023 - 040

This is my work from 2007:

023:

Sweet quilt and sweet memories! Given to a family friend for the birth of her first child.  I loved the large block concept for this quilt.

024:

This mini quilt eventually made its way back to me after my husband's grandmother's death.  I gave it to her for her birthday.

025:

Fancy quilt alert!  I gave this quilt top to my grandma and grandpa for Christmas but I didn't have it quilted so I took it back home.  Quilt it, I DID!  I'm still surprised I did something so fancy relatively early in my quilting career.  They're still enjoying it hanging in their house.

026:

Oversized blocks made this quilt go together pretty quickly.  I gifted this to a friend who was undergoing surgery.  The back has well-wishes and notes of encouragement from her friends and family.

027:

What a sweet quilt!  As modern as I'd like to be, part of me loves and craves traditional patchwork like this.  The fabrics give it a modern feel and I still adore the pinks and greens together.

028:

I designed and made this quilt for one of my closest friends for her wedding.  I can't help wish I would have been able to take beautiful pictures of it when it was new.  *Sigh*

029:

I made this quilt for my oldest son when he was two years old.  The pattern was published in American Patchwork and Quilting magazine and I fell in love with it!  This quilt is still floating around our house and being used.  I think this is the first quilt that I made that I also kept!

030:

Adore, adore, adore!  This pattern was a FunQuilts design that appeared in American Patchwork and Quilting magazine.  I made it for a very good friend of mine in anticipation of her 2nd child who we weren't sure was a girl or boy at the time. (Boy.)   I loved this pattern and have incorporated the like-colored patchwork elements in quilts since.

031:

The large-scale block quilt is a great go-to for easy and fast baby gifts.  This one was given to the niece of a very good friend o' mine.

032:

I loved this Hunter's Star quilt!  Sometimes the simplicity of a 2 fabric, monochrome design is just right.  I went through an insane number of spools of thread quilting this, lots of odd-sized pebbling.  We gave it to a cousin for her wedding.

033:

The collection of fabrics I had in my possession really inspired the design and coloration of this quilt.  I used more red back in the day than I do now (note to self: use red again)!  Another gifted quilt for a cousin's wedding.

034:

I designed this quilt using my Electric Quilt software.  I still really like the design - I ended up making 2 more quilts using this design since.  My heart was heavy while making it, the baby set to receive the quilt wasn't expected to survive birth.  She did, but died shortly afterwards.  Her short little life has left such a lasting impression on me and I'm blessed that I got to meet her.

035:

I submitted this quilt as a design competition for Fon's and Porter's Love of Quilting magazine.  It didn't win, but I remember calling it Kids in the House - a play on words for the traditional Birds in the Air block it's made from.  The layout is reminiscent of a chaotic time in my life with 2 babies.  I still think it's kind of fun.  

036:

I love the fall palette of this quilt!  The courthouse steps log cabin layout is a classic.  My sister chose the fabrics and helped me assemble it, she used it as a bed quilt for many years.

037:

This is as "art quilt" as I get, but I was really happy with how this mini came out.  I gave it to a quilting friend after she lost her husband.

038:

I designed this quilt on the fly for a young cancer patient.  I don't remember the specifics now but a woman who was in a bible study with me at the time knew of this young woman who was fighting cancer and I felt led to make her a quilt.  I'll probably never know her name or what happened to her - I lost contact with the woman shortly thereafter.

039:

I made this mini-quilt for a Christmas gift exchange that was for a quilting circle I used to go to.  

040:

We had a hand-made Christmas in 2007 with my dad's side of the family.  That was the last year we did that. :)

It's was a good way to cap-off 2007, anyway.

013 - 022

I've been out of the practice of blogging for several years now, but even I know that when you're boring yourself to death with a blog series, it's time to change it up.  

Because I really hate to completely abandon this idea of counting up my quilts, I'm going to write very briefly about each year of quilting.  I still want to know a number.

Behold: I give you the remaining quilts of 2006!

013:

This is cheating a little bit because I don't have a picture of the actual quilt that I made, but it's just like this table runner, only the stars are all in a hand-dyed maroon fabric.  It's lovely and it was a gift to my mother-in-law for her birthday that summer of 2006.

014:

This was an interesting project because it was my first commissioned quilt.  A coworker of my mom's gave me lots of candlewicking blocks that her mother had made many years before.  I trimmed down all of the blocks, set them with a simple sashing and borders and quilted them up.

015:

And whaddya know? My second commissioned quilt on the heels of the first!  I made this as a large wallhanging for a family friend.  I really loved the scrappy creams of the background blocks contrasted with the rich stars. 

