The late Wedding Quilt

My nephew got married in August and I was making them a flannel quilt. I decided to go with a Christmas/Snowman theme because they live in an apartment at this time and I don't know what colors they will choose when they get a home. I started the quilt early enough so it would be finished before the wedding. But that didn't happen.


Notice the red squares in the center? There was supposed to be enough red in the kit to make the second border which is now the light colored stripe.

This photo shows the border a little better. From a distance it doesn't stand out like it would have if it was red.



I got this kit last year or probably the year before at an after Christmas sale but I still thought I'd try to find some of the red fabric on the internet. I was so excited that I actually found the red fabric and I ordered it. Duh! The fabric arrived and it was cotton, not flannel. In my excitement to have found the matching fabric, I hadn't even noticed that little fact when I ordered it.



I didn't want to mix the cotton with the flannel because of shrinkage so I carried the center of the quilt to lots of quilt shops looking for a red that would go with the red in the quilt. Well it turns out that I couldn't find any red flannel that was even close. Finally at one shop I spotted the stripe fabric in a kit (it was to make a two sided baby's receiving blanket) and grabbed that kit. I figured one of the fabrics that was already in the quilt would be better than something that didn't match.

Plus as a bonus, there was enough of the stripe that I could use it as the binding. I love striped bindings! The above photo is the back of the quilt. The flannel is so soft and cuddley I think I'll make myself one! Just add it to the list of UFOs and quilts I want to make some day. LOL !! My list is probably 4 pages long by now.

best Christmas present

My gift will be delivered in July!

My Elf

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!

This is my favorite Elf! May you have a wonderful Christmas with family and friends.

What a difference a little snow can make!

Yes, snow is pretty, but I hate to have to drive in it. Ours is melted now, I'm slow at getting this posted. I have an up and down battle with depression. I have had for many years. I haven't posted for about a month because I am in the down stage now. I don't like Christmas and the end of the year. It seems to be so much work, and the real meaning of Christmas is gone. I hate that Thanksgiving hardly gets mentioned because of Black Friday and the shopping frenzy. The end of the year is so final. I think back to the things I wanted to get accomplished, but didn't get them finished (or started in some cases!) So life moves on and soon it will be Christmas. And I'll have my family home for a great day of celebrating. It will be fun to see all the grandkids and how excited they are at Christmas! And the new year will start and instead of New Year resolutions I'll make a New Year list of what I'd like to do. No resolutions, that sounds so final. Merry Christmas to everyone. I hope you have a joyous season.

2 baby quilts finished

I finished my Quilt For Kids.

The backing and binding are the same fabric. I really like the fabrics they picked out.

This is the back of the following quilt. I made a quick and easy quilt for a friend's baby boy. I really like the checkered binding. The quilt itself is a panel with a car race theme.

Haven't been able to finish too many projects lately. Seems like work is getting in the way of my quilting time!

I had a 3 day weekend over Veteran's Day and went to visit family. We had a wonderful time. My uncle is a veteran from WWII. We attended a wonderful supper and program for the veteran belonging to his church.

Oh I've been waiting for you!

I get lost in parking lots and buildings. So can you imagine how lost I get in a city? I was in Des Moines one evening trying to get to Ankeny, which was north of where I was. I ended up about 30 miles south of where I wanted to be. And then I still had to find Ankeny and it was getting later and darker and started raining. And after all that I had to find my way back to the hotel. Well, I missed it too cos there was a "Road Repair" sign blocking my exit sign. So after all that excitement I decided to finally give in and get a Garman...one of my new best friends. I'm going to test it out on Thursday when I go to Sioux City, another city I am not familiar with. So if I don't get lost I'll be back to post on Friday.

And guess who is walking!! He also learned how to open the door to the garage at his home. He will go into the garage and climb in his stroller waiting for mom to go for a walk. Oh boy, glad it's her and not me, I'm too old for chasing him all day!

A Winner & A Thank You

The winner of the string quilt book is Anna of Peaceful Piecer. Thank you to everyone who entered! I enjoyed reading all the comments. So much in fact that I'll be having another giveaway soon.

Time for a giveaway.

Have you ever found a book that you really liked. I mean really, really like.

