A BIG Friday Finish!

Yes!  I did it again!  I pieced 52 quilts in 52 weeks in 2012!

Now that I try to make a collage of all my 2012 quilts, I remember I gave up on this last year.

So I am inserting a page-sized collage, and if you're interested in seeing a specific quilt, I invite you to look at my Flickr photostream.  Just click here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aunt_marti/sets/72157631698004158/

And you can see the photos full-sized.

Linking up to Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday at Quokka Quilts.

And Finish it Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

I'll contact My Little Sailor (aka my tech editor) to format a collage with embedded links!





From the desk of your

A Friday Finish: Happy Solstice!

Each season, Karen Snyder of Anna Lena Land hosts a "Block-a-Day" QAL challenge.  For Autumn 2012, the block is "Tessellating Crosses."  This is an easy block, conducive to strip piecing and using up a lot of scraps!

I made mine in black-white-and-yellow, based on a Jelly Roll from Benartex fabrics, "Lemon Tree."

Ninety 8" blocks and borders resulted in a quilt that measures 92" X 82" -- big enough for a full-size bed.

When I first started putting the blocks up on the design wall, I thought the tessellating pattern wouldn't show. But with all the blocks together, I like the secondary pattern of light crosses:

I am searching for a black, white, and yellow quilting weight thread to quilt this.  If I can't find it, I'll use black.  Or maybe yellow?  What do you think?

To celebrate, I'm linking up to Thank Goodness it's Finally Finished Friday, hosted this week by Karen at Sew Well Maide.

Getting caught up in piecing my Block-a-Day quilt, I have fallen sadly behind on my 30 Quilts in 60 Days goal.  Only one quilt quilted this week, and it's a baby quilt for my nephew's new baby girl:

There are 10 days left in 2012, and I have six more flimsies to quilt in order to meet my goal.  Can I do it?


From the desk of your

Friday Finish: 22 of 30

Woot woot!  I've quilted and bound 22 quilts since November 1.  That's 22 of my 30-quilt goal!

Here is "A Wedding Quilt for Joseph and Annie."  It was designed by Malka Dubrowsky, and the pattern is available here.  She includes the Kona Cotton colors so you can make your quilt exactly as shown!

I didn't remember that Malka also used straight-line quilting on her quilt.  I thought I was being so clever to quilt it that way!

Lucky for me, Elder Son came down from Denver for an appointment this week.  He replaced the nylon tracks on Meggie so she doesn't do the "swoop" when I'm trying to quilt straight lines.

Quilt #20/30 is a Strip Club quilt from early this year.  The fabric is Fig Tree & Co.'s "Strawberry Fields."  The pattern is called "Shortcakes."  Hence, "Strawberry Shortcakes!"

Next is an oldie that was almost a tragedy.  This quilt was waiting to be bound, sitting on the wet bar in my downstairs sewing room.  The kitchen sink overflowed and soaked everything on the wet bar.  Of course, I didn't notice it right away, and the dark red sashing bled into the off-white sashing.  I didn't want to just trash this lovely quilt, so I serged all the edges, then washed it with some color-catcher sheets.  Success!

The pattern is called "Four Patch Posies.  It's a kaleidoscope variation -- it is really fun to see how every block is different, even though they're all from the same fabric.

I'm slowly but surely getting all my 30s reproduction fabrics pieced and quilted.  This one, "Bowties" was another "Block a Day" from Anna Lena:

 My bookcase of ready-to-go quilts is filling up!

And since it's Friday, I'm linking up to TGIFF at Quilt Matters.

Only two more days to enter the giveaway for a free membership in Amy's "Sugar Block Club."  Go here to comment and enter!


From the desk of your

Friday Finish

Eighteen of thirty quilts quilted and bound!  I'm getting more adventurous in my long-arming; today I am experimenting with straight-line quilting on the long arm machine:

I'm thrilled with the way this is turning out.  The only problem is, the tray on which my machine sits has a gouge in it (don't know how that happened) which makes the machine slip when it goes across that point. Which of course, makes the line crooked!  Now that I know where it does that, I can adjust for it.  But I have two lines of stitching that will have to be ripped out and re-sewn on the regular machine.

Three more quilts to add to my "ready to hand off" stack.  The first one was a "Sunday is for Scraps" project. I quilted it to test a new polyester batting from Pellon.  Poly batting is so much lighter than cotton!  I think I will donate this one to the nursing home -- it is just the right size for a wheelchair quilt, and it is lightweight enough that it won't be uncomfortable on a lap.

I am really proud of this next quilt. It is a Fat Quarter Fun project from early this year, "On a Slant."  I used the January Color Palette colors in Kona cottons (blogged here).

