Mercy Border Quilt Finished

Our first year of PQA, we did our Mercy Border Quilt project.

Basically, each person made a center square and then we swapped each month and a new border was added to it.  Our quilt was growing at the "mercy" of whoever was putting on the next border.

It was actually very fun and we saw some amazing borders.

Well, this is mine.  I started with a Circle of Geese block in the center and this is how it grew.

 I wanted it to grow into a rectangle, so half way through the year I added the two mini Circle of Geese strips to each end, and it continued to grow...

 It ended up being just barely smaller than a king size!!

Much bigger than I intended but it has a great drape on the sides of my bed.

I love the colors too.

What a fun project that was!!

Elephant Swoon #8 and #9

The last two Elephant blocks are done!!

Yippee!!!

I really love this one.  It is so rich and hits me inside somewhere....

This one is just BOLD!!

All nine are done and now I can start putting the quilt top together.

Elephants 4, 5, and 6!

So, we were gone the entire summer living in the central mountains of Idaho.

It was a fantastic summer adventure for the whole family.

We loved it but I really miss my sewing machine when we're gone.

I had some real catching up to do.

And here they are:

Elephant Swoon #4

Elephant Swoon #5

Elephant Swoon #6

So fun, huh!!

Swoon Elephant #1

A select few of the 33 little elephants get a 

place of honor in the center of a Swoon block.

Here's the first one finished!!

What do you think?

I think it's pretty darn awesome!

Can't wait to show you the next one...

33 Elephants

How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.

How do you sew 33 paper pieced elephants?

One piece at a time.

These cute guys are 4" each and made of gorgeous batiks.

The pattern came from A Quilter's Arc .

They will all be a part of an amazing quilt in the near future.

Now, I've got some serious paper to pick off the backs while I watch some movies...

February's Work

I know I'm quite behind but, oh, the computer has given me fits....

So here is my February accomplishments:

This one I'm calling Botany and I got ten more of those wonky diamonds done.

On the strip quilt, I've added 10 more blocks and 12 more little nine-patches.

 Four pretty flamingos join the animal collection.

 These are so fun, huh!  I just painted the legs like I did for the lions last time.

 This one I'm calling the India quilt.  So far, I'm just drawing sketches and getting some ideas together.  Stay tuned to see this elephant in color later.

 These are Mosaic blocks.  I started them in a swap about a year ago and then the swap was disbanded so I'm going ahead with them on my own.

 Here is one more sailboat to add to that collection.  This one was fun because it is my first wonky boat and I made the little yellow flag 3D so it stands out from the block.

Next, on to my swaps:

For PQA, I made for myself two of the 4-patch ladders for my own quilt to go with those that the other ladies are making for me.

 And this block I made for Nicole.  She is going to have a beautiful quilt.

For Block Swap Adventure:

I made this one for Helen K. in England.  She wanted a star in yellow and gray.

And this is the one she made and sent to me. (Crazy that we made the same block.)  This one will go with the sailboats.  I think it's great!

For the Inchy Hexagon Flower Swap:

I made these for Joke R. in the Netherlands.

 And these I received from Lori J. in Tennessee.  My black-eyed-susan quilt is really growing.  I'll have to share my progress on it later.

Phew!  Is that enough?  How good it feels to really get some things done - a little on lots of different projects.

A Quilt Story to Remember

Here's an amazing story about a quilt.

I made this quilt for my brother-in-law and his family for Christmas some years ago.

Their kids were playing with a reading lamp near the bed and knocked it over.

 Some time later, as they were getting ready to leave the house for the day, my sister-in-law realized she forgot something and ran into the bedroom, only to find the quilt smoldering and smoking.

 She soaked the quilt in the sink and saved her home just in time.

Luckily, she was inspired to run back inside the bedroom.

 Luckily the quilt was folded over and the light bulb only burned through the quilt not harming the mattress.

 Luckily it was only burned on the very corner and a simple fix.

 Luckily I had exactly enough scrap of that stripe fabric left to rebuild the border.  Stripes - especially uneven stripe like those - are so forgiving!  You can't even tell where I pieced in the new fabric...

...Unless you look at the back ... I used what I had on hand.  A slightly different neutral muslin.

Oh, well.  It will serve as a reminder scar, I guess.

 All in all, the quilt was saved and, more important, their home is saved too.

 It's still a beautiful quilt with many more years of use in it.

I finished it in time for my sister-in-law's birthday, so as a gift to them, I appliqued a fourth little cub because #4 is coming this winter.  Cute, huh!

A Gaggle of Goslings and other such PQA excitement...

Catch-up time.

Here's some of my summertime adventures with PQA.

(For more on what's going on and some of the other quilts, click the Parma Quilters Anonymous button on my sidebar.)

For May, I had Dawnel's cute baby boy quilt.  This is how I received it:

She painted the scene on the center block.  If you look close enough, you'll notice that the moon's hat is striped blue and white with black outlines.  I wanted to use that in the border I added.

 Here's a closer look.  All of the borders are fantastic.  I love it!

 I mitered those striped corners and they looked sharp!

 For June, since we are half way through the year, we decided to get our own back and add to it what we felt it might need to help it through the rest of the year.  I was excited about this because I had big plans for mine.

I cursed myself...

This is how I received it.

I did a 12" circle of flying geese for the center.

 I really wanted to use the circle of geese again somehow but I wasn't sure how.

I made miniatures!

I copied the pattern at 50% and made them into 6" squares...

Lots and Lots of  mini geese - goslings...

Dizzy Goslings!

 I won't go into detail about the hours spend and all the tiny pieces of fabric.... I was quite dizzy when I was through.

 And, here's how I added them to the quilt.  I wanted to elongate it some so it would be more usable for the kid's beds.

 I like it so much I'm giddy!

What Fun!

Come back later on and I'll show you the others I did this summer.

A Great Summer Finish

I've got a great summer finish!!

I'm so excited to finally have this one done.

I started working on those stars about 10 years ago.  That was back when I first started quilting.

I guess this was one of my first big, solo projects.

 I just worked on it a little at a time... and 10 years later...

Taa Daa!  Here she is!!

I really like the black for the sashing and borders.  It gives it a bright, starry night look.

Maybe a little hint of Amish too... 

 The back is pretty basic.  I  just put three big black stars there.  They look pretty sweet though.

 It was quilted by a local long-arm quilter.  She did a great job.  I held the border up to the sun so you can see the star pattern around the edges.

 Look!  It glows!

 The first quilting technique I ever learned was paper piecing and it came pretty easily to me.  At that time, I didn't know how to make a square with any sort of design on it except by paper piecing so that's how I made each of these stars.

I designed the pattern and traced each one and then sewed them all.  They are 8 in. squares and there are 72 of those little gems.

Here are some of my favorites:

 It looks great on my bed, doesn't it!

(I built my bed too.)

Someday, I'll get some pillow covers made to go with it.  Any suggestions on pillow cover designs??

Anyway, I'm loving my new quilt. 

I give so many quilts away, it's nice to have something for me.