A Pile of Quilts

Here is a a picture of the quilts that I basted, most of them over the weekend.  If you aren't a regular, this post is brought to you by Tanya, Richard hates basting quilts (pin or spray).  I did give in and went and bought some more pins.  I don't think Richard will run out of quilts to quilt anytime soon.  In Richard's defense, he did get one quilted and bound.  It is in the wash and pictures will be coming soon.

I also finished two quilt tops this weekend.  The owl will most likely go on Etsy and and the butterfly one is for girls camp auction.

The owl is a star quilt as Richard pointed out.  I was going for alternating blocks from 8 1/2 inch squares forming half square triangles . This was using the same pattern that I did the pieced rag quilt in.  I don't know if I will ever do that large of blocks again in a pieced quilt.  I think 5 or 6 inch squares are easier to work with.

 The Butterfly quilt top is in the pile of stuff to be quilted. I plan on doing another Butterfly one in different colors, it was fun and simple quilt. 

The other boring stuff I did over the weekend involved hand sewing the sleeve on a quilt Richard is displaying at HMQS for part of Salt Lake Modern Quilt Guild Display. We watched a movie while setting on the couch and hand stitching.  Richard should be proud, I didn't even fall asleep.  Normally I fall asleep while watching  any movie at home. 

Last night I was trying to get Julia to go get one of her toys.  She said toy and went and grabbed a strip of fabric.  I thought it was cute.   

Owls and Butterflies

I finished the green owl quilt top last weekend and Tanya was kind enough to baste it for me.   It is sitting in a pile, that is growing every day, of quilts that need to be quilted.  Tanya pointed out to me this morning that she is out of pins and I must start quilting some of these.  The current pile has in it the above Green Owl Quilt, it has the Brown Owl Quilt, A baby Pieces of hope quilt.  Tanya has 2 other baby quilts one is one of the Jelly Roll quilts (the back to the second one we ordered did not match as well as we hoped and its now back in the needs back pile).  She also has the baby quilt that was made from the left over pieces of Rebecca's Quilt half basted and waiting for pins!

Now personally I think we need to buy more pins and not rush me, but Tanya says I am slacking and need to get those quilts done.

Tanya has been playing with her most recent quilt.  You can tell she has a style different from me, which is great as who wants to be like some one else.  She made 9 of these butterfly's using her embroidery machine this is the first "Big" project using it so far.  These 9 will be put as blocks in a quilt she is making.  Last I saw there were 4 rows of this quilt sewn together, but I will not share it and wait for her to show it off when done. 

It does amaze me how fast and neat that the machine cranked these out.  And to think only 1 butterfly was damaged in the making of this quilt.  You ask how can you hurt a butterfly?  The thread got stuck on the bobbin and with the machine going full blast, before we could get to it and stop, a needle broke and the butterfly died.  It was a sad loss it sat on my desk for a few days, before I had the heart to put it down.

Link a Finish Friday #62

It is now time for Link A Finish Friday.  Today I would like to start with a big thank you to Fat Quarter Shop who has offered to Sponsor our Link A Finish Friday with Prizes.  This month's winner (April) will win a $15 gift certificate to spend at Fat Quarter Shop. 

Please remember to thank our sponsor by visiting their store at http://www.fatquartershop.com/ their blog http://www.fatquartershop.blogspot.com/ and Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/FatQuarterShop

Jacaranda Tree Art Quiilt - Quilts by Jen

The Five Year Quilt - The Traveling Leotard

A Finish for Friday - Quilting & Other Craft Therapy

Are some of the great quilts linked up last week. Thanks for all of the great linkups.

<center> <a href="http://richardquilts.blogspot.com/search/label/LAFF"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ7qXTAJie7G0ghuAU0KS32w8KlUExqal-Wlv6YLpJTmDGicbYKwa9J8fEzNhD3sjUlmC_VNvpZNjibX2VVA_oSxwLnBmhrtBJ6OGmnOhdFAbhImedCBpTdcHMX3Xu_y1R-EEAMTNQmxs4/s1600/Button_Friday2_Resized.png" width="120" /></a></center>

1) Who likes rules. Toss them out.

2) Add a link to your finish blog or where ever you show off your finishes (Not limited to quilts but I like them the most).
3) Visit a few of the finishes and comment or encourage them on.
4) Monthly random winner picked from all of the months linkups to $15 gift card from Fat Quarter Shop.

Not required but fun to do

1) Follow my blog.
2) Follow the blog of all those that link.
3) Link back to my blog.
4) No finish, go quilt and stop reading the web.

2 20 inch blocks

I have finished the first 2 of my 10 x 10 (2 1/2 inch) blocks for the queen size quilt for our bed.  I have never yet finished a quilt for my bed, so it will be interesting how things go on this project turns out.  At the time of this post I have actually made 7 of these now.  Each block is 100 2 1/2 inch blocks they are going to be a lot of fun.  There are some fun left over fabrics (from quilts Tanya has made in the past) in these blocks and there are even more colors that Tanya picked FQ's that I chopped completely into 2 1/2 inch blocks.

You can see some of the variety of the squares in the piles around my machine that I was sewing together.  My process of random is grabbing 2 blocks sewing them together and doing huge long chains of those.  Once those are all done I cut them apart and toss them into a basket and mix them around.  And then I start sewing the pairs to each other.  Until I end up with rows of 10.

I then iron my rows and stack them in 2 piles and then start sewing them together.  Next thing you know I have blocks of 100 squares done.  I think I will need some where around 14 blocks of this color group and I think it was 12 of the brown.  We are still tossing around ideas on the exact size of the quilt so I have not yet finalized my design in EQ7.  What do you consider a perfect size queen?

