Week Eight - Antique Quilt!

Here is a quilt that I took to my son, given to him by his grandmother, and made by her grandmother. That would be five generations ago. It is in excellent condition!

 Up close.

 This would be a fun quilt to reproduce!

Week Seven - Quilt 0 - Family Time!

No quilts were made this week. We had our grandchildren visit and then went to see our son and his wife so here are a few pics. 

 After all, these visits are priceless and I can always quilt later.

I knew when I began this challenge that there would be weeks I would not have a quilt but I still wanted to see what the overall picture could be in a year. I am so blest to have my dear family and share these moments!

Week Six - Quilt Six - Not So Easy Street!

This was Bonnie Hunter's Mystery Quilt for 2012, beginning right after Thanksgiving. She called it Easy Street - I named mine otherwise. It is a really large bed quilt, and I altered the borders to fit a queen bed with a large drop. I used the same color scheme as Bonnie.

 It's really quite a nice pattern set on point but the outer triangles are pieced so it's a little hard to tell.

 My favorite color used was the turquoise so I did the larger border in that fabric.

All ready to take off the long arm.

 Completely quilted - queen size.

Miles of binding all sewn down!

Week Five - Quilt Five - Rocky Mountain Puzzle!

This is the Rocky Mountain Puzzle SBOW from Primitive Gatherings for 2012. Yes, it is now FINISHED, bound and ready for the Pieceful Hearts Quilt Show in October.

 Wow, this was a challenge for me - all these half square triangles, even sewn with Thangles, but if you just keep on sewing, it will get done!

 The best motivator were the beautiful reproduction fabrics! A surprise package every week that was so pretty!

 Instead of doing a traditional baptist fan pattern, I used a pantograph called Random Clams, which sort of gave it that look but had a slightly contemporary flair.

And now it's all bound and ready for the show! So worth the effort!

Week Four - Quilt Four - Under the Big Top!

 Now this quilt was totally made in the past week. In fact, I think I began it last Thursday, but as you can see, it is quick and easy and the fabric makes the quilt. I even put a very simple quilt design so as not to take away from the Circus! 

I bought the fabrics at Intown Quilters in Decatur, GA, and the pattern is free from Blend Fabrics. Intown had some kits made up with the pink fabrics but this quilt is for a great nephew to be born in August so I wanted the blue and greens. Here is the link to the pattern, Bailey. Really was fun and easy! So, that's my quilt for this week!

Lest you think I have lots of quilt tops all made up to quilt or bind - I don't. I only have one left to bind and one completed top to quilt and that is it. I'll be 'on my own' to produce more quilts quickly. I'm excited with my challenge and hope you come back to see how the quilts are coming along!

Week Three, Quilt Three - Hugs & Kisses!

 My third quilt is for Lacey, my granddaughter. I like to make a quilt for the grandchildren to have at "Nana's house" when they visit so this is for Lacey. I appliquéd this years ago and recently put it together. Now it is quilted.

 I used a Daisy Bounce pantograph for the quilting design. 

Most of the backing fabrics were fat quarters so they were basically cut in half and ended up all the same size, unlike the previous quilt.

Here is a close up to show one of my favorite fabrics on the back - the paper dolls. I loved playing with them when I was a little girl and laugh now and say that was my training for cutting all my freezer paper that I now use for appliqué. I'm also pretty fond of the stripe binding. Hard to go wrong with stripes for a binding! 

Week Two, Quilt Two - BackArt!

Jake's Trucks Quilt

 My little grandson, Jake, loves to play with trucks, backhoes, excavators, etc. There were some dump trucks in their neighborhood and he was fascinated with what they were doing. When I saw this fabric in Florida, I could not resist and made this easy quilt for him. The pattern is from Villa Rosa Designs and on a simple postcard, Sundance.

 He's coming to see me soon and I hope he'll have fun with it! 

 I decided to 'use up' some fabrics for the back, also known as Backart. One of my first introductions to Backart was a book by Danita Rafalovich and Kathryn Pellman, Backart on the Flip Side, published in 1991. It seemed to be a fairly new concept then.

My method of doing this is simply looking at the quilt top and beginning to pull fabrics from my stash with those colors in mind. I probably pulled at least 25 from my closet that MIGHT possibly work, maybe more. As I begin making the back, I look at the size of my pieces, determine a plan and begin pressing the fabrics and cutting into straight pieces.

First I wanted to use all the leftovers from the kit for the top, piecing some of those together. Next I decided this might work best in strips, or rows, because I had so many different size fabrics. I determined how large I needed the backing to be, tried to find a common denominator with the size pieces I had cut to join them to a row, and then what was "pleasing" to the eye, next. 

This is working improvisationally to me, and quite fun! No rules but the ones I make as I go along. If a fabric doesn't make it into this back, it's okay, back to the shelf it goes. If I need to cut half an inch off a strip to make it fit another, that's ok. I just do it. the horizontal rows may not be exact to begin with but as I go, I even them up or add "coping" strips to make them close to the same. I may even piece some simple blocks to make use of some fabrics.

Because of longarm quilting, I need the backing to be 6" - 8" larger than the quilt top.

Here is a larger picture of the whole back as it lays over my longarm machine. I am going to try not to worry so much about all my photos. It often keeps me from blogging on my other blog, Quilting by Judith, waiting to get that really good photo or the whole quilt at a time. I'm trying to 'let that go' yet still have reasonably good pictures so I can reach my goal.