Happy Triangles

This colorful batik quilt started out as a kit which I bought years earlier at Intown Quilters when I had a coupon for a good deal.  But the kit was only for a throw sized quilt, so I added quite a bit of my own fabric to make it much larger, and added the borders and the back as well.

It ended up being about 83" square, which I decided was big enough for a wedding quilt.  I hadn't intended for it to be square - but somewhere along the way I made a miscalculation, or lost some blocks.  At any rate by the time I put the blocks together, square it was and I was too done with it and too ready to have it finished, to go back to making more squares.

I was making the quilt as a wedding present for my very dear friend and former colleague, the one and only Sara Totonchi, executive director of the Southern Center for Human Rights.  And as things were going, I was rapidly approaching the one year anniversary of Sara's wedding to John Therkelsen!  So I was really running out of time!

As always, it was machine quilted by Regina Carter, this time using a pattern called spirals galore.

At first I was worried that naming the quilt "Happy Triangles," was somewhat inappropriate for a wedding quilt, but as it turned out, because I was so late in actually giving Sara and John the quilt, by the time they got it, Sara was pregnant with what turned out to be their absolutely adorable son, Max, who compled their happy triangle!

Can you imagine anything cuter on this quilt?  I usually love getting a photo of the baby on her or his quilt when I give away a baby quilt, but come to think of it, a photo of a cute baby on any quilt I give away is a pretty good idea!  He is even dressed to match the quilt!

Just Strips

This is a so-called "Jelly-Roll Race" quilt.  However, it wasn't made from a Jelly Roll, rather I cut the strips myself from a bunch of fabric I had bought.  I meant to buy fat quarters of this line of fabric I really liked, but instead bought quarter yards.  Thus I had ended up with a bunch of really skinny strips and didn't really know how to use them until my quilt group decided to do this Jelly Roll quilt.  It was a perfect bunch of fabric to cut 2 1/2" strips from, and so I did.  I also didn't really race to complete the quilt, but it certainly didn't take long.  I later found another print from a different line, to make a border and that was it.  

A very easy quilt to make which requires no hard thinking, and I like the way it turned out.  

 As always, it was quilted by Regina Carter, and it hung out at my house for a while, until I drew my brother-in-law's name for Christmas and decided it would make a perfect gift for him.  Here's a picture of the two of us holding the quilt after he had just received it.  Our great niece, Grace, who is always a big helper in disctributing presents and opening them, on Christmas, is also in the picture.

Tea Cozy Cover

I made this because my sister asked if I could make a new cover for her tea cozy.  I actually generally hate to sew anything which is not a quilt.  So if it had been pretty much anybody else who had asked me to sew anything else - other than a quilt - I would have tried really hard to find a way to say no.

It's not just that I dislike doing other kinds of sewing, I also have some kind of mental block against it.  Even when there are things I would like to make, I just can't get it done.  Over the years, I have seen plenty of fun or cute little things in qulting magazines which I have thought I might want to make, but every time I take on something other than an actual quilt, without a fail, I get started, but then I get stuck and it takes me forever to finish the project.  Sometimes a small easy project will sit in a box somewhere for years before I finally get back to it and finish it!

But my sister wanted a new cover for her tea cozy - and her old cover was pretty ratty, worn out, and discolored.  My other incentive was that I had this really cool fabric, some retro fabric which would be just right for my sister's kitchen - both in style and color.  I've always loved that my sister and her husband painted their kitchen, and the attached dining area, orange (and I actually many years later copied them and painted my own, MUCH smaller, kitchen orange as well).  And, as you can see in the picture the fine fabric by Jenn Ski was as made for their kitchen.  Nevertheless, I am NOT going to go ahead and make dish-towels, aprons, and potholders with the rest of the fabric of that line.  Nor, am I, most likely, going to make curtains for their kitchen.

On the other hand, I actually don't have a plan for the fabric yet, so we will just all have to stand by, armed with patience, and wait if we want to see what will become of it.  Or rather, to see what kind of quilt will become of it.

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A Bright Green Farm

All of my Danish nieces and nephews were born after I started quilting.  As a result, I made baby quilts for all of them, they also each got a "big Boy or Girl" quilt at age 5, and I'm almost done making each of them a teenage quilt (only one of them has yet to reach that mile stone in life!)  My American nieces and nephews, on the other hand were almost all born before I started quilting - indeed most of them were born before I entered their family!  So they never really became part of the tradition.  However, by the summer of 2014, I had almost managed to make and give a quilt to each of my nieces and only Rob, the oldest, hadn't yet received a quilt.

Fortunately, several good occasions presented themselves, Rob had completed four years in the Army, including one year of combat in Afghanistan, and returned to us safe and sound.  We were all happy that he chose not to re-enlist.  Instead he entered college at UK and completed his degree, with the assistance of the GI Bill, in record time and with top grades.  Last, but not least, Rob who had always been a very determined bachelor, had started hanging out with and seeming awfully fond of a certain fellow student named Gretchen.

So, it was very fortunate that I finally had managed to finish this big quilt - which at 94" x 114" is definitely big enough for two - and could finally give Rob a quilt of his own.  It's basically just a scrappy monochromatic quilt, all 4" green squares cut from my stash and entirely hand pieced.  Then, as always, machine quilted by Regina Carter, who used a pattern called Swirling Ferns..

I named the quilt for the Bright Family Farm where Rob grew up, because I know Rob, like all the rest of us, is very fond of the farm, even though at this point in his life, he prefers to live away from the farm. And I was able to give the quilt to Rob at a family gathering on the farm, which happened to be the first time many of us met Gretchen.