Finished Wedding Shower Quilt

Finished Gary's Quilt

Here's the ultimate praise from Gary - thumbs up! And he wanted his picture taken with the quilt over him despite the fact that the temperature was hovering around 95 in Arizona. We're both so pleased with how the quilt came out. I used a machine stitch to do the binding as I didn't think I could sew it by hand with the quilt in my lap in this weather. Close-ups show border quilting pattern and amount of straight-line quiliting I did in the center section. Thanks, Sis for the pieced top and the great fabrics. I'm going to make a label for this quilt and the others I've been working on this spring and will post pictures soon.

Once the strips of fabric were sewn together, I cut 7.25 squares. The batting I have is 46 inches across so I had to plan blocks that would fit across that measure and save room on the batting for possibly a border and the binding. Length is no problem what ever it comes out to works...the width is the issue. With 1/4" seams the sewn width would be 43.5 ". I will decide on the border once all that sewing is finished. The "back" of the quilt will be large plain blocks of left over fabric. The binding will probably be my favorite...."candy cane" cut on the bias...using all the front side fabrics. We'll see whats left over.....

The front side of the quilt fabric was "ripped" into strips...another not recommended quick tip...there are long threads all over the place and Assistant Dewey is covered in threads and has also taste tested a few....but in an effort to giddy-yap on this project serveral rules have been broken. The strips were then sewn in to one large piece. As I worked on this I once again reflected on a thought I had a couple of years ago watching my sister teach a quilting class out in Arizona. With rapt attention everyone listen to her talk about cutting up your fabric into tiny little pices and sewing them together into a larger piece. My wandering thoughts conjured up an image of psychotic people madly cutting up little pieces of fabric then madly trying to get them back together..."why cut up perfectly good fabric and sew it back together to make another piece of fabric?" ...thats the whole meaning of quilting....seeing the wonder of parts to make a new whole....prettier then the origanl fabric can stand alone....I digress but in a fun way!

Simple Wedding Shower Lap Quilt

Hayley is swamped with end of year work and student teaching so I am working on a quilt for her to give a freind of hers for a wedding shower gift.... we are using all old fabrics from other projects and to save time and give the quilt a more "antique" look we did not wash the fabric. It will be peiced and quilted and bound before washing.

After washing, drying and defuzzing, the seams turned out great. Using the red on the back turned out to be a really good idea. It defines the denim squares quite well.

David's Denim

This is the year for "man" quilts. Here's the one I'm working on for DCA, jr. It's using the raggy edge technique. It went together really quickly. Gary cut up the jeans. Ruth helped me cut out the squares. I put them together in series of 4 patches. Then the four patches into larger 4 patches, etc. Last couple of seams were the most difficult. There is no batting just the flannel backing. I'm getting ready to wash it. If it turns out substantially different after washing, I'll post more pictures.