quilt Guild. We gathered on a cold cold night, probably in January, and cut and stitched in the gathering room at the Ramstein North Chapel. Not only did we make great quilts, but we also had a potluck supper, great food. One of my earliest quilts.

Stars over Ireland

This quilt began in a Mystery Night at Ramstein AFB, taught in 2002 (?) by Kimberly Einmo before her first book was published. Oh! We had so much fun, but making zillions of half square triangles was a chore.

The top went together quickly, but I had a photograph of a tombstone from when we visited Ireland, and I wanted to use it as a quilting motif in the white centers. I also found a Celtic border I liked, but it was very small, and I had to enlarge it over and over to get it to the proper size for my border.

The hand quilting took forever, partially because the white fabric was sort of rubbery, and hand quilting through it was tough. Aaarrgh! I didn’t finish hand quilting until I was back in the Kaiserslautern area for an emergency surgery, and had nothing to do by wait for my return flight to Doha and quilt!

12 Days Applique

My friend Shirley and I were bored, and we challenged one another to this quilt. We had the patternm by Mimi Shimp, but we both changed it dramatically – I wanted the blocks in the order they were sung, so enlarged them all to 18 x 18. We also used the beautiful duppioni silks readily available in Doha, and other more difficult fabrics.

The main motif was totally hand appliqued, but the minor motifs were machine appliqued.

We had given ourself 6 months to get the blocks finished, and another year to hand quilt the resulting top. The reality – after 2 1/2 years, I machine quilted the finished top just to get it done. I am not unhappy. I love this quilt, and I will hang it for one month every year, from December 6th – the Feast of St. Nicholas – until January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany.

Nathalie’s Cat Quilt

I had promised Nathalie a fish quilt, but young people change their ideas. It’s a good thing I checked with her, she said she wanted cats, in pink! in purple! in turquoise! and waiting in my stash was a perfect Laurel Burch fabric with pink, purple and turquoise cats. You can see it in the middle and the inner forder.

I wanted to distract her from her evacuation from Beirut during the 2006 Israeli invasion.

Doha Fish Quilt

This turned out to be one of my very favorite quilts. My challenge to myself was to find everything I needed for the quilt in Doha, Qatar. I found a wonderful shop, Anwar al Doha, which means The Lights of Doha, and there was the fish fabric and the mottled navy background fabric. Each block was so fantastic! I love this quilt!

I was using it to teach a class on Stack and Whack. Oh, did we have fun. Stack and Whack is a technique pioneered by Bethany Reynolds. You need wild fabrics, with a lot of variety in the background, to make them, but they give great immediate gratification to beginning quilters, and you can hide a multitude of mistakes in their bright and whacky design.

(I kept this one for myself!)

Darlene’s Seaside Beach Quilt

Huh. I guess it’s a pattern. I hadn’t thought about it. This quilt I also made for my sister. I was making it for myself when we talked on the phone, and she said “if you were going to make me a quilt, I would want it to be one about the beach.”

I was in the middle of cutting this one out for myself, so I cut two, and I pieced both together at the same time, but mine remains just a top, I still need to do the applique shells and the hand quilting of the waves around the border. I do love the colors, and the top hangs on my project wall just so I can look at it. We all love the beach, and working with these seaside-y, sun faded colors was a treat.

There’s also a great story behind finding the fabric, which I love love love. When my son was getting married, I decided to scout out a fabric shop in Panama City. As I was looking at fabric, I heard someone say “I think I know you!” and I said “I don’t think so, I spend most of my time overseas,” at which point she shrieked and grinned and said “Germany! I know you from the quilt guild in Germany!” and I remembered working on a project with her and her telling me about her dream of owning her own quilt shop. And here she was, she owned her own quilt shop Quilting by the Bay. Woooo Hooooooo, Sandeeeeeee!! Good on Ya! If you go to her website, be sure to download her fantastic newsletter. Her shop is amazing.

I used a pattern to make the quilt top, called Seaside Cottage, I believe. It had an applique flower border, and I changed it to a hand quilted wave border with applique shells, to my mind, more in keeping with a beach theme.