Becky's quilt obsession

I took time today to clean up my area a bit, and uncovered a really old UFO. I'm taking a break today from the RWB coins, after doing some sorting of them. The summer of 1979 was the only summer I was able to be home with my kids. The program I had been teaching closed in May, and I was going back to school in August. My DD would have been 5 then, and I remember making a lot of doll clothes with her standing right next to me, giving me directions. She wanted a quilt for her dollies, so I bought 2 pillow panels of Precious Moments, a boy and a girl. I appliqued both the front and the back panels to white fabric - 50% poly, putting a piece of poly batting underneath. I then quilted the panels, sewed borders on the boy, and hand quilted it. I did wonder why the quilting on the boy didn't puff up. Oh, I had never taken a quilting class, and only had read a few quilting books from the library. Somewhere between the boy and the girl, I decided I didn't need to use a hoop to quil...

I'm trying a new template color, as I thought the rose sides didn't go with the RWB theme of this blog. I hope you like it. This picture is of the stacks of coins sent by HeartStringers. I've made some personal goals about creating quilts with these strips. Remember, I'm also a Stashbuster, so that is part of my goals. 1. Create as many different quilts out of these coins as my little brain can think up. 2. Use up as much as possible of this bin - the "Americana" bin, including the blocks and panels that are kept in here. 3. If I remove any fabric from the "stacks", I have to use it all - or cut it into strips for the scrap bins. 4. Nothing is to be returned to the stacks. I don't think I'll miss them. Becky

I finished the second top out of RWB coins from the HeartStrings group. It was indeed a lot of borders. I ended up adding another full border of coins, but wonder if I should cut off half of the last ones on the two sides. That would reflect the skinnier navy strips I used. The quilt is still a little wider than I would like, although it fits the measurements given on the Quilt of Valor Foundation website. I ended up using most of a second group of coins that had about the same colors in it. I removed the darkest blue from them (don't worry, it will be used later), so I wouldn't have the "missing tooth" effect from them. They brought in more bright blue, which was a good addition. After reading your comments on the other postings, I went ahead and used the other 2 skinny parts of the panel in the outer border - the flag and the watermelon. If you zoom on the picture, you can see little red ants crawling on the top edge of the watermelon. It reminds me of ...

I worked some more on the second RWB coin quilt yesterday, and added some more rounds. The navy borders blend better than in the picture. The size is about 46 x 54, so I need to add another round, and to figure out a way to add length. The next navy border will probably be wider on the top and bottom, and skinny on the lengthwise ones. Right now I've used up all the coins from this particular group, but will be picking out some others that blend well. You would think that they all would blend, but it isn't so. Some HeartStringers must tend toward the toned or greyed colors - the ones I call country blue and the like. Others (like me) have more of the clear tones. Some have already blended the strips with both tones and clear colors in them, like the ones in the first RWB quilt. It is really neat to see all the different varieties, and try to make them play well together. For the life of me, I can't figure out why I'm making a quilt that is all borders - I hate adding ...

I have 2 design walls. On one, I have the RWB top waiting for borders to be sewn on. I didn't have much time to sew this weekend, and for me borders take a long time. I wanted to play a few minutes, so cut up more of the panel I used for the soldier block, and played with some coins. This group of coins arrived early, were shorter, with thicker coins, and only a little bit of blue in them. I'm not sure who sent them. The fabrics were similar to the RWB Block swap we did earlier in HeartStrings. They were all just sitting together on the cutting table. Humm - I think they go well together. Now I have something on the second design wall to play with. Hopefully I will finish the other top up tomorrow. Happy Quilting, Becky

I finished this quilt top - flimsy - so thought I could start on the Red-White-Blue (RWB) Chinese coins that were sent to me from HeartStrings members as part of the RWB project from Memorial Day to July 4th. I received quite a stack, and was eager to dig in. One "squishy" was from May, and she made two sets of coins that were very similar, and tied them up with a selvage and a label - the only reason I know who sent this bunch.I used a template my DH made for me, and trimmed the coins, then added HSTs to the edges to make a square. This is the block made of 4 strips. I should have counted better, because I ended up with only 11 blocks, and I needed 12. Rather than try to "match" strips to make a 12th block, I decided to make a star block instead. I have a habit on including a star in every quilt I make, even if it is on the back side. I asked a friend to embroider a block (she does awesome machine embroidery) but she didn't have time now, and her machine was p...

Okay, I'm being brave and starting a blog. Please bear with me while I try to figure this out.