Quilting is in my Blood

My January 2022 One Monthly Goal is to make a 60″ x 60″ quilt top using units from an old Work-in-Progress that will become a donation quilt in 2022. I was a part of Alyce@ Blossom Heart Quilts‘ Bee Hive for three years and in 2019, I had Bee Hive members make scrappy Treasure Hunt block units that I will use in this quilt (read the details about these blocks here). Here are 36 of the units made in 2019 by Bee Hive members and me. I had a total of 84 usable units and need 100 to make the 60″ square quilt.

Here are the units for four more Treasure Hunt blocks that I recently made that I will mix in with the other 84 units:

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts: Jan 2022 OMG.

I am joining in on Yvonne@Quilting Jetgirl’s #2022PlanningParty and also Cheryl@Meadow Mist Design’s Best of 2021 Linky Party. Let’s start with looking back at 2021 and sharing my five favorite quilt projects beginning with my Ombré Lotus Quilt which is definitely my 2021 finish. I’ve made several ombré quilts this past year, and I have loved making every single one of them. In case anyone wants to know, my second favorite project in 2021 is my Northern Lights Wonky Stars quilt 🙂

Over the past three years I have made at least one quilt for donation to a worthy project. My favorite donation quilt of 2022 is my Positivity Quilt.

I continue to enjoy making animal quilts, I’m a big fan of Elizabeth Hartman’s patterns, and I love making Christmas projects, so the Christmas North Stars quilt below easily qualifies as one of my 2021 favorites:

I absolutely love the rainbow and color gradient patterns designed by Kristy@ Quiet Play. So far I’ve only made one of her patterns but have been a part of her pattern club for the past two years and have many of Kristy’s patterns saved for future quilt projects. I decided to make her Geometric Cat the center block for the Cat & Birds quilt I made for my good friend, Kristen, when she was pregnant with her baby Lucy. Below is an adorable photo of Lucy enjoying her quilt which is certainly a 2021 favorite:

I have made several mini quilts in 2021, and I used to struggle cutting small diameter dowels with a folding pruning saw in order to insert the trimmed dowel into hanging corners on the back of my mini quilts. There would be sawdust everywhere and the jagged ends would have to be sanded down. But when I was getting ready to hang Cleo the Llama mini quilt (click here to see her husband Jack–scroll to the end of the post), my best friend Mary suggested I try cutting the dowel with the large pruning shears used to cut branches and shrubs. It worked like a charm! Cleo is a 2021 favorite because I absolutely love llamas and also because I named her after my mom! (And Jack after my dad!)

2022 Plans

Now onto what I hope to accomplish in 2022. I have four projects that I guarantee won’t be completed in 2022, but I plan to make significant headway on all of them.

Temperature Quilts

I’ve wanted to make a temperature quilt for the past couple years but then the pandemic hit, and I didn’t particularly want to commemorate 2020 or 2021, but hopefully we’ll move into endemic status in the coming year, and I’ve decided to start making THREE temperature quilts. One is for me in northern New Mexico, one for my stepdaughter who lives in California, and one for my stepson who lives in Washington. I will use the same Kona solids to depict each temperature range, and it will be so much fun to see the quilts next to each other and compare the different temperatures for each state. I’m going to use 2″x4″ finished flying geese in all three quilts.

Quilt Your Life

I’ve recently joined Kitty@NightQuilter’s Quilt Your Life Crew. I’m going to document distance on my relatively new Peloton bike. I’ve been riding it at least 10 minutes a day (which for me has been a little over 3K) for the past eight weeks but hope to increase both my daily distance and time on my Peloton in 2022. I have an idea for my Quilt Your Life quilt, but I am still refining my design.

Quilts for Special Occasions

• a high school graduation quilt for my great-nephew, Colby
• an I Spy quilt to celebrate Lucy’s first birthday in April
• a Pineapple mini quilt for my sister-in-law, Sharon’s 70th birthday also in April
• a Butterfly Effect English Paper Piecing quilt for my best friend, Mary’s birthday in October using a quilt kit I bought in April from Pink Door Fabrics.

Donation Quilt

I’m going to turn an old Work-in-Progress from 2019 into a donation quilt in 2022. It is the Treasure Hunt quilt, and I had Bee Hive members make scrappy blocks that I will use in this quilt (read the details about these blocks here). I’ve recently made 16 more blocks so that the quilt can be finished at 60″x60″.

To Be Determined

I’m going to leave the rest of 2022 open. It’s likely there will be more ombré projects, more mini quilts, animal projects and of course Christmas projects.

Happy New Year!!!

In early November I finished a 54” x 54” throw-size Christmas North Stars quilt (pattern by Elizabeth Hartman) that is primarily for my sister-in-law, Sharon, but is also my brother, Bill’s Christmas present this year. Last year I made a North Stars Quilt to include in my Christmas decorating that has a white polar bear, two otters, a walrus, and a seal. When I showed Sharon the pattern and told her she could pick four of the blocks, she chose the muskox, the foxes, the reindeer, and the bear but requested it be a brown bear instead. We decided to use a muted Christmas palette of some dark and olive green, red with a tinge of brown, cream/brown, gold, and taupe/grey. The above photo is on their couch right after they opened my package that I sent from New Mexico to California.

