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Friday, May 22, 2015

Crazy Pipe Dream :: I finished my quilt!


Hello! I thought that since I just barely squeeked in my entry for the Blogger's Quilt Festival, I would come back and edit my post with a little intro. I'm Jenny. I live in Iowa. I'm a SAHM for two little ones full time, a part time longarm quilter, and many other things I guess, but this blog is just about my longarm quilting and sewing projects. Check it out. Say hello. Move on.  :)


I FINALLY finished it! I started this quilt over 2 years ago. (previous post here.) I'm calling it 'Crazy Pipe Dream".  I got the top together within a couple months, but then it sat in my cupboard for over a year waiting patiently for a lull in my client quilts to be quilted. I don't know if I ever got a 'lull', but I got to a point where there were only a few quilts that were in no hurry, so I put it on quick!


The main reason I think it was on the back-burner for so long was that I didn't know how to quilt it. I wanted to do something custom, but had a really hard time coming up with a design that would connect all the gray areas without having to SID through the little squares too much. I even posted it into the 'how should I quilt this' FB group. They had some good ideas, but when it came right down to it--this quilt is huge (93 by 79) and custom quilting all those little squares seemed really daunting and monotonous. (The little colored squares are 1 inch and the grays are 2 and 3 inches btw.) So, I decided to save the fancy custom quilting job for another quilt and just quilt every design I could think of all over the darn thing! 


So thats what I did! and it was so FUN! Once I made that decision, it was like a big weight was off my shoulders. Just scribble everywhere! I did do a few fancy custom blocks in there though. And I like them all. I don't know how I could have picked just one.



Yeah, it's pretty wild in there!



I love all the bright colors.



I even let my little guy try out the longarm for the first time. He loved it, and now wants to 'help' quilt every quilt. Uhh, maybe next time kiddo...




there's his handiwork down through the center here. I even quilted each of my family member's names in it. Somewhere.



And here is the back. I made it to look like one of the blocks because my backing wasn't quite big enough. So I added these 10 inch squares and it came out just right. I centered it as best I could and it came out pretty close. I finally have one of my WIP's crossed of the list. 1 down, 10 more to go!

Thanks for stopping by, for those visiting from the Blogger's Quilt Festival. ( got this entered juuusst in time!) Come back any time.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Embroidered butterflies


Norene made this pretty little quilt using embroidered butterfly blocks. 


I basically outlined the embroidery and filled the corners with a flower.


For the black borders I used a bright multi-colored thread and quilted some leaves and a flower in the intersections.
Thanks Norene!

Thursday, May 14, 2015

More DGS and an I Spy


More do.Good Stitches blocks to share---This one is for March. Courtney made up a tutorial for these blocks and requested a floral theme. No problem there.


April's blocks were another springtime floral theme with these fun tulip blocks. She had us use a pink, yellow, burgundy, peach color scheme. Can't wait to see this one all together.


And here is another project of mine--an I Spy quilt. I used 3.5 inch squares to make this baby quilt.


There is a little bit of everything in there...


Thanks Teresa for the fabric for ummm... the majority of this quilt!

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Coral:: DGS January


So, way back in January, it was my month to choose a quilt for our Haven circle for Do.Good Stitches. I found this Coral quilt from Angela Walters free patterns and loved it. I wanted to quilt it! I had each of our 10 members make 3 blocks using pink or turquoise with a gray background.





My Mom helped me figure out the layout--alternating the colors diagonally. I just needed to make 2 more pink blocks to make it work.  A few gals sent some big gray squares for the end rows. Thanks so much for that!
(no quilt is complete unless a baby has crawled on it!)



And here it is all done!


I used a turquoise thread in the gray and the turquoise blocks, then switched to pink and went back to do the pink ones.


Each block is outlined with a ruler and filled with a different design.



I was doing pretty good thinking up different designs, but my creativity was starting to run thin towards the end. So, there might be a couple similar looking blocks, but they are all different.


The back featured some pretty big butterflies and our little label. The striped pink binding pulls it all together. It finished at 72 by 63 inches--a nice throw size. This is the first quilt to go to our new charity, Redeemed Ministries.

Thanks Haven-ites for making such stellar blocks--as always.

Friday, May 1, 2015

Bike ride t-shirt quilts

Well here are a couple more t-shirt quilts, as promised. Both of these are from a local community group that has organized a bike ride for the last 25 years. To commemorate they made 2 quilts with several of the shirts. One they will raffle, and the other will be put on an auction.






Outlined the designs and filled the background with paisley swirls.


Oh. And stars in the cornerstones.


The other one is quilted similarly except for swirls this time.



I've never participated in the bike ride, although I've always wanted to. It's always on Labor Day weekend and it seems like we always have other plans. Maybe this year. We'll see.

Thanks for having me quilt these special quilts, I hope they raise a lot of money!