016:

This was a wallhanging for a family friend's wedding gift.  I used a technique I learned from Alex Anderson's Simply Quilts show on HGTV in which half-square triangles are used instead of diamonds.

017:

This was a lap sized quilt that I made for a family friend after he suffered a serious fall and back injury and was laid-up for awhile. 

018:

I took a day class at my LQS on how to make this Fractured Crystals quilt.  We gifted it for a cousin's wedding.

019:

Awww, I still love this quilt!  I gave it to a friend's baby on her 1st birthday.  She's 9 now!

020:

I'm calling this quilt one of mine because I helped a friend make it step-by-step and then I quilted and bound it.  However, my friend bought all of the materials - she gifted it to a nephew.  Cute, cheerful and I wish I would have had better photography skills!

021 and 022:

Dum, dum, DUM! The return of the candlewicking blocks!  I had enough to make two more quilts for the above referenced commission.

012

{I'm counting up and journaling about every quilt I've made over the last 10 years.  Now presenting No. 12.}

I don't remember a lot of specific details about this quilt other than I made it for a friend's wedding.

I love the scrappy backgrounds of the star blocks and a simple meander almost always does the trick.

Pretty cute binding fabric, too!

011

{If you're just joining me, I've been counting up the quilts I've made over the last 10 years, today I'm on No. 11.}

Summer 2006:

First of all, yes: small quilts count!

Second, it was an epiphany when I realized I could make small decorative projects with the quilt making skills I was amassing.  For giving gifts, this realization was especially helpful.

I ordered the star fabrics from Fabric.com - clearance fabric.  I clearly remember having such a limited income at this stage in my life.  It was sale fabric or no fabric.  I still have large quantities of these fabrics in my stash since this project required so little of it.

I used a small stencil to mark the feather wreath, quilted it and then removed the blue water-soluble marker.  I used some micro-stippling within the star blocks and larger-scale loop quilting around the perimeter of the stars.

I can't believe I'm sharing this picture of me! I'd stayed up all night trying to finish this last-minute gift for my grandma's birthday. Not that I got much sleep anyway with a 14 month-old and a 2 month old. :) It kind of sounds like a nightmare to me now - just because I'm so far removed from it - but I have such sweet memories of that stage of life.

010

{I'm writing this series of journal entries about all the quilts I've ever made.  In order. Over the last ten years. Thank you for joining me, we're up to quilt No. 10!}

Summer 2006:

Log Cabin: I just can't quit you!

For this quilt, I used the leftover fabrics I had from making quilt No. 9.  

I was invited to a "personal shower" for a childhood friend and bride-to-be. I honestly didn't understand the concept of a personal shower, it was the first I'd been to.  It was a pre-cursor to the bachelorette party, so a lot of panties and unmentionables were given as gifts.  My oblivious self made a quilt for the occasion. :)

So, let's recap: 

I had just turned 25 years old.

I had one 14 month old baby.

I had one 1 month old baby.

I'm invited to a personal bridal shower for a friend.

I don't buy the gift, I make the gift.  A quilt.

Makes total sense to me! :) I love how obsessed with quilting I was back then, excusing away all rationale and going for it. 

Oh yes, I remember now that I changed up the quilting slightly in the different colored "logs". I do love the look of the dense but consistent quilting.

I do remember my friend loving the quilt so much, making it all so worth it! 

009

{I'm currently writing a series, counting up and journaling every quilt I've made over the last 10 years of quiltmaking.}

Spring 2006:

This quilt.  We're talking pretty grown up stuff here. :) A big departure from the last two I had made.  Really - different from every quilt I'd attempted at this point in time.  And speaking of "point" - the blocks in this layout are on-point.  That was new... and tricky in execution for a first-timer, if I remember correctly.

I designed this quilt to have a large negative space in the center to play up some fancy quilting I was just itching to try.

I had devoured two of Diane Gaudynski books and was totally inspired by her elegant quilting and awesome instructions.  That's why I could pull off this fancy quilting in only my 9th quilt.

I stitched an "M" in the center medallion.  One important lesson I learned from this quilt was that fancy quilting on patterned fabric doesn't show up the best.  Solid fabrics are really best for showing off the quilting.

I had to majorly play with the photo edits above to get the stitching to show up - this is the back side of the quilt.  I didn't have great photo equipment back then nor an eye for photography, a dangerous combination indeed.

We gave this quilt as a wedding gift to my husband's cousin and spouse for their wedding.  I wish I would have been able to keep up on giving wedding quilts to all newly marrieds, but I had to give up that ideal.  Too much time and too much money required, especially for our single-income, baby-having selves 9-10 years ago.