I quilted it with a spiky meander and used a multi-colored King Tut thread:

I love this quilting design with the geometric shapes of this quilt!

The third quilt this week is going in the "someday my boys will get married and I'll have another granddaughter" cache:

It is a Modern Quilt Relish design, "TV Dinner."  I used Moda's "In the Meadow" charm pack, so I'm calling it "TV Dinner in the Meadow."

I'm getting better at quilting flowers!  I experimented with ric rac and Susie's Magic Binding.  I decided to round the corners rather than try to miter the ric rac.

I took photos of the ric rac binding technique and it will be a Tuesday Tutorial someday.

Linking up to Thank Goodness it's Finished Friday at Quokka Quilts.

Tomorrow is another Fat Quarter Fun class.  We're making a Mary Ellen Hopkins design, "Nine to Five."  This color is a hint of my fabric choices -- can't wait to show you!


From the desk of your

Friday Finish and Giveaway Winner

Whew!  I'm halfway to my 30 Quilts in 60 Days!

Here are the quilts I've quilted and bound since my last "30 Days" post.

First up, a Fat Quarter Fun quilt from last year.  I'm calling it "Prince Charming," since most of the fabric is from Tula Pink's "Prince Charming" collection:

Next is another Fat Quarter Fun project, "Gemini."

Made from 30s reproduction fabrics, this is a BIG quilt.  It nearly covers the top of my king-sized bed.  Even so, it was fast to quilt because I quilted an allover meander pattern.

Second finish this week is "Chain Reaction," sewn from Kate Spain's "Terrain" collection.  I experimented with a "chain link squares" quilting pattern.  I love the way this quilting design crinkles up when the quilt is washed:

In fact, I liked it so much, I used it again for "Line Dance," made with a Kate Spain "Central Park" jelly roll:

I quilted the chain pattern in the background and loops-and-swirls in the prints:

I didn't quilt this one, but it's going to Japan so I wanted to show it to you before I mailed it.  This is My Little Sailor's graduation quilt (from 2007).  The design is a Judy Niemeyer paper-pieced pattern, "4th of July."

 Sonya Chin custom quilted it -- isn't the quilting stunning?

And now, the giveaway winner!

This is how I tricked you into reading through the whole post!

After jumping through some statistical hoops, the winner of the giveaway is Hueisei, in Malaysia!

I'm delighted, because Hueisei was an early follower of my blog and always says nice things in the comments.  Hueisei, I'll be emailing you asking for your mailing address and we'll see how my post office does with this international mailing!


Linking up to Sarah's "Whoop Whoop" and Richard and Tanya's "Link a Finish Friday," and Crazy Mom Quilts "Finish it up Friday."


From the desk of your

Monday Mystery with Poinsettias

The big news this week in quilt land is Bonnie Hunter's newest mystery, "Easy Street."  This is my first year playinig along, and so far I am right on track.  Of course, we're only at Step 1!

I'm quite pleased that I got all my first step completed and still kept up with quilting and binding for 30 Quilts in 60 Days.

Here they are, 192 four-patch units of grey and black-and-white:

Go here to see other mystery quilters progress.

"Easy Street" is not the only mystery chez Aunt Marti.  These past two years I've made a little book of the photos of all 52 quilts I've made that year.  This year when I got my book back from Snapfish, I realize I don't remember to whom I gave several of the quilts.  So the second mystery is, who got these quilts?

Quilt #1 is "Yellow Brick Road."  Every quilter's favorite "I need a quilt to give away TOMORROW" quilt, this was a "brown bag surprise" at Ruth's Stitchery.

Quilt #2 was another mystery.  Written by Deb Caffrey, I started this one at Quilt Colorado 2010:

A third "brown bag surprise" at Ruth's Stitchery, "Framed Squares."

"Over and Under" was the green monochrome quilt in 2011 from Patchwork Times:

Another monochrome quilt from 2011, I called this one "Mellow Yellow."

Actually, when I consider I've given away 42 quilts in the past two years -- it's not bad that I can't remember five of them!

DH abandoned the Broncos game to go to Dutch Heritage Gardens and look at the poinsettias with me yesterday.  Who knew there were that many colors of poinsettias?  Here are two of their newest varieties.  The first one is "Tinkerbell,"  just for you, Michelle  (who blogs at Just for the Piece of It):

I love the serrated leaves and bloom.

I can't remember the name of this one (really must remember to write these things down!), but it has the brightest red bloom: and mottled leaves:

I hope YOU remember to go here to complete my solid-fabric survey and comment to enter the giveaway.  The giveaway ends this Friday, November 30th (thanks, Jeannie!) at noon MST.  

From the desk of your