Some of the other quilts I've finished....

Thanks for all the great suggestions of flower trails (see my post about tulips ).  A Maidenhair Fern asked me about the quilt in the header of my blog.   I thought I'd share some of the quilts I've made over the last couple of years.  (and check out her blog...she has some beautiful quilts and posts).

I made this one back in 2011

This quilt was my entry (and winner!!) to the 2015 Pantone Color of the Year - Marsala 

So many quilts....

This was made for a dear friend who had a crazy accident...but healed up perfectly (it was probably the gift of the quilt that magically healed her...)

And then babies were born...

This was for my niece who loves giraffes - and her gorgeous new daughter.

This was for a friend who is battling a terrible disease...but she's a warrior!

This was my Riley Blake fabric challenge entry in 2015.

But wait ...there were more...

This was for my daughter - I give her a pillow each year.  Can't you just hear the Christmas carols...

And still more............

This was another challenge.  It has writing on the bright green sashing that is a quote from Salvador Dali'.  "Never fear perfection, you'll never reach it."  What it meant to me was don't sweat the small stuff - enjoy the process and you'll get better at it as you practice.  So I quilt a lot....

This is a really snuggly quilt I made on which I finally attempted matchstick quilting.  I love that type of design for quilting - but it takes f o r e v e r to finish...

 

And I liked the style of applying the fabric to the quilt blocks so much - I made another one.

The blocks are made by appliquéing the tiny fabric bits down WHEN YOU QUILT IT!!!   That's like skipping a whole step!!!

I baste (just barely) the tiny pieces on and then while matchstick quilting - they magically get sewn on permanently.  I love the texture of the quilting and the raw edge of the fabric pieces.

What have you worked on that you haven't shown us?

Urban planning: paving roads and installing landscaping

I'm being featured on Midweek Makers!!  Check Susan's blog out!



It's on the machine... quilting is under way.  I worked two elements so far - the major thoroughfare and the green space in the top quadrant.  I like it so far.

Well, I like except where I quilted the building - that part will get unsewn.   Not loving how that worked out but I have another idea and I'll work on that tonight.  My "unsewing" will be more beautifully worked now.  I have a new tool...

Doesn't this make my hand look luxurious?

I picked this beauty up at the MidAtlantic Quilt Fest in Hampton, Va., this weekend  (on IG look for #MAQF or #midatlanticquiltfest for some GREAT photos).  I LOVE it.  The seam ripper or stiletto pops in and out.  The show was nice - I had two quilts hanging in the Modern Quilt Exhibit:

Facebook pose...

My buddies were taunting me about not touching the quilt.  It's mine... I'll lick if I want...  I was a little afraid one of the white gloved quilt police was going to bum rush me and knock me to the ground...

My dear friend Mary Menzer aka Fairly Merry, also had three quilts hanging on won a ribbon!!

This quilt DOES NOT photograph well...  It's GORGEOUS but the lighting and background washed it out here.  Different Drummer

Forgive this older photo of this quilt....  This is Quilt it Wright.  It won the ribbon - go to her website and read the story about this quilt.  It's incredibly interesting.  And - the quilt has such depth of color - I'm afraid I didn't capture it here either...

Have you been to any good shows lately?

Check out the Linky Parties on my side bar.  There are SO many good quilts in progress out there!  I'm also linking up to :

Free Motion Quilting

Urban Planning using quilts.

I'm sure you can all relate.  I've got to sew labels and sleeves on to two quilts by tomorrow morning.  I need to sandwich and quilt 3 quilts in the next week/ week and a half.  I'm drawing up two more creations that I've been pulling fabric for...  Yet.... I was compelled to finish this quilt (which has no deadline nor purpose other than to satisfy my creativity sweet tooth).  

So I found a photo of a city in Sweden from which I could not pry my eyes away.  The colors grabbed me first but then the shapes and patterns completely drug me into the rabbit hole.  It's from IG and t's a site called Daily Overview (here's the link:  Daily Overview).  I am obsessed now.  Seriously - I have so many ideas flowing...I've got to throttle myself back to keep from overdosing on marker fumes.

I felt like this lent itself so well to a quilt...I got out my trusty graph paper and went to town.  Not finding my markers....I had to settle for a highlighter and a pencil and just labeled where I wanted each color.  I decided it use 1.5 inch raw edges to make gridding this out a bit easier.   While it somewhat follows this photo - I took artistic license with it to make it doable for me.

That's right - I own a pen that is... an eraser.  And I use it A LOT...

Of course, as soon as I finished this process, I nearly tripped over my markers.  But I wasn't going back and redoing this - it works fine the way I colored and labeled it.  I used that eraser marker a lot in this process before I colored in the blocks.

Once I got to putting it all together, I was glad I selected the 1.5 inch size.  It made putting everything together much more simple and clean.  I don't usually sweat matching points but this needed that precision.  Once I kept adding to it - I realized I would make some bigger changes to the bottom left quadrant.  I just wasn't feeling the layout on my paper.  Laziness?  Maybe.  I am just dying to get it sandwiched up and quilt it...  I think I will add a border of the darker gray around the quilt to finish it off.  It's approximately 42 inches by 30 inches before anything else.

This was before I used the grid work.  I thought I could improv it but when these went together, I felt the more rigid grid would look better and give it more uniformity.

Building streets and buildings...

I'm really pleased with the results so far....  But...now back to the sweat shop.  Those sleeves are sewing themselves on!!

I'm going to link up to several Linky parties this week - look at my side bar to join in.  Here are some posts from some of those Linky parties that I especially loved:

Rainbow mini swap progress

A gift for a 90 year old

Winning!!!

7200 Hexies

Elna Supermatic

Spell it with Moda

Brown sofa

Gorgeous Eye Quilt

Quilted Lanyard Tutorial