The Wedding Quilt!

This may not look like what you would traditionally think of as a wedding quilt, but my husband and I thought it would be perfect for our friends Maestro and Joy when they got married. Maestro is retired Air Force and Joy is still on Active duty in the Air Force.  They have a little funny story, they met 16 years ago when he was enlisted and she was a young officer.  The story as I heard it is, she would not date him because he was enlisted and she was a officer.  Well all these years later they re-connected, he was now retired, neither ever married, and she finally agreed to date him!  

 Ric and I were lucky enough to join Joy and Maestro in the Cayman islands for there beautiful wedding!

Ok, back to the quilt!  Back in the late 1990's early 2000 these panels were very popular!  I made many quilts with them, taught panel Quilt classes, and was know as the panel lady in a few circles! I cut the panel into six different pieces and then put a border around each piece.  I then made 4 log cabin blocks to add into the quilt.  

One of the things I love about this quilt is the main fabrics are not what you would normally use in a patriotic quilt.  I think there was only one star fabric in the whole quilt.  Using none patric fabrics in a patriotic quilt is what I believe made this quilt pop!

I quilted a involved pattern in the long cabin blocks, (back of the quilt to show the quilting close up).

 I always label my quilts, I think of it as signing my art.  It is a great place to put a little note or memory.  This is one of my favorite labels because I  added a picture from the wedding.

Lady Bugs, My Beginning Quilt

I started teaching a beginning Quilt class last weekend. The funny thing is I always said I would never ever teach beginning quilting.  Never say never! Sew Special Quilt Shop had been asking me to teach a beginning class from the first day I went in to talk to them about teaching in the shop.  After teaching a few classes I realized, there was a need for a beginning class!

I havn't made a sampler quilt in a long time, but I really enjoyed it!

My favorite part of making this quilt was quilting it.  At first I was a little overwhelmed, I am not sure I ever machine quilted a sampler quilt. First things first, it was time for a new pair of quilting gloves!  I swear by these gloves and can not imagine machine quilting without them.

Not knowing where to start I decided to start with quilting the red sashing.  As I was quilting the sashing I started to get ideas for the blocks.

 I quilted in all the fabrics except the white background fabric. I felt like quilting the quilt in this way gave me boundaries.  It was so much fun deciding on what to do with each block.

 In all the smaller triangles in the quilt I quilted the same pattern throughout.  In the larger triangles I did another design.


I quilt the squares the same way.  In the smaller squares I quilted the same flower throughout, and a different design in the larger squares.

All in all I love how the quilt turned out.  I taught my first class of a four part series last Saturday! I think this will be a huge learning experience for me and my students.  I truly feel blessed to be able to share my knowledge and joy with my students.

Happy quilting :)

Happy Mothers Day Weekend!

Happy Mothers Day to all the Mothers, Grandmothers, Aunts, and Sisters out there!  I have decided on this Mothers day weekend it will be a quilt weekend for me!  No cleaning, well maybe dishes, and laundry but cleaning bathrooms, hardwood floors, vacuuming and mopping are not on the to do list. What is on the to do list this weekend is quilting and enjoying time with my family and that is it!

I started the weekend off right, ordered pizza for Friday night dinner and then started quilting.  I have had fabric set aside for my great niece Saylor's quilt, I have been having a hard time deciding on a pattern.  So much fabric and ideas, so little time!  I am still undecided which one will be Saylor's Quilt, but I seem to be making more of the 4 patches with the half square triangles blocks. I guess we will have to wait and see.

The other quilt I and working on this weekend is my quilt for my beginner quilt class starting next month. Yikes, I need to get the quilt done, Sew Special is already advertising it and people have signed up. The top is done, it is ready to be basted and quilted, so that is the plan for the rest of the weekend.  

Happy Mothers Day, Happy Quilt weekend!

