062 - 068

I wanted to share with you the quilts I made in 2009.  As I was counting them up, I kept wondering why I wasn't that "productive" that year.  And then I remembered I was pregnant most of the year and then had a newborn for the remainder of the year! :)  Oh yeah....

062:

Through the magic of the Internet, I was commissioned to make this quilt for a woman in California.  I want to say this was a wedding gift for a couple to celebrate their dogs (and the dogs of family members also, I believe).  Of course, it was something I'd never done before and I thought it was extremely challenging to incorporate the customers wants with something that also fit my personal design aesthetic.

063:

This was a quilt I made for a cousin's baby.  The mama worked with me to tell me what she wanted, a traditional Irish Chain in unconventional colors.  I loved the way it turned out and was really happy with how the orange peel quilting worked!

064:

Even though the baby I'd had a month earlier was named Jace, this baby quilt was actually for a friend's baby.  My Jace is still waiting on his quilt, I've promised myself I'd have it done by his 6th birthday (in a few months).  The top is complete, I just need to quilt and bind it. :)

065:

I made this for a cousin's baby.  Large-scale prints can be so much fun!

066:

This baby quilt was made for yet another cousin's baby.  I love them all.  The babes, that is... and the cousins. :)

067:

What can I tell you?  There was a baby boom in our family!  Yes, another cousin's baby.

068:

This was a quick baby quilt gift for a friend at church.  I made strategic use of leftover fabrics from other projects.

041 - 061

Plugging right along!  Here are the quilts I made in 2008.

041:

This is the baby quilt I made for my first nephew.  I love the soft colors and variety of prints and solids.

042:

Another Iowa Hawkeye quilt (the first one was in my last post)!  This one was for my friends' baby boy.  Sidenote: I had the pleasure of repairing this quilt years later, which is the best compliment you could give me, in my opinion.  I love when a quilt is used and loved!

043:

This was an original design for a baby quilt gifted to a friend.  I think this was just a matter of finding an interesting block from my Electric Quilt software, adding a sashing and border and using up great fabrics I had from another project.

044:

This quilt was a commission for a customer I didn't know but who was referred to me by a quilt shop.  The woman had the center of this wallhanging - an old pillow - cross-stitched by a family member and pretty old.  She wanted to bring new life to it.  I was happy to help do that!

045:

I made this baby quilt as a commission, too.  I repeated last year's original design with new colors and fabrics and for a finishing touch, embroidered the new baby's name into the top border.

046:

Here's a mini-quilt that I made for a friend who commissioned it.

047:

I designed this quilt for a special commission to be given as a wedding gift.  I really loved collaborating on the fabrics and ideas online.  I really do love all the stages of quilting from the design and fabric selection to the final binding!

048:

Do you see how one quilt can inspire the design of the next? This baby quilt I designed and made for a lifelong friend's baby.

049:

I made this quilt with a lot of scraps from other projects and gifted it to neighbors for the birth of their new baby.  One letter of personalization goes a loooong way with a simple quilt. :)

050:

Another commission with the same pattern as seen previously.  I wouldn't mind patterning this one someday. 

051:

I made this quilt out of scraps from the last quilt I posted.  I'd over-made SEVERAL half-square triangle units from that previous quilt.  Then a deadly tornado came through an Iowan town and destroyed lives and property.  Because of a mutual friend, I'd learned of a young family who had just brought their new baby home from the hospital when the tornado hit.  I decided to make this quilt for that baby.

052:

Pretty bold and modern here!  I designed and made this quilt for a wedding gift for friends.

053:

This was QUITE a commission, let me tell you! I designed and made this quilt for the children of a couple who would be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. If I remember correctly, I mapped out 50 stars and incorporated as many photos as I could, transferred onto photo fabric, of course.  I really wanted this quilt to be great for them!

054:

This was another commissioned quilt that I made at the request of a customer for his wife.  He already knew exactly what pattern he wanted, so the rest was easy!  I think this was a quilt-as-you-go method and the applique was secured/quilted through the layers.

055:

In the fall of 2008, my friends had way too many babies!  This was one quilt I designed and made for one of those friends and her new baby boy.

056:

Quilt for twin boys #1. :)

057:

Quilt for twin boys #2!

058:

Quilt for twin girls #1.

059:

Quilt for twin girls #2.

060:

This table topper commission was super fun to make, I loved using that negative space to do a few fancy quilting motifs.  Log cabin layouts are so versatile!

061:

I self-published a pattern using this wall hanging designed.  It's called Four Winds and I offered different layouts but this one was my favorite layout.

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.