These 2 blocks are the same as the 2 above just a little more close up so you can see them better.

Along with the 2 blocks I did finish the last top we will have from the pieces of hope line.  This baby quilt when finished will end up on our Etsy store or given as a gift.

A lot going on in the background!

FYI- This a long winded post or at least according to me (Tanya).  It is brought to you by Richard.

I feel like I have been slacking, as I have not been posting as often as I did last year.  I sat down a few weeks ago and talked with Tanya and explained my problem is I do not have any focus on what I can and should get done this year.  Last year it was 52 quilts in 52 weeks.  This year its been slack and don't do much.  Well, that is going to change.  A few weeks ago, I had Tanya sit down and pick out projects for me to do.  Instead of doing 1 project and then waiting, I handed her a bunch of large zip lock bags and a pen and paper and asked her to gather some of the stash that matches.  I asked her to put a note with you want me to make (dimensions and any special instructions) and I would then have something to work on.  Well yesterday I pulled a new one out of the cabinet (I think I have about 15-20 projects waiting in the cabinet and you will see many of them finished over the next few weeks and months) and off on a new adventure we go.

For those that can't read and are not in the mood to make the picture bigger it reads "Queen size for our bed 2 1/2 inch Squares"  to some that may sound daunting, how can I do a queen size quilt in 2 1/2 inch blocks, but to me that sounds like fun.  I was inspired a couple weeks back by a quilt linked up on Link A Finish Friday, here on my blog it was a Scrappy Swoon Quilt.  You can find the post about it here and a picture of it below.

I believe her quilt was done in 3 1/2 inch blocks? But hey I like 2 1/2 better (ugly things look cute when cut in little tiny squares).  Anyway on with my story.  Since I am one of those that like to do my own thing, I'm not going to make a make a Swoon, but I love the Scrappy Idea.  I mixed it with my own star design.  Back in October I created a block as part of the Glorious Autumn Block Party and I shared my "Richard's Star", yes a little conceded to name it after myself. It was my first ever created block and I had to save it and could not think of a better name.  Anyway I digress a little.  Back to this, I made a small block and as a joke to my wife I made it LARGE (originally block is 12 1/2)

As you can see with my daughters help, we showed the little block and the HUGE block.  The plan is to make the block scrappy, the size to fit the top of our queen size bed without hanging over the side.  So I plan to replace each of the 3 colors with Turquoise, Brown, and Tan.  Like the Scrappy swoon I plan to sew and then cut the material out of my sewn together blocks of 2 1/2 inch squares.  Maybe I will have to track my progress of this and make a pattern? Who would like a "Richard's Star" Quilt?

The little box of fabric my wife had is just not enough, so I dragged Tanya shopping for fabric. OK, maybe she jumped at the idea to go fabric shopping.

So as you can see, we did good at buying turquoise today, but the brown and tan are lacking.  Maybe in a few weeks we will have to do this shopping thing again. Like any good husband, while out fabric shopping with their wife, I had to add a few things to the cart.  I will explain each of my needed adds.

On Friday I pulled a bag out that said star baby quilt gave me dimensions of 40 x 40 and I cut out 4 1/2 inch squares figuring that I could do 10 columns by 10 rows.  But with my trusty math I realized that I could only get 96 squares out of the fat quarters I had (and with miss shaped fat quarters, I did not even get that).  So the squares that I cut Friday are on the left and the purple/green stars and the white multi-colored stars on bottom right will be 2 more colors for that.  Binding will be the green stars and the larger white in the back will be the back.  Any way all these are safely back in their bag and packed back away.

On Thursday, I found a bag full of owls that said baby owl quilt.  Well being the typical person I am, I decided 2 quilts are better then one.  I cut out the fabric she gave me and made 2 small quilts shown on the top of the above and below pictures.  I then explained to my wife I wanted a brown border and then a outside border for these quilts to make them the size they were to be.  She had the idea that instead of doing both with a brown borders, one would be green and one would be brown.  The stripes in both pictures will be binding.  The solid will be a 1 inch boarder and the jacks will be a larger outer border with the larger  block fabric on bottom left in both pictures to be the backs.

Of course I could not help myself when I saw this fabric below, I bought a 1/4 yard cut of each of the 10 colors.  I unfolded only one, but all are the same way they are a gradient from a lighter to darker color.  My plan is to make a lap quilt out of them.  I would explain what I am doing but it would not make sense, I tried to explain it to Tanya and she just gave me one of those blank stares.  Any way these are now in a bag and added to my to-do pile.

Lastly,  I am determined to finish at least a lap sized orange and gray even if Tanya protests.  So part of my design I wanted a gray strip to go between all the 5 x 5 blocks of orange and gray.  So I got that gray for the strips.

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Last, but not least we have 2 contest winners to announce  This month for our LAFF giveaway the winner is LAFF #57 Quilt number 2.  Which is the quilt 1152 Tumblers from Kathy's Quilting Blog.   

As you can see it is something I would love to do as I cant resist chopping all my material into small pieces and then sewing them back together.  For the record I used Random.org to pick the LAFF from the 5 in the month of march.  Then again Random.org to pick which of the 17 quilts won.  Thanks to every one that linked up this last month.

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Last of all we had a quilt giveaway to celebrate Julia's 1st B-day.  We tried to get Julia to pick one name out of a basket for the winner and as you will see below the one name pick did not go so well, the first few tries.

As you see the concept of one winner eluded her.  She wanted every one to have a quilt.

We finely convinced her to put 1 name back into the basket and we have a winner.

Congrats to Jodi, Some may find it interesting, but she was also the last one to enter.  So congrats.  There were entrants from our Facebook page and our blog both. Thank you to all that entered.