Vinny's Quilt

This is the fourth quilt in my UFO(unfinished objects) challenge.   I am really too embarrassed to tell you how long ago I made this quilt top, but I will tell you the right baby hadn't been born, until this year. My nephew Levi and his wife Ashlee had their first baby on leap day! I am so excited to be able to give them this quilt for this precious little guy!

My sister Julie had made a similar quilt to this and I loved it, so I had decided to make one.  It is a true scrappy quilt.  I bought the bug fabric and green polka dots fabric, but all the fabric for the pieced blocks and first border came from my scraps and fabric stash.

This quilt has a lot going on as far as the fabrics and colors so I decided to quilt it with a straight line thru all the pieced blocks diagonally.  I could not decide on one color to do this so I used green thread thru the green fabric, red thread thru the red fabric and ect. I also did a little stippling around the bugs. This may make me sound old, but the hardest part of making this quilt was sewing on the binding.  The binding is black with green polka dots, the backing is a black tone on tone fabric.  To finish it I hand stitched the binding down with black thread!  All that black was tough on my eyes!

My Mom is visiting from Montana, so she will take the quilt back with her to give to baby Vinny!

Natalie's Quilt

I made this quilt for my step daughter Natalie.  The blocks are a traditional jacob's ladder, laid out in a not so traditional pattern. To make things easy I used mini charm squares for the four patches, saving me tons of cutting time. I made this quilt with Moda's Cannon fabric by Kate Spain.

I bought 10 packs of mini charm squares plus(8) 2 1/2 inch squares from my sash.

 I quilted it with flowers and leaves in the purple/orange areas, and flowers in the green/yellow fabrics. In the white I quilted lines back and forth.

This was one of those quilts that went together so smooth and so fast. I had a blast making it for so many reason. It was great to see what I could make with mini charm squares, I loved the fabrics, and colors. The quilting turned out beautiful, I hope Natalie loves it as much as I do!

I will be posting the free pattern.

Ben Came Home!

Well it has been a little busy at our house with Easter and the beautiful weather.  Saturday was spent cleaning flower beds, and planting new flowers. Trimming plants, adding new edging and all that fun stuff we get to do in the yard at spring time.  This is truly my favorite time of the year! We also had the family over for Easter lunch, we enjoyed food, pinata, cascarones. Fun was had by all.

 My oldest son, Ben, came home for Easter weekend from the Army!  Happy Happy, Joy Joy! Usually when he gets home, he is off to see his friends. Lucky me, he decided to hang out in the Ginger Hut Friday night!   As we were talking and I was doing very little quilting, he asked me where his quilts were.  I have made him many quilts over the years, but I knew what two he was talking about! I said I guess up in the attic with the rest of your stuff, and he told me he wanted to take them when he left. Awww who doesn't get teary-eyed over that? Sunday night when he was packing up to leave, he said, "Mom where are my Quilts"?  So up to the attic we climbed, as we were going up there, he was worried, I hope they are not damaged from being in the attic, I hope something hasn't nested in them! Awww... they were just fine, needed some fresh air, maybe even washed, but nothing had nested in them! Here are the two Quilts my grown son took back to Base/Post when he left.

Ben on the bed hugging Sam.  Ben's pinwheel quilt, the first large quilt I made him.

Ben's Dino Quilt! He loved dinosaurs as a kid, we lived in Maryland when he was 2 years old to 5 years old.  I swear we went to the museum of Natural History every month so Ben could see the dinosaur bones and get his Dino fix! We moved back to Maryland when he was starting 4th grade, he was so excited to show his brothers around the Natural History Museum!

As Ben left with those Quilts all I could think was, it is time I made him a adult quilt!

Bella's Block Party!

