Memorial Quilt

This week my sister-in-law and her husband picked up the memorial quilt I made for my mother-in-law.  And brought it to Arizona with them.  It was made for my husbands youngest brother who passed away suddenly about 2 years ago.  She had asked me to make the quilt for her.  She brought me his sheriff shirts and a shirt from when he was a county jailer, and a few kaki pants.  Not much to work with.  But it would be nice to feature his shirt badges in a quilt.  I took a couple shirts from my father-in-law's closet.  And raided my homespun collection.  Thought about what to do for 4 or 5 months.  Then finally cut into his clothes and started in.  She called me last night right after she received it.  A very tear filled phone call.  Here's a few pictures of the quilt.

The pictures where taken before I completed the binding.  I struggled with how to label the quilt was going to have it machine embroidered but thought it would look to boughten.  Then found a cross stitch on line app and printed out a pattern.    Think it stays with the homespun feel of the quilt.

A Great Find

What have  I been working on.  Washing, ironing, folding, and cutting fabric. About a month ago I bought these 5 grey tubs at a garage sale.  I was on my way home and turned at a garage sale sign went to that garage sale and was trying to find my way back to the main road when I happened upon a second garage sale so I stopped at that one also.  I found a couple things and was paying when I noticed these 5 grey tubs sitting there and the word fabric written in sharpie on the top of the lid.

I ask is there fabric in the tubs.  The 2 ladies explained that the tubs belonged to their grandmother and she was a prolific quilter.  She had passed away and since no one in the family sewed they were selling her fabric.  They wanted to sell all of it to one person for 50 dollars.  So I peeked in the top tub.  It had black and grey double knit on top and other non quilt fabric yuck nothing great.  I checked the second tub.  Filled to the top with quilting fabric.  Large pieces, name brands as bad as the first tub was this one made up for it. Not wanting to really dig through all the tubs I peeked in the third tub it also had quilt fabric in it.  I gave it a quick smell test.  No smoke or musty smell.  Great, it didn't matter what was in the last 2 tubs I was in love with the fabric in these 2 tubs.  So I bought it with out looking at the last 2 tubs.  I really wanted to break out in a happy dance.  I was so excited with this great find.

What did I get for my 50 dollars........
the 2 large bags of fiberfill  and a pkg of quilt batting that was sitting beside the tubs
5 large grey plastic tubs
15 spools of Coats and Clark sewing thread
4 spools of  hand quilting thread
3 doll clothes patterns
lots of fusible interfacing all kinds, with the directions grandma was an applique quilter
Zippers, lace, rick rack, buttons and a variety of other sewing trims
about 20 orphan blocks
A tub of non quilty fabric that I kept
(the rest of the non quilty I didn't think I would use went right to the Goodwill)Before  I could change my mind on it.
2 queen sizes flat sheets new in the pkg yet
and about 3 gallons of smaller fabric scraps I still have to cut up into squares and strips


Now to the good stuff.....................
160 yards (yes I measured) of what I graded as quilt worthy fabric  it comes out to about .31cents @ yard.
Pictures of a few of my goodies. I'm guessing it's older fabric at least 5 to 6 years old I don't think any of it is really old.  Mostly all small scaled prints that I love, tone on tone no novelty prints I just could not be happier with it.  The Grandmother had good taste in fabric!!!

This is the best piece.......9 yards of this fabric what a great neutral.

Not bad for me I don't usually go to garage sales.

Green Blocks

So May is coming to an end and I still have so much green scraps I could use up.  I started with the 2 projects that use solid fabric.  The 8  granny square blocks I made and I still have a lot of strips left.  I'm thinking just all green blocks would make a nice quilt and I have lots of green solid fabric.  But time is short so I have to put the brakes on to that idea.  Just to busy with work and outside fun during the summer to get to much sewing done.

Here are some of the blocks from great granny all mixed together.

 Made a big star block out of green.

 A few windmill and double hour glass blocks out of green.

 And 8 bird boxes blocks.  I sewed on the borders and checked out how they are looking with all the colors together.

I can't believe that almost 5 months of the rainbow scrap challenge is over already.   My projects are starting to really come together.

Rainbow Scrap Challange Last Purple Blocks

I can't believe how many purple blocks I made this week.

I made 4 purple bird boxes blocks.  I then worked on the sashing
Here are a few of the blocks with the sashing.  I feel pretty good about the
way this quilt is turning out.  Kind of a combination of a couple different quilts
that I seen on pinterest.

9 star blocks
5 windmill blocks

 6 hour glass blocks

And 5 more horny crumb blocks.  I just sew up all the odds and ends up at the end of the month

and I end up with what I end up with.

Linking up with everyone else doing the RSC at soscrappy HERE

20'' Star

The 4th block of the star quilt is done.  I love putting these blocks up on the design wall.  Its coming together so nice.  And the scrap fabric I'm using for the back ground I'm still happy with.  Love finding a perfect place for that fabric I never thought I would use.(I know it's a little funky but I really hoard my white/neutral background fabrics hate having to buy more)I'm thinking maybe trying a raspberry block.  Fabric that's kinda pink and kinda purple.  Thinking ahead I'm going to make 9 blocks so green, red, orange, yellow and then I'll need one more so I'm going to audition raspberry.

This is one of my on going rainbow scrap challenge projects for 2014.  To check out what everyone else is sewing on check them out here at Soscrappy.

April is Purple for RSC

April is purple month.  Last month I had time to do some fabric organizing and sorting.  I now have my cut strips and squares sorted by color and then by size.  It is very handy.  I do have some organizing left to do with a few of the smaller squares.

I started with these granny square blocks this month.  I'm using different scrap solids for the outside of the blocks.  I have quite a few different colors and none of them big enough for a project. So I thought this would be a great way to use them up.

linking up with everyone else doing the rainbow scrap challenge HERE

Aiming For Accuracy

Week 2 of my finish a flimsy quilt challenge.  I got one done last week just a little late in posting it.   This quilt was a quilt along from last Fall called Aiming for Accuracy.  It was a free quilt a long from Michele Foster the pattern is now for sale on craftsy HERE for 12$.  Thanks to this quilt I finally learned how to set my sewing machine to a perfect 1/4 seam.  Got out the manual and figured it out.  Since then my quilt piecing has been going sooooooooo sooooooo much better.  I was amazed when
I sewed this quilt and all the seam lined up perfect.  Before My seams where always alittle wider then they should've been.  Making all my blocks a little small so learning to set the sewing machine has let me increase my enjoyment of quilting.  Back to the quilt.  I had one seam across the quilt to sew yet.  Then add and piece the 3 borders.  Cut the binding and the top is now sewed up.

Benjamin Franklin Quilt

This weekend I worked on some BOM blocks  from the Benjamin Franklin Mystery Quilt by Erik at Homemade Coffee Break ezine.  I found the BOM in December and fell in love with it.  But it was started I'm guessing at least a year ago.  They are on block 20 with 2 or 3 months left.  So I have some catching up to do.  This weekend I made another 7 blocks so I have 11 blocks done, almost.  I may redo one or 2 (top center). A couple of these need sashing/borders on them but,  I'm waiting on the borders till I get a better feel on the color/fabric placement when the quilt layout will be revealed in a couple months.  And they all need a good press and alittle trim.  For fabric I started with a white fabric that has a red pin strip on it.  Then picked a navy and a red as main fabrics.  Then I fill in with scraps.  I try to use a little of the main navy and red in each block so that even though it's a scrappy quilt something pulls it all together.