Not My Sister's

This quilt was a real stretch for me. I saw it hanging in my local quilt store, Wilderness Road Quilt Company, here in Danville, KY, and just loved the way it looked, so when a class was offered in the spring of 2009, to make the quilt, I signed up without paying a whole lot of attention to what it would involve. And now that the quilt is finished, I have no regrets, but making it was not only fun and games. It took a lot longer than the class allowed and I really had to push myself to get through it.

So far, I have never not finished a quilt I have started, but if I had not loved this quilt and the fabrics I had chosen so much, this could have become the one! Before I started, I had paid no attention at all to just how many small individual pieces were involved in piecing those six outer borders of the quilt. And I never did count how many, but it was an awful lot of individual pieces, and almost all of them were triangles! I did not enjoy that process.

I also had never previously made a Dresden plate, and probably never contemplated making one. That was fun, however, and I can see doing it again.

Overall, I am very happy with the quilt and glad I made it. It was beautifully machine quilted - as always - by Regina Carter, who used a lovely bubbly pattern I had never seen before.
It was also a whole lot of fun to take the class and make the quilt in a group, and to see how very different our "identical" quilts turned out to be. Leslie and Tori, owner and employee of Wilderness, had each made her own version of the quilt before the class, so two versions of the quilt were hanging at the shop; as they had two, they named it "Sisters." I originally thought I would give my quilt to my sister, but when I talked to her about it and described it, it appeared that she would really like a throw size quilt, not another big quilt like this, it is 80" x 80". So I decided to keep this one for myself and named it: "Not My Sister's."

I am working on a quilt for my sister which will show up here one of these days. Stay tuned!

Kittie Blankie

For this little blankie, I hand pieced the top and used a little fleece blanket for the back, but since I did not use any batting it is actually not a quilt. The technical definition of a quilt requires that there be a top and a bottom layer sandwhiched around a batting and the three layers be stitched, tacked or tied together. In this case the middle layer is missing.

I machine stitched the top to the fleece and then turned the edges of the fleece over from the back to the front for the binding. I like the way it came out and though it is thin, it feels plenty substantial enough for a baby blanket and the fleece was thick enough to hide the seams.

I gave this to our neighbors, Erin and Jon Meyer, who I discovered had a new baby girl, Rachel, two months ago! They already had two children, 5 year old Noah and 2 year old Grace, who I know and had occasionally talked to over the fence. Their yard backs up to our 1/2 mile long driveway, so we see them when we walk to get the mail or I occasionally stop to talk when I drive by. But during the winter, there wasn't much interaction, which I suppose is my excuse for missing the pregnancy and new baby!

Fortunately, I had just finished this little blanket.

Dog Bed 8

I am still continuing to make and give away dog beds. And the only "fee" I charge for the dog beds is that I ask the recipient to give me a picture of his or her dog on the bed. Unfortunately, some of my customers have been a little slow at paying for their beds. At this point I am missing pictures of dogs on beds 6 and 7, so I have delayed postings on them.

I am delighted to post this picture, however, of Dusty on Dog Bed 8.
Dusty is a young male terrier Shih Tzu mix who was adopted from our local shelter by my mother-in-law, Pat, just a few weeks ago. He seems to be a very agreeable and sweet dog. He is house broken and very friendly, apparently doesn't even yap a lot, which is unusual for a dog of his size and breed. He definitely has the terrier prey drives and has already attacked a baby raccoon, but otherwise he is very gentle and friendly and gets along famously with my great niece Grace, Pat's great-granddaughter. After just a bit of prodding, he took very well to his new bed.

I wrote this post quite a while ago, but never got around to posting it.  So before I actually do so, I will update it.  Dusty was and is a very good and sweet dog, but he turned out to be too much for my mother-in-law.  He was probably only about a year old at the time, and needed daily play, exercise, or stimulation - more than she was able to give him. And when he didn't get that, he tended to become "naughty," he barked much too much, chewed on things he wasn't allowed to have, got into the trashcan etc.  Of course, he was acting out because of frustration and boredom,  

Fortunately, Pat was able to find a new home for him with a man who does a lot of handy work and walks around in the small town in our county where he lives.  Last we heard, he takes Dusty along everywhere he goes, so Dusty gets plenty of exercise and stimulation and is a much happier and better adjusted dog now, because that is just the right type of situation for him.

Charity Quilt IV

At some point last fall I sent off to www.quiltsforkids.org for a kit to make a quilt for their project. Unfortunately, life interfered, and it took me a lot longer than they would have preferred for me to finish their quilt. They prefer 4-6 weeks. It took me more like four months!

Quilts for kids is a program sponsored by Downey and other companies which receives free fabric from some fabric companies which it then passes on to volunteers who make kids' quilts. These quilts are given to hospitalized children at certain hospitals which participate in the Quilts for Kids program.
Seems like a pretty good and easy idea. And it is. It took me such a long time, I guess, because they require that absolutely everythign has to be done by machine. The label has to be sewn on by machine, the quilt has to be quilted by machine, the binding has to be sewn on, completely, by machine, etc. etc. So, this became the first quilt I have EVER quilted on my machine. And, before I could do it, I had to get a walking foot and learn how to use it! I have to say I didn't particularly like all their strict rules - though I understand the necessity - the quilts will be washed a lot so they need to be able to stand up to that, is their reasoning.

And I am happy that I now feel like I can machine quilt my own baby quilts, when and if I feel like doing that. Otherwise, I generally hand quilt them, but it is nice to have that option.

Noah's Ark

Last year a lot of people I knew had babies - some of them quite suddenly and unexpectedly - to me at least, hopefully they had some idea it would happen! As a result I found myself making a lot of baby quilts, some of them without much notice. That wasn't as much fun as I like for quilting to be, and therefore I decided that when time allowed, I would try to get a bit ahead of the curve and once in a while make a baby quilt - even if no particular baby was on its way - at least not one that I knew of. So I would have at least one baby quilt, should I suddenly need or want one to give away!
Here is a picture of the first such "extra" baby quilt I made, held by my adorable Little Sister, Marisela, who I "acquired" in August of 2009, through Big Brothers and Big Sisters of the Bluegrass. Let me take this opportunity to give a big shout-out to Big Brothers and Big Sisters. It is a great program which needs lots of big sisters and brothers - the latter is in particularly short supply. One person can really make a difference in a child's life. I have no illusions about what kind of difference I may or may not make in Marisela's life, but I know she and I both have a great time hanging out together. She makes my life a lot happier and she gets to do things she could never do without me.

We found a use for this baby quilt this past weekend when we made some new friends. I met Lin through my volunteer work at our local low-cost spay/neuter clinic, and at some point told her about Marisela. Lin suggested we might want to get together with her and her granddaughter, Kayla, to do something fun once in a while. That happened for the first time on Saturday and it was a huge success. Marisela and Kayla got along famously and it was uncanny how much they even looked alike, they could've been sisters separated at birth! Kayla's skin is a bit lighter than Marisela's and Marisela's hair is a bit less frizzy than Kayla's but otherwise it is very close! And after playing together for a couple of hours they were both ready to have play dates every day!

A couple of days before we met Kayla, her mother had given birth to Kayla's first sibling, a baby brother named Conner. So Marisela and I decided to give Kayla the baby quilt for her new brother. Between lunch and the afternoon play date, we came back to my house and wrote the dedication on the label. Marisela liked putting her name on it and wrote in the card that she hoped Conner would like the quilt that "Charlotta and I made for him!"

I look forward to making a quilt for Marisela and perhaps even helping her make one herself, or at least helping her design something which I can then sew for her.