Mail from Sue

SH Sue, one of my quilting friends from Washington State Internet Quilters, has sent me a heart block each for the loss of my father and our kitty and the great cat panel for two pillows.
Thank you so much, Sue!
Michelle is claiming the pillows already, so I better get some swaps I signed up for out of the way, so I can finish those for her.

Looking forward to moving back up to Washington the end of this year, so we can sew together again.

Secret Santa's Christmas Stocking

Wednesday I finished the Christmas stocking for a Secret Santa exchange I signed up for on WASIQ. I freehanded the pattern, because the stocking has to be big enough, so all the goodies fit inside it. The picture doesn't show the stocking outline I drew for the pattern too well, but this is how I checked the size of the seminole center I used.

All the fabrics I used for the stocking are batiks and I think it turned out pretty well, if I might say so myself. lol

I hope the recipient will like it and the contents that all fit in the stocking.

The stocking will be mailed out on Monday.

Two quilts done

Looks like I totally forgot to update my blog with my two latest finished quilt tops. Both of these tops have been sitting in my UFO pile for quite some time, so it feels good to have them done.

The first top is my comfort quilt for my mother's passing from cancer February 13th 2005. Members from WASIQ had sent me the heart and flower blocks for this top. To make it large enough to really snuggle under it I added two of my own blocks and then alternated the blocks with wow (white on white) plain blocks that provided a great quilting surface. Each of the plain areas has a different design on it, using Pam Clarke's method.

On the back I used "Quilt for the Cure" fabric.

The second quilt below (African Queen) was made from a BOM at the Shibori Dragon in Washington state. After the blocks for 12 months were complete I used EQ5 to design the final layout. The quilting on this top was also done using Pam Clarke's method.

And how's this for the backing?

Deployment quilt

I just did some browsing on a Yahoo group that I belong to (WASIQ) to see when exactly I received the 12 star blocks that are shown in the quilt and it was April 18th, 2003. Boy, time flies I tell you!
Members with deployed family members or some close family member in the service were gifted with these deployment blocks. At the time Cliff had been on an 8 month tour, so having been gifted with the star blocks touched me deeply.
I used EQ5 to design a setting for the blocks and came up with a quilt that has 50 stars total. Go ahead and count them. ;o)


Well, as you can see in the close-up of one of the star blocks above, I finished outline quilting all of the stars (1/4" inside and outside of each star) and did some loops on the red border of each star.
To quilt all 12 blocks in this way it took me two hours, which I spread out over two days.
Now I'm debating how I want the blue sashing and white sashing stars to be quilted, but in the meantime I'll sew on some bias binding I made yesterday to the "1st" quilt, before I get back to working on this quilt again and maybe inspiration will have hit me by then. LOL