The first class I taught at Sew Special Quilts was Bella's Block Party. I love this Quilt!  I used a Moda Jelly Roll, Block Party by Sandy Gervais for the blocks.  It amazed me I made all 24 blocks from one Jelly Roll. I think this quilt looks harder to make than it was, you sew your strips together then cut out triangles from your strips.  Why a Jelly Roll works so good for this pattern is, most Jelly Rolls have two different color directions making it hard to use all of one Jelly Roll in a quilt.  This pattern works because you separate the two colors, I used the oranges for half of the block and the greens and blues for the other half.  I believe what really makes this quilt pop is having high contrast between the two halfs of the block.

I like the way the borders are done, it looks like the quilt is framed, I could not be happier with how this quilt turned out!

The pattern was out of the book Smash Your Precut Stash, This is really a great book, the directions are well written and easy to follow.

I have been able to see a couple of the quilts made in the class, I love seeing finished projects!  Bring on the show and tell!

My favorite thing is seeing my beautiful niece, who the quilt was made for, sitting under it!

The Ginger Hut!

 This is where all the fun happens! I love my little sewing house, so affectionately called "The Ginger hut"! My niece Patti came up with the name and it stuck.

When we bought our house there was this little bonus shed in the back yard.  It had electricity and A/C but little else, I thought I can work with that!  It had a drainage issue and a roof leak but other than that it was a solid little building.

First things first the roof and drainage was addressed. Then we added new lighting and started painting the roof. We hired a handyman to put up drywall and texture.  Silly me, my son Sam and I did the molding and base boards, next time I will have the handy man do that.  I painted cabinets we took out of our kitchen and painted the concrete floor. Sam made me a counter.  My husband Ric decided I needed a TV, so he gave me one and even hung it on the wall, he is so sweet! But the best day was when I got to bring in my fabric and all my sewing things that were stored under the stairs in the house.  Ric was shocked at how much stuff I had :) 

This is Fred

This is Fred, he is my resident lizard. I don't have a bug problem in the Ginger Hut, so I let him stay.  He likes to hang out with me when I am sewing, and you can not imagine how many times he has scared me.  You just don't expect to see a lizard hanging out by your rotary cutter, or in your fabric or under a quilt! He has gotten very comfortable with me and I am forever having to shoo him out of the way. I don't want to cut fabric when he is on my mat.  One good thing, he knows better than to get on my machine!

Fred has a girl, but she is shy!  Most likely we will have little Freds one day soon.

New projects!

A couple of the fun things I have been playing with are, For You by Zen Chic and Canyon by Kate Spain. Both are Moda fabric lines. I have quilts started out of both lines and can't wait to share them when I get a little further along.  

I have a lopsided log cabin quilt out of the Zen Chic fabric, I used the pinks and oranges for that quilt.  I have plans for two other quilts out of that line! 

I started a Jacob ladder Quilt out of the Canyon, the layout is super fun.  The really exciting thing about the Jacob ladder quilt is I am using the precut mini charm squares.  The quilt takes 428 - 2 1/2" squares, I am using 10 mini charm packs and will only have to cut a handful of additional squares, this makes me Happy!

 

February UFO Challenge

 I made it!  My February challenge is finished, and I gave it to my brother-in-law Dan last night. He was thrilled to get it.  The funniest thing happened when I was basting this quilt, Dan stopped by and saw what I was working on.  He loved the quilt, could not say enough about the colors and the pattern, the blocks, how it went together, on and on.  I just stood there smiling and finally said, "I am sure happy you like it, because this is your quilt".  He said "great I love it, when will it be done".

Moda Fabrics was coming out with some super cute panels in the late 90's early 2000, and I would rather have a quilt you can use verses something to hang on the wall, so I started cutting them up and making them into full size quilts.  One thing led to another and I began teaching panel classes. Some of the ladies that took my classes and some of my friends started giving me panels.  This quilt was made from one of those panels.

I can't be sure when I finished this quilt top, but I think it was 10+ years ago. Thank goodness for this challenge, I am finally finishing some of those tops I have been "aging"!

I wanted to try something a little different with the center panel piece.  I did a stitch around the diamonds to give them a look of being applique.