And you end up buying 2 copies of it?? I did. So I am having a giveaway for the second copy of the book "String Quilts" My favorite is the poppy quilt on the cover. I think I must have too many books if I am starting to buy doubles! Actually this is the only double book I've ever bought. And I buy my books at JoAnn Fabric when I have a 40% off coupon. So if you'd like to win this book, leave me a message and tell me where you are from. I will do the random number thing on Sunday.

My grandson stayed over night with us a few days ago. Here he discovered the magnets I have on the fridge, while I was making breakfast.

He decided that they come loose but wasn't sure of what to do with them.

Now he has it figured out. He can take them off and put them back on. Aren't kids in their jammies so cute and cuddley.

Is this Heaven? No it's (the AQS Show in) Iowa!

This is what you see from the upper floor when you are walking into the AQS show that was held at the end of Sept. in Des Moines, Iowa. WOW!! This is only about 1/4 of what you can see walking past the windows. The pictures are some close-ups of the quilts. They were fantastic. Look at the beading and quilting on this one.

I cannot imagine sitting still long enough to do all of this beading. This quilt was over 5 feet long and had beading running thru it.

Look closely at the quilting on this one. It was fantastic. I would love to be able to do this. This is a portion of the stem and background.

Isn't this applique great! It was large and ran from top to bottom of this quilt. I would love to do applique large like this. I haven't done applique yet, but this is large pieces and looks like I could do it.

This DWR just glowed from the center out. This quilt is on my bucket list!

This quilt is called the Christmas Pickle, I think. I have the book it's in because it's another one I'd like to make. I LOVE the greens in this quilt. They are more of an olive or dull green, not the bright Christmas green. She did a great job with this quilt.

More great beading and some couching of yarn or heavy threads. The whole quilt is quilted and beaded like this close-up. Just wonderful work.

I took this photo from the side of the quilt. The petals in the flower are 3D. It was so vibrant!

I am not sure if this is made with ribbons or fabric strips. I love the 3D movement in this.

This is from a full size quilt. The appliqued flowers were huge! And such beautiful fabrics.

This is a big white flower and the purple is the middle of it. The detail is amazing.

I just love quilt shows!

Stay tuned for a giveaway

I had a long post but lost it. Stay tuned for a giveaway.

I need advice

I am making a flannel quilt, pictured on my last post. I didn't have enough red for the outer border and the binding. It was from a kit from a year or 2 ago. So I went online and found some of the red fabric and ordered it. When I opened it today, it wasn't flannel! I didn't realize it when I ordered it. So my question is ......does it work ok to mix flannel with regular cotton fabric or will the difference in shrinkage make it look bad? Has anyone tried this before?

UFOs

It's been awhile since I've been posting regularly and I forgot what I was doing and put the photos in first one last. I usually add a picture of my grandson at the end of my posts and here he is with my camera case. Do you think I could get at least 1 good picture of him? No, not this time. He is getting more teeth and chews on anything he gets ahold of.

This is a quilt I started on yesterday. It's a Quilt for Kids project. The outer border will be the green with lighthouses and they sent a cute backing. I'll post a picture when I'm finished with it.

This next quilt is from a kit I bought on sale after last Christmas or the one before, I don't remember. But after I got this far I didn't have enough fabric to finish it.

But I went online and found enough fabric that I'll be able to finish it. The fabric is Be Merry by Riley Blake. It's flannel and oh so soft and cuddley. It is a wedding present for my nephew and his new bride. Yes, the wedding is over. I gave them an IOU for a gift.....I'm sure no one else has ever done that!!

And since I can never work on one (or 2 or 3 or more) project at a time, these are blocks from Pure. I'm going to cut them in half diagonally and piece them back together. I hope to be able to get one light side and one dark side and set them in a diamond setting.

I love these colors together.

What about you, do you finish one project before you start another one or do you have lots of projects going at once? I bet I'm not the only one who does that!

red sunflowers

We, and by saying we, I mean my DH, planted sunflowers this year. Behind the grotto you can see some yellow ones. But in another place we ended up with red sunflowers.

Have you ever seen red sunflowers? I never have. It was hard to get a picture of these because they were taller than I am. In the first picture you can also see some of the pink roses and our volunteer petunias.