Memorial Day Update

This week I spent time working on things around the house, like getting my living room ready to pack up as we are planning to strip the popcorn ceiling and paint starting next month.  I also spent one day at the quilt shop sewing with a friend who was up from the lower 48 to take care of her house and visit her son and daughter-in-law. She lives in Oregon, maintains a home in Alaska, and travels the lower 48 in her motor home spending time in Arizona and Florida each year.

I am also working on booking hotels for my son and me for this August when we drive down from Alaska to the lower 48. He is moving down to attend grad school.

As I posted on Friday, I finished the second memory quilt top and quite a few blocks for my Gypsy Wife quilt, so I moved on to a few other projects. On Friday I pressed four quilt tops to send to my wonderful quilter.

I pieced the backing for one quilt and added borders to my Buggy Barn Hearts bed runner.

I also found/purchased sashing and borders for a couple of other quilts and started putting them together.
I started with these 9-patch blocks that I had set on point. They were left over from another project and sitting in my UFO orphans box.

I picked a bright pink to sash them. I discovered in the process that the blocks were not all the same size so I set them on point again and trimmed them all to 13.25".

 Then I sashed them and set them on point.

I like how the quilt has turned out and need to find a backing so I can add this one to the box of tops I am sending my quilter.

I am deciding if I want to add borders or just finish it as is. Currently, it is about 40" square. I am debating if I want to add an inner border of pink and an outer border of the white or just a pink border.

I plan to use my time this week to make a few more blocks for my Gypsy Wife quilt and to move some other projects forward, including binding a few more quilts. I will be offline for a couple of weeks and unable to do any quilting, but I will try and get some hand work done during that time. I will post an update again next week before I go offline.

What I’ve Accomplished This Past Two Weeks

This past week I have been busy finishing the second memory quilt top.

I’ve also been busy working on my Gypsy Wife Quilt blocks and have made several more blocks to use as fillers. I still have some larger blocks to make as I am enlarging the quilt, then I can begin putting my top together as I plan to vary the layout of the blocks some and am still thinking about the layout.

I’m having fun with this quilt, choosing from my scraps left from other projects, and Fat Quarters that I had laying around. This is a great quilt for playing with color and design ideas. I have made several changes to the setting blocks and added a few blocks to the quilt that were ones I liked, I only eliminated one block front he quilt as I did not like the design. I may still go back and add it in before I layout the top. I plan to make extras of a couple of other blocks that I really liked in different color ways of course as this will help me with enlarging the quilt.

Stay tuned for more progress on the Gypsy Wife and I would love to read your comments on my colors and block choices.

Have a wonderful quilt week!

The Second Memory Quilt

I’v spent more time in my sewing room this past week and have actually gotten further on some projects than I thought. I made progress on a UFO and on my Gypsy Wife quilt blocks.

This last weekend was devoted to UFOs, one of which is the second memory quilt. This one is for my friend’s younger sister. It is also made with the pajamas. I started with the extra block I had from my friend’s quilt that I went around log cabin style. Please excuse my toes peaking out on the left side.

I am added a border of four patches all the way around the quilt. I then added a border of the background.

The inner border is another knit from the pajamas and the outer border is from my stash. 

 I want to thank my neighbor for holding the quilt up so I could take a picture. THat’s her feet peaking out on the bottom of the quilt. The wind kicked up out on the deck last night when I was trying to take a picture, and I hope to get a better one later this week.

I need to find a backing and send the quilt off to the quilter. The quilt is roughly 60” finished. A nice lap or throw size. 

Memory Quilt

I received a huge box of pajamas from my best friend in May of 2018, after her mother passed away. I had told her to send me some shirts and such and I would make her a memory quilt.  She also requested one for her sister, which I am working on currently.

I had a pile of pajamas of all different fabrics; knits, fleece, satin, and such. I picked the Cozy Quilt pattern Circle Back as it reminded me of the circle of a mother's arms and love.

I started with deboning the pajamas so I could cut them into sections.  Then I began pressing interfacing to each section and that took a long time. Once I have the fabric section prepped so they were roughly the size of a fat quarter I began cutting strips and sub cut them into pieces so I could begin stitching them the background pieces. That took the most time.  Then I started sewing and there were like 168 pieces of pajamas and roughly the same for background pieces to sew together. It took me quite a while to get them all together. Once I had that done the blocks went together fairly quickly in sections and then the sections were sewn together to make the 16-inch blocks. I trimmed them to 15.5 inches as they were not perfect due to the fabrics being used which often slipped, especially the satiny ones.

Once the blocks were together the top center when together easily. I then had to start with interfacing the fabric that I choose for the inner border. I had to piece it in sections and sew them together to get border lengths so there are quite a few seams in that border.

Once the three borders were attached and the quilt was pressed I boxed it up to send it off to my awesome quilter Shirley Jackson for her to apply her magic to the quilt.

When it returned home I trimmed and bound the quilt so I could have it done to hand carry to Los Angeles to deliver it to my oldest and dearest friend when we embarked on our twelve-day cruise to Alaska.

I know she will love it and be surprised when I hand it to her as I wanted to deliver it personally, rather than mail it to her.

You might think there is a lot of red in this quilt and there is for a very special reason. Red was her mother's favorite color.

Here is Theresa with her quilt. She was surprised and she did love it! She loves it and is very happy to have gotten it.

Now I will continue to work on her sister's quilt, which I am using a different pattern, or rather a variation of two patterns to make.

Saying Good-Bye before I was dropped off at 3 terminal for my flight. She was at terminal 5.