Competition

 Readers,

I know you can't believe I have another quilt to post but I do.  I completed this eye-spy quilt for a special couples baby quilt.  I taught both Zack and Cassie  and I worked with the Zack's mom.  She is a wonderful counselor for the vocational center in Winona.  Cassie taught for a year at Winona but decided she would rather be a nurse so went back to school and got a nursing degree.  I taught Zack for 3 years.  When he and his friend Stefan came in your day was better.  I looked forward to their period every day. Zack went on to be a minister.   Zack and Cassie recently had a sweet baby girl...I did not get this finished in time for the birth...but it is done now.  I delivered it to the grandmother today.  Both Cassie and Zack were athletic, multi-sport participants and Cassie went on to play softball for Millsaps where she pitched a no-hitter.  So I put lots of sports fabrics in since they both love sports.  They both pull for state so that is in there too!  I hope Emery enjoys using it for many years.  

Quilted this with a swirly heart edge to edge design.  Bound this with one of Tula Pinks tiny stripe fabrics.  

Sew on,

Terry

Anticipation

 Hey all,

The quilt I quilted to test the tension was this Christmas quilt that I made using blocks left from a Bonnie Hunter mystery that went awry.  It was NOT Bonnie's fault.  I changed the colors then didn't like the result in the reveal.  This is what the quilt was supposed to look like....

This image is from Bonnie's web site:  Click here to buy her pattern.  This was her Allietare mystery quilt from about 6 years ago.  

Back when Bonnie designed this I did not like the color combination resulting from my change once the blocks were put together, so I took the star blocks and set them aside. I made a quilt out of the other blocks and donated it to the junior league of Winona for their fundraiser.  Those star blocks were set aside, and periodically I would run across them and think, I need to figure something out for them, but never seemed to set aside the time to do it.  

So last year I took the star blocks to Quiltville Inn and the group of ladies there helped me come up with this setting.  

So if you don't like how something is going...don't be afraid to change things around.  Loved both the blocks individually, just not together.  Ended up with two great quilts from this pattern.  This was the first quilt I quilted after the tension issues.  So out of practice on a long-arm, but I have a number of tops done, so I should get some of my skills back soon.  This quilt is for me, so if it is not perfect it is ok.

The back has numbers 1-25 and is called countdown to Christmas, so Will named this one Anticipation ;

So thanks Will!

Sew on,

Terry

Nestled

This quilt was made for Chloe Bell.  She is a precious little girl, and I wanted to try a stack and whack, one block wonder quilt. At the Spring Gathering 2020 in February several of the Starkville ladies told about their one block wonder quilts.  I was intrigued.  A couple of weeks later at the beginning of Spring Break Lauren, a good friend,  and I were at the West Alabama Quilt Guild's Show in 2020 just before the world shut down.   I saw this fabric at one of the venders and I thought was so soft and pretty and thought it looked like something a little girl would like.  So I bought the fabric and some pink to go with it, as I knew that was her favorite color.  

So I read Magic Stack and Whack book a couple of times, and made my half hexies.  Then I was kind of stuck on how to arrange them.  My friend Marilyn Rose, who has made a lot of one block wonder or stack and whack quilts met with me to go to a quilt store in Vicksburg.  She talked to me about design and layout options.  When I got home I played with the math a bit and decided to put a small panel in the center showing a big piece of the fabric.  I also put some on the borders, making sure the prints were right direction.  

Edit:  Thought I would add this photo from when it was on the long-arm as it shows the back.

Nestled is on the left!

Then I assembled a big print for the back then folded it up as The Harmon Quilt was on the long arm machine.  After the tension problems on the long arm, I didn't want to put another quilt on and have to rip out more quilting.  So I decided to let it sit till school was out.  Once school was out, I watched a number of YouTube videos on setting the tension on an Innova machine and decided mine probably needed a lube job and deep clean, so I ordered what I needed.  After a trip to San Diego, the stuff came in and I rewatched the videos then added lube to the machine and set the tension like they said.  Sewed like a dream.  But I was still not sure I wanted to put a quilt headed for someone else on the machine so I took one of the tops I had made for me on the machine and quilted it.   It sewed like a dream.  So next came Nestled.  Loved the way it came out.  Hope Chloe enjoys it.  

Update:

Chloe had a birthday recently and here are a couple of pics of her with her quilt...

I hope she continues to use it and love it.  Makes my heart happy.

Sew on,

Terry

The Harmon Quilt

Sue, Bill and I have been friends since high school.   Sue and Bill are avid campers.   When they bought a camper, I had been to Will's where in one of the Dallas quilt shops I found a lot of National Park Panels by Riley Blake that look like the postcards of the National Parks sell.  I had also seen a pattern by Violet Craft that  makes a mountains.  Violet Craft Any way.  I started planning a quilt for a queen sized bed that their camper held.  Well, I had made the mountains and had got a sheet of paper out to plan the layout with the panels and the pieced part.  About that time, Sue called and she and Bill upgraded to a king sized bed.  So I redid the plan and put it together.  Now the quilt was exactly the size of my long arm.  So that gave some challenges.  I normally put a small piece of fabric on the side to check tension with new bobbins and new colors.  You wouldn't think a change in color would require a tension change, but sometimes it does.   

When I got about a third of the way down, I rolled the quilt and the tension was terrible.  I had to take the quilt off to pull out a lot of the quilting.  So I put the quilt in time-out.  I didn't  put anything else on the long-arm even tho I had a couple of quilt tops that were done.  I had decided to do it on a sit-down machine,  but was worried about moving such a big quilt around.  And to be honest, I wasn't sure how to quilt the rest or if I could consistently continue the pattern I had done on the long arm.  So the quilt sat in time out some more, and I kept making tops.  

So then I finally decided to put on my big girl panties and that I could do  it.  So I put it on the sit-down machine and quilted all the black and all the flowers.  Then I finished off most of the blocks, but couldn't quite finish before my quilt retreat to Quiltville Inn.  So I labeled and bound it with the oar fabric I had found for the quilt.  And took it with me.  I finished it at Quiltville Inn.  

So here are the pictures of the individual blocks.  Bill held it up for me to photograph.  

I paper pieced their name using patterns from From Blank Pages

The Violet Craft parts:

The National Park pillow panels:

Pictures of the back:

From the balcony of Quiltville Inn:

Sew on everyone! You too can overcome obstacles!!  BTW Sue and Bill loved the quilt.

Terry