Quilt of Valor March

I love this Quilt of Valor.  It was very well made and a lot of thought went into these fabrics.  I quilted it with a Stars and Stripes border to border pattern.  The border is quilted with hearts with stripes and stars in them.  I used the mother goose color of thread which is a light tan that blends well without taking attention away from the words printed on the fabric.  

This is a snipit of the quilting plan.

Individual block

thread on red

thread on the blue

Thread not detracting from the words.

Front with back

Happy and uplifting words.

Antique Dresdan Plate

This is a friends Grandmother's quilt from the 20's and 30's.  It has had a place of honor on their living room wall for many years.  In fact when one of my grown daughters saw a picture of this quilt she recognized it.  I am so glad to have these special people as life long friends.  

Dresdan Plate

This is after I squared each block and ready to quilt.

 You Can see below that a couple of the blades in each block have been worn over time.  By stitching each blade it will keep others from fraying and preserve the rest of the damaged blade.

After each block is quilted.  Fabrics from 20's and 30's...Sashing from 90's

Each Blade has a special curl individualized for the shape of blade

Back Side of the blocks and sashing curls

Customer Bright Quilt

A wonderfully bright and happy quilt top was brought to me to be quilted.  With all of the these busy and colorful squares and its border with a white background, I decided to use the white thread.  This customer was able to sit in my living room and choose the patterns that she wanted.  I was able to design an mock up and send her the final design for her approval.          

Mock up of entire quilt

Mock up of close up corner

                                                                        This is a picture of the two borders next to the middle border to border design.  

Front border corners

Back middle close up.

Beach Fence Headboard

I wanted a beach theme headboard so I started off with scrap wood from other projects that were anything from 1x3's to 1x8's.  I screwed them to two 2x4's making sure that the spacing was even between each piece of wood.   I did pre-drilled the holes through the 2x4's but not through the one inch boards.  Then used 2 1/4 in screws.

 

           

  In order to distress the wood to look wind worn I   You can see that the some of the boards were stained years ago to use as shelves.  first cut notches in the top of some of the boards.  Nothing is even or symmetrical. 

I then took a grinder and put grooves to help with the windblown look.  A belt sander would do the same thing but much slower.                                  

 I then mixed some old blue gray paint with some white and then watered it down to make a white wash type of look.  I painted it on and then wiped off  on the flat surfaces leaving more paint in the grooves. I hot glued two kinds of grasses to continue with our beach fence theme.  I wound two sizes of natural ropes to support the grasses.    

  

We love our Beach Fence Headboard

Quilt of Valor February

I have just had the honor of working with two beautiful quilts from Moses Lake WA.  These were a pleasure to quilt.  Well made and the colors and choices of fabrics were well done.  I like the addition of the black to set off the other colors.  My daughter came in the room and asked why there were fishes on Soldier quilts.  I told her that it was there for the colors and texture.  Well done ladies.

This is an album quilt.  Each star was made and signed by a different quilter from around the United States.

Fixing a Loved Quilt

A very special young lady in our lives has a quilt made by her Grandmother and is was loved and loved.  Abby even knows which triangles were made from her own clothes as a little girl.  Because it was tied instead of quilted this quilt struggle to stay together.  As I took it apart I found that instead of batting an old polyester comforter from the 70's was used.  I wonder if that rough fabric aided in the destruction of the fabrics.

 I used washed muslin for the backing, an 80% cotton batting, and bleached washed muslin for the quilt sandwich.  I then put on the triangles without any borders.  I squared up the triangles by using the channel lock on the quilting machine and basting every other row.

After squaring up the rows I stitched around the most damaged triangles.  I knew that if I tried to replace them the other fabrics would just tear.
After that I stitched borders right to the quilt sandwich on the machine.



 This way I could again use the channel locks and get the straightest borders possible.  The sides aren't as      straight but hardly crooked enough to notice.



Because you would be able to see the triangle patches from the underside we chose a busy pattern with lots of points to disguise the patches.  This is a modern folk art pattern called Wilma's Garden.  It has several different sunflower and fan flowers as well as a folk art cat.

Patched triangle upper left corner

Cat's head is tilted up  in the upper left corner.

All in all we are very pleased to be able to preserve this quilt so that it can be loved, used and washed for many many years to come.  When you look at the whole quilt you can almost feel Grandma's love for her little Granddaughter.

Quilt Rack

I was taking the dog for a walk last fall and a family was getting ready for a garage sale.  Out by the garbage can was a pile of wooden ladders.  After washing them up and varnishing them I have a new quilt rack in the living room.  I love it.  I will be putting one of the other ladders in our bedroom.