Thursday, November 12, 2009

Memory Quilt #1 of 3, Mostly Pieced

Below is the beginning of my son's memory quilt from high school graduation. If you look back here you can see its humble beginnings. I wasn't sure where to go from the signed blocks. My quilting e-friend, Sam, sent me a pic of her beautiful quilt of the same block where she made half blocks to finish out the design. So I adopted her idea, and below is the result.

Then I had to figure where to go from there. James likes blue, so I added an inner blue border, below. I added it so that the half block row and the inner border combined equalled one of the star blocks in size. That way I had several options of what to do from there.

For starters, I added a border of 4" finished blocks all around, using the same colors as were already used in the center. This was taken at night under fluorescent lighting, so the colors are definitely not true.

I haven't measure it yet, but it is quite large already. I want to make it large enough to use on his bunk at school as a bedspread, so there will need to be some additions. I am going to measure tomorrow or Saturday and see where I need to go from here. It is a challenge to be to keep it masculine in color and fabric design. So far, so good!
~Joan


11-12-09 Bull's Eye Progress


Diane came over to sew again today. Here is a picture of our progress so far. After just two sewing sessions, we are nearly halfway finished with our blocks. These are just the completely finished ones. We have lots more in various stages of completion. Not too bad for fabrics we were ready to pitch, huh?

Luke made me a new design wall this morning that is far superior to my old one, although it did the trick for a many years. The old one was formerly screwed into a wall in our home. Now I don't have the wall space, so the most important characteristic of the new on is that it must be portable. We went to Lowe's and had several funny moments just being us. We got a sheet of 1/4" plywood and a piece of 3/4" foam insulation board. I had gotten a flannel-backed tablecloth on clearance yesterday for $3. I didn't realize you would be able to see the apples through the back, but oh, well.

Luke stapled the plywood to the insulation, then wrapped the tablecloth with the flannel side out and stapled it in to the plywood on the back. With the insulation board on the front, I can pin blocks in place if necessary. The plywood on the back makes it much better for leaning against a wall or bookshelf. Thanks, Luke! Oh, and yes--the Lowe's guy DOES speak English!

~Joan

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

11-11-09 Bull's Eye

I was up at 6 with a horrid headache, so I decided to sew a few half blocks. They take next to no thought, and I had my iPod playing the end of the book of Judges and then Ruth. Naturally I wanted to see what the addition of those blocks would look like, so I added them to my design wall to get the full effect.

Diane, I put half of the half blocks in your stack!

~Joan