Finished!

I showed this as a top a few months back, but thanks to my good friend Carol it is now quilted. This is my daughter Mariah’s 6th grade graduation quilt. A remembrance quilt from the talent show she participated in that year and sang Santa Baby. I still need to attach the label. I have said it before but will say it again. I love words on quilts. Years from now someone will inherit this quilt or pick it up at the local goodwill store and within minutes they will know Riah’s story. The front tells a little and the label will tell the rest. All quilts tell a story, so it definitely doesn’t hurt to help them out a little by adding the actual story to the quilt top. I have many different methods I use for my lettering. I have used my computer fonts, I have pieced the letters with squares and triangles, I have fused, I have appliquéd and now my new favorite is to piece using Tonya’s wonky style. However you choose to do it the letters will add a whole new dimension to your quilts. And on a side note, these triangles were all leftover cuts from the quilt I made on Bonnie’s site called Smokey Mountain stars. I had absolutely no waste in the making of that quilt as all snipped corners were used in this quilt.

Strings in Solids

I have always had a love affair with solid fabrics. I know it sounds crazy and I don’t even know why I am so attracted to them, but I am. I believe it must be the clear pure color that I am attracted to. This past weekend I was attempting to do my 5 “river” blocks that I have assigned myself to do each weekend. I got on my stool to dig through my basket of blue fabrics and in the process a large bunch of solid fabrics fell to the floor from their perch on top of the overflowing basket of solids. As I bent down to pick up the mess I was struck with the thought that I needed to put some of these into a project and reduce a little of the overflow. I immediately thought of the liberated string quilts I was attracted to in Gwen Marston’s book of the same name. I set out stripping a bunch of these into strings. I then sewed the strips together as a leader/ender project while I made my 5 river blocks. It is amazing how quickly this all went together. Before I knew it I had 48 blocks made and now have them sewn into 12 larger blocks. I plan on sashing them and have already started on the lettering that is going in the border. The neat part is that I still have a bunch of strings left. I am going to continue on piecing these together and start a chevron quilt. I have wanted to make one of these for years, using Gwen’s liberated method I don’t have to worry about matching any seams. A really easy process and I am using my stash all at the same time. Another successful weekend in that I was able to get my 5 blocks made and then the 48 string blocks made and also ended up piecing 3 blooming star blocks which is my actual leader/ender project of the moment.