Mug Rugs

Because life can throw us curveballs, I try to never leave anything to the last minute.  These mug rugs will be part of Valentine's gifts for each of my daughters.  One is a reader and had a pet rabbit when she was a teen; the other has a love affair with foxes.  These will be given with a coordinating mug and other gifties.

The book is paper-pieced, it's a free pattern from Kate Basti called Tall Tales Quilt Block  For the fox, I shrunk the Fancy Fox pattern by Elizabeth Hartman using my mad math skills!

May your bobbins always be full,

Plus Sugar Skull Quilt is complete

I really love how this Plus Quilt turned out.

A close-up of the quilting and some of the fun fabric.

 I used most of the leftover fabric on the quilt back.  I made this with my daughter Sharon in mind.  She loves the Sugar Skull motif.  I'm going to show it off this week at our TVMQG meeting on Thursday.  And on Friday I'm leaving for a 10-day baseball tour.  I guess she'll be getting this quilt sometime in July.

The quilt measures 60x60"

The quilting is Bubbles.

My LAQ is Janiel Miller.

May your bobbins always be full,

Plus Skull Quilt Top and Back are ready for the LAQ

My constant companion, Ben!

I thought I was finished with this quilt top until I took this photo.  To me, the error was glaring, but I decided to "sleep on it" to see how I felt in the morning.  Although my daughter most likely wouldn't have cared, I decided to fix my mistake.  Below is the corrected quilt top!

I had enough leftovers to patch together 10 squares of 5-inch strips, by adding the Ikea number fabric, I was able to use them all.  I think it makes an interesting quilt back.

May your bobbins always be full,

Plus Skull Quilt

A quilt update on the Skull Quilt.  I've been cutting pieces and yesterday I laid them out on the garage floor.

The dogs were there to "help"!

After taking some photos, these are from my IG, I moved the solids to the edges, and thought that was a good improvement.  I pinned all the rows together, and killed my back!  They're ready for stitching but first I'm going for a massage.  I have a groupon, and I'm using it!

May your bobbins always be full,

A new Plus Quilt

One of my daughters likes the Sugar Skull motif.  I've been collected some of those fabrics and some "normal" skull fabric, so I could make her a quilt.  One of my challenges was a quilt design that would show off the skulls.

I settled on a Plus Quilt design as the best bet.  When I pulled the fabric, I added some low volume but I thought it needed more, so I added four solids, shown in the photo below.

I think this will make a good balance.  Now, to the cutting mat!

May your bobbins always be full,

Mandalay Half Rectangle Triangle quilt is finished!

Another quilt is complete, and I'm so happy.  I love this quilt.  It's the second time I've done a HRT quilt, but I don't think it'll be the last.  The other one was a kite quilt.

The quilting by my LAQ is great.  This photo shows the Kona Cadet I used on the back, better than the last photo.

I used all the leftover Mandalay fabric to piece the quilt back.  I sure hope my daughter likes this quilt,  If not, I'll be glad to keep it!  This is a queen-size, 85" by 88.5".

Now I'm free to start some fresh projects.  I hate to have WIPs hanging over my head.  I think I'm going to make some baby quilts, one for a specific baby and others to have on hand.  You know how babies have a habit of popping up!  I need to be prepared.

May your bobbins always be full,

I've got a stack of quilts to bind...

And they're all queen-size.  From the top, Autumn Leaves 95 x 95", Vintage Modern 70 x 87", and Mandalay HSR 85 x 88.5".

It took me about 4 days to get to this point.  I had thought I'd have all the bindings sewn on by now, so much for thinking!

The colors of the bindings aren't showing up very well from the top, they ar Kona Wheat, Kona Black and Kona Cadet.

Now, I'm ready to start on the first one.  Photos to follow, of course.

May your bobbins always be full,

Scrappy Scrapalious Quilt is finished!

I spent most of the month of March stitching this quilt top together.  I used a lot, not all of my print scraps.  I call this design Brick by Brick.  I tried to alternate light and dark, I was semi-successful.

Photographing this monster, it's 92" x 90". was a challenge.  The photos taken on the grass were only OK, and these on the tennis courts required seven clothes pins!  Seven!

For the quilt back I stitched together fat quarters of Make Life Sweet by Sweetwater.

I attempted to get both dogs to pose with the folded quilt, Ben was the only one to co-operate!  This photo shows the bounce of red I added to the binding.  It's such a large quilt I added two extra scraps, I'm loving the look.

I believe this quilt is staying at my house.  I currently sleep under a quilt that I purchased over 15 years ago before I started making quilts; my youngest daughter, Sharon, has advised me that I need to sleep under one of my quilts!  Bossy, bossy, bossy.

BTW, I now have no UFOs!

May your bobbins always be full,

Los Angeles Quilt Show and Fiber Art Fest at Crafted.

Yesterday, my daughter Sharon and I went to the Second Los Angeles Quilt Show, it was held at Crafted in San Pedro at the Port of Los Angeles.  We went last year and were very impressed; second year was great, too.  I was going to enter a quilt this year, but as I told Sharon, "This hasn't been my favorite year", maybe next year.  I didn't take a photo of all the quilts, but I'm going to show you many of them.

Sharon thinks I need to make one like this.  Isn't it beautiful?

Another beauty.  I love giraffes!

Such a  great story.

Lovely quilt, sorry for the blurry explanation.

I love this simple quilt.  And the name!

What a wonderful quilt, and her tag is great!

Another blurry tag.  These are applique quilts, made from whole cloth, in the manner they make them in Pakistan.

May your bobbins always be full,