I ordered some fabrics from Tim Holtz’ Christmastime collection that captured that palette perfectly (I especially love the Christmas Carols fabric that I used in all four blocks that looks like it was printed on old parchment), and used several fabrics from my stash including a cardinal fabric that I fussy cut for flying geese units in the bear and foxes blocks. Below are close-ups of the bear and foxes blocks before quilting where the cardinals are easier to see as well as the brown and red grunge fabrics used in these blocks:

I used several different Essex Linen fabrics in the Muskox and Reindeer blocks that provide such wonderful textural interest:

The background fabric for all four blocks is Essex Homespun Silver and the sashing fabric which is subtly different than the background fabric is Essex Homespun Charcoal. I love the texture of these fabrics, but they definitely fray easily. Sharon specifically requested that the quilt be backed in minky fabric which I found at the Etsy shop CaliQuiltCo. I sent the quilt top and the grey minky fabric off to Jessica who has quilted a couple other projects for me and who coincidentally lives about four miles from Sharon and Bill (too bad I can’t get air travel miles for all the miles my quilt flew on airplanes!). Jessica, who is on Instagram as @sugarmillquilts, did a fabulous job with the quilting using Glide Celery thread which is a gorgeous shiny light green thread and the edge-to-edge quilting pattern called Fire in the Jungle worked wonderfully for this quilt. The photo below shows the beautiful quilting on the minky back:

Since this was the first time I’d used a minky backing fabric, I was pretty nervous about binding this quilt and asked for advice from other quilters on binding with a minky quilt backing. I was encouraged to treat it like regular quilting cotton but to stay-stitch 1/8” from the edge to stabilize its fluffiness. And that worked like a charm! I did end up using a wider binding on the minky side of the quilt to further contain the fluff that tends to shed. 

Below is a close-up of the foxes after quilting that shows off the Glide Celery thread:

We recently had our shed repainted, so I thought the quilt would look nice against the bright terracotta background. Since this photo was taken, I’ve had a black curtain rod that extends up to 120 inches mounted at the top of the shed to be able to more easily photograph quilts outside without using duct tape!

I’ll close this post with a photo of Sharon holding her quilt. Doesn’t it make quilters feel wonderful when their quilts are loved and appreciated?

Linking up to Meadow Mist Designs: Favorite Finish November 2021.

I will make this quick since it’s December 1st, and I still have a lot to do to get ready for Christmas, especially since I’ve decided to squeeze in a couple more small holiday projects. My December 2021 One Monthly Goal is to make a Cardinal mini quilt using Amy Friend@During Quiet Time’s paper-pieced Cardinal block. I’m waiting on some Kona Cardinal fabric to arrive (don’t worry I have a back-up plan of using Kona Chinese Red fabric if my order gets lost in the holiday mail). This mini quilt will be in honor of my sister, Jackie, who loved to watch cardinals out her kitchen window in Dearborn, Michigan.

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts: December 2021 OMG.

My November 2021 One Monthly Goal was to make a reindeer mini quilt. A few months ago I purchased the Sleigh Ride Sew-Along foundation paper piecing pattern from Juliet at The Tartankiwi. She is one of my favorite FPP designers, and when I saw her Sleigh Ride pattern, I really wanted to make a table runner with three reindeer and a sleigh to add to my holiday decor this year, but a mini quilt with just one reindeer was much more doable.

If you read many of my blog posts, you’ll know that I tend to quilt very minimally, but I had fun experimenting with different kinds of quilting with this mini quilt. First I did some quasi straight line quilting using a light grey thread  (Aurifil Dove 2600 50 wt) on all four borders with the width between the lines slightly varied. Next I outlined the reindeer with the same grey thread and then I also stitched around the inner perimeter of the reindeer with matching brown and gold-brown thread. And THEN I got a little adventuresome! I wanted to add some texture to the reindeer’s fur and remembered Yvonne @Quilting Jetgirl sharing about thread-painting her amazing Stone Sheep mini quilt. Now she used many colors and weights of thread that she explains in detail in this Auribuzz Thread Matters: Pairing Thread Weight and Needles post. I only used a brown Mettler 712 50 wt thread, but I still like the texture created with this thread. Initially I did some free motion quilting to “paint” the fur texture, but because this mini quilt was only 15.5″ by 15.5″, I actually had more success using my walking foot and flipping the quilt around keeping my needle down.

Finally I hand-quilted some gold stars using DMC 5282 gold metallic floss (most definitely NOT a friendly thread for hand quilting!). I also added a barely visible french knot eye in DMC black floss.

All I need to do now is to cut some dowel to hang this mini quilt. I had planned to take it to my office but decided to keep him home. So instead I made TWO mini quilts to take to my office that I will share about tomorrow in my To-Do Tuesday post with Texas Quilt Gal.

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts: November 2021 OMG Finish.