Linda H. Made A Top

Linda is not only a quilter, she also makes clothing. Actually, she's constructed fantastic garments since she was an adolescent. Quilting came along later in life. Here is a top that Linda just finished creating for herself. I think it turned out great! Nobody else will have one like it. The fabric is quite lightweight, it's not warm enought to wear it yet. We've had a cool spring so far. Linda thinks the red dress form looks a little distracting, but it shows the top nicely.

Bear Potholders

These bear potholders were a gift for someone in our quilting-craft group who is going to be moving away. There are lots of bears in this area, many times in the fall they are right in the middle of town. I was called into work the day of the farewell party, so I had to rush over and deliver the gift and snack. All work and no play for me! Not really, I only work a day here and there. The bear pattern came from the book, "Block Magic, Too" by Nancy Johnson-Srebo. It is an excellent book for picture block patterns. Best of all, they are not paper pieced. I avoid anything that involves paper piecing, it's not a technique I enjoy. Other people make wonderful projects with that method, though. Now I'm back to finishing a 30-year-old UFO. As soon as the binding is done, I'll post a picture of it.

The Sasquatch Quilt Is Completed

I named this, "The Patterson-Gimlin Quilt", after the famous film from 1967. Whether this is true or not remains to be seen. :) The pattern came from Elizabeth Hartman's "Legendary" pattern. Her design had one Sasquatch, but I added a second one who turned into a female. I got a little carried away with the free-motion quilting. It was quite finicky to do, there were many changes of thread colour and the stitching is rather dense. I'm not experienced with detail work on the longarm, so I quilted it on my smaller machine. It will be be hanging on the wall at the cabin, there is a hanging sleeve on the back. I bought a curtain rod for it. This was one of the quilts on my 2025 UFO completion list. I started it a year ago, now it's all done- yay!

Second Mug Rug By Linda H.

This is what Linda said about her mug rug: "My second attempt at something for the mug rug exchange. It’s bigger than it’s supposed to be again but the hummingbird pattern was 6 by 6.5 inches and was pieced not paper pieced and I couldn’t make it any smaller. It was hard enough handling those tiny sections. Whoever gets it will just have to put up with it being large!" I think whoever receives the mug rug will be pleased with it. :)

Mug Rug By Linds H.

Linda was in a mug rug exchange, so she created this one. It turned out larger than it was supposed to be, so she'll be constructing a smaller size for the exchange. A friend was the lucky recipient of this delightful project. The 1930s reproduction fabric is charming.

Batik Quilt Is Completed

At our fall retreat, I won a door prize that was kindly provided by Lorena. It was a basket of sewing notions and goodies, including a charm pack of batiks. Last month, I stumbled upon the charm pack in the sewing hole. I watched some YouTube videos to find inspiration to use five inch squares to make a quilt. One of them looked interesting- an inch and a half strip was cut off of each one, then the pieces were shuffled around and sewn back together. After that, a half inch was sliced off the unit to make it square. They were assembled into windmill type blocks. I didn't fancy the idea of discarding a half inch of fabric from each piece, so I contemplated a different layout that didn't have any waste. Fabric is much too expensive to be throwing it in the garbage. There was a major excavation in my batik fabric bins to find fabrics that were in the same colour family as the charm pack. The backing is muslin, but it wasn't wide enough for the quilt top. I added two rows of leftover batik segments to enlarge it. For the quilting, I tried out a free-motion woodgrain design, which I hadn't done before. The thread was Aurifil in a variegated pink/yellow/tan. I had that spool since 2012 but it never suited any of my other quilts. It worked well for this project. Now I better get busy and finish the Sasquatch quilt, it needs to be completed for our trip to the cabin in May.

Friday Finish: Ten Year Old UFO

I put the last stitches in the binding this morning. This quilt was made from a free tutorial on the Wedding Dress Blue blog. The pattern is called, "Film at Five". We are having a UFO completion challenge in our guild, this was one of the items on my list. I guess ten years from start to finish isn't too bad. :) I forgot how big this quilt was, it turned out to be queen size. I couldn't display the whole thing hanging straight on the photography frame, it went all the way to the ceiling with the bottom part resting on the floor. It's still too mucky outside to take a picture on the lawn. Normally, I don't like to use a pure white fabric for the backing, but I had a lot of it in my stash. It's good to use what we already have, considering the high cost of fabric these days. The quilting is a free-motion "Topographical Map" design.