Welcome friends!

This is my entry in the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  I'm entering it in the Bed Quilts category.  Once you have checked out my quilt, make sure to check out the rest of the quilts in the festival!



If you are a regular, you've already seen this quilt about a million times, but it is the one I am most proud of at the moment.

My Valor Quilt:

This quilt was all about the timing.  I had been starting to get the idea into my head that I wanted to make a donation quilt, and then I found out that my city was planning to open a brand new Veterans Memorial Hospital and were in need of bed quilts!


Two days later, I was still debating whether or not to jump in and make something when I heard about the Something New Sampler going on over at A Cute Life.  That sealed the deal for me.  It was perfect - I got to practice all kinds of new styles and techniques that I otherwise would probably never have tried.


Since the quilt was going to someone I didn't know, I didn't feel pressured to get everything perfect or try to match someone else's personal style.


I got to practice all kinds of new quilting styles.  


I got to use mostly fabric that was given to me (for free!) by a friend and all of my batting was donated by another friend.  The red stars and blue stars are present in every block.


AND the whole thing was going towards a good cause.


Look how great the quilt turned out!  I love it and was a little sad to let it go - luckily I took tons and tons of pictures.


The best part for me was the reaction I got from others when I turned in the quilt.  I dropped it off with the lady who was in charge of donations for our area and she took it to her meeting to present it (along with some other finished quilts) to the rest of the representatives and the people in charge of the whole thing.  She called me afterwards and positively gushed about it for 15 minutes straight.


She said everybody loved it and in the end she brought it back home with her so she could get some pictures of it.  She was very specific about the parts she loved and asked lots of questions.  Isn't it great to get praise from a fellow quilter?  Someone who really understands how much work goes into what you do and can appreciate all the little tiny parts?  I couldn't wipe the grin off my face that whole day.


Making quilts is such a satisfying hobby.  I later found out that my quilt was one of the quilts on display at the opening social for the Veteran's Home.  Such an honor.


This quilt was so much fun to make and I'm so grateful things worked out the way they did.  Amy's quilt along was perfect and so much fun!  I learned tons of new things and plan to use some of them again and again.


I used Maureen Cracknell's method for Quilt-as-you-go and once I got the kinks worked out (clean your machine OFTEN and be super careful ironing raw batting), it worked beautifully.

Of course, I had to make something for my moms for Mother's Day this year.  For my mom, I had to make another table runner to go along with the fall/winter runner I gave her for Christmas.  This time it was a spring/summer runner.
Unfortunately, I don't have ANY photos from any of the steps along the way.  I must have been too busy sewing!  But I have lots and lots of finished photos...

For the Spring side, I didn't want to spend tons of time coming up with my own original idea.  Fortunately, I had the perfect pattern already available.  I won a copy of Quiltmaker magazine from Ribbon Candy Quilt Company - who is the designer of the super cute "Skinnies" pattern line.  The magazine included a pattern for this "Spring Skinnie."

I adapted the pattern a little bit to make it fit the longer table runner and I think it turned out gorgeous!  It was fun to pull out all my spring color scraps and do some matching.

The entire thing is appliqued, except for the borders, of course.


For the Summer side, I really had no clue what to do.  I searched Pinterest and eventually found this pin on one of my boards that kind of stuck:

Click on picture for link

In the end I decided to go Red, White and Blue - so this runner is perfect for the 4th of July.

Once I had decided to do the Circle of Geese blocks, I sat down with some colored pencils and several small copies of the pattern and experimented with color.  These are the three blocks I came up with, all from the same pattern!

 For quilting, I knew that I wanted something that would work for both sides of the table runner.  Last time I used fusible fleece, so I was able to do custom quilting for each side, then fuse it all together.  This time I wanted to use leftover batting that I already had on hand, plus I wanted a thinner runner.

 I wasn't able to get swirls out of my head so I ended up using Angela Walters Concentric Circles design from her book Free Motion Quilting with Angela Walters.  I was a little nervous about it because I had spent tons of time practicing it on paper and wasn't too impressed with my results.  Happily, the design looks MUCH better once it is actually quilted.  I really love how the quilting turned out.  It is dense, which is good for a table runner.  It also adds a new level of texture without interfering with the quilt design, so it is perfect.

I decided to try my hand at curved corners and they turned out great!  Because of the curves, I used bias cut binding for the first time ever (sheepish grin) and it worked beautifully.  Plus I didn't have to worry about mitered corners!  Score!

I auditioned several different fabrics for the binding - some of which probably would have been amazing, but in the end I went with this blue because it seemed the safest.  I really wanted something that would work well for BOTH sides.
And there you have it.  Another table runner.  It's about 15" x 38"


For my sweet mother-in-law, I embellished a few dish towels.  One can never have too many dish towels (especially my MIL.  She loves dish towels).  These are perfect for summer:
 

I think the watermelons are my favorite.


Up next... Father's Day!