 In the small boarder I quilted loops, but in the bigger green boarder I quilted leaves. Over all I am very happy with how the quilt turned out. #allpeoplequilt

Simply Colorful

Today I am teaching a class at Sew Special Quilts, a nice little shop close to my house. We will be making this Simply colorful quilt. There are a couple of fun things about this quilt. First, the pieced blocks are made from one 5" charm pack! Second, this is a great quilt to do the square in a square block, if you have never done that before. I broke this quilt into two classes; the first one we will work on square in a square, the second putting the quilt on point and the borders.  If you have never put a quilt on point, this is a simple little quilt to learn on.

This quilt ended up darker than I had originally planned on it being.  The fabric I bought for the setting blocks clashed with the green in some of the pieced blocks.  I asked my class only to bring in the charm pack today so we can talk about fabric for the rest of the quilt before they buy it.  I am so excited about the class today, I love teaching and sharing my ideas and knowledge. Bonus, I teach at a great shop, and the ladies are always so great.

January UFO Challenge

All people quilt, picked #2 as the January UFO project to finish.  This is a quilt for my great, great niece! No I am not old enough to be a great, great auntie, but the truth is my niece's daughter has two babies!  So it is what it is :) I do have to admit this quilt only needed the binding and label, it was a easy one to get done.

A little background on this quilt, My great niece Tori is a barrel racer and this quilt was started for her.  Do you ever have those quilts that just don't work?  This was one of those quilts.  I found this cute cowgirl rodeo fabric maybe 10 years ago and thought it would be perfect for a quilt for Tori.  I kept trying to do different things with it and finally gave up and stuck it in a bag to "age".  When I was unpacking my fabric in my new little quilt house (more to come on that) I found it.  Happy days, because by this point Tori had a baby girl, and wa la, in one evening the quilt top was finished.  I had so much fun machine quilting it.  I did a big sun design over the pieced blocks.  I quilted around each of the pictures and then added in some double loops, trying to make them look like rope.  Overall, I love how Khloe's Rodeo quilt turned out.

A friend of mine Terri asked her quilting friends to join this challenge from all people quilt. The idea is you write down 12 UFO's, (unfinished objects).  Every month they pick a number and that is the project you complete.  It sounded like a fun way to get some of those UFO's that I have been wanting to finish done, so I signed up and here is my UFO list.   

Hello, welcome to my Blog! Let me introduce myself, my name is Susan.  I am married to a wonderful man named Ric, and we have a Brady bunch group of kids, plus three dogs.  I am originally from Montana, after retiring from the military I decided I did not want to live in the cold and was lucky enough to settle in San Antonio.

I started quilting in 1992 at the suggestion of my sister, Julie.  I was moving to Maine and she showed up with one of her “extra” sewing machines.  She added in a quilting class and enough information to give me the quilting bug!  I was an aircraft mechanic at the time, most of my co-workers were guys.  When you are a aircraft mechanic, you do step 1, step 2, step 3 and you do not deviate.  Quilting gave me so much joy and freedom!  It was a great way to connect with other women every time I moved, and the creative outlet that I craved. BONUS, if you change the pattern or don’t follow the pattern it doesn’t matter because no one will die!!!!  Oh the freedom quilters have.

I was lucky enough to be able to teach quilting from 2001-2003, but then my life got a little crazy so I had to take a hiatus from teaching.  I found so much joy in teaching, sharing my knowledge, and meeting great people, it was sad to let it go. Ric and I moved into a new house in 2013 about the same time Sew Special Quilt moved from Boerne, Texas to about five minutes down the highway from us. And to top if off, in 2015 they were looking for new quilting teachers, so now I am back to sharing my knowledge and meeting new friends!

I hope you enjoy what I have to share.  I am new at blogging, if you have any suggestions along the way please drop me a line.

Thanks, happy quilting!

Susan