Down Time

Hello quilters :) I'm still kicking. I didn't realize another Friday had passed until a couple of you emailed to check on me.  I'm hoping to get back to regular updates soon; there was a confluence of running out of quilt photos, bad weather that kept me from taking more, and then a couple rough weeks at work.  

(I'm making this post from my phone, so I apologize for wonky formatting. Click on the pics to make them bigger).

This week I've been in Santa Fe visiting family and resting.  They tell me that this week spring weather has arrived, but it's still below freezing at night and snow drifts hang on in the shade. It's a nice contrast to Texas.

As some of you know, and others have guessed, the past 3 years have been difficult ones for me. I've had some very major stressors in my personal life for whatever reason it seems to have caught up to me moreso since Christmas.   

I still have blocks from the Tall 9s and tops from last year's string drive to complete, not to mention many tops you've graciously sent in. I want to keep the drives on hold until I'm at least somewhat caught up and feel like I have forward momentum again. Several wonderful supporters including Cynthia, Louise and Linda are helping, but if anyone else wants to help assemble and/or quilt send me an email. 

CiL has plenty of finished quilts at the moment, so I will be able to continue supplying the hospitals at our current rate for quite a while before that becomes a concern. 

In the meanwhile, I'd love it if you'd support Cynthia's charity, which is similar to ours. She is running block drives every 3 months and the most recent one just started. Click here to see what's up. I know better than anyone how encouraging it is to get blocks in your mailbox, as well as bonus donations like cash, backing fabric, and prepped bindings. You all have taken care of me for years and I'm excited for Cynthia to find out first hand just how wonderful the quilting community is.

As for me, I'm not doing great, but I'm ok. I'm taking care of myself and taking time to figure out what's next. I made a couple of personal quilts recently, which is something I hadn't done in ages. 

I wasn't a responsible adult and didn't get porch-cat (now called Squeaky) spayed in time, so we have kittens and they are a snuggly squishy delight. (She'll be spayed as soon as they're weaned). I'm having lots of flashbacks to when Fudge and Sundae were this size and I was bottle feeding around the clock.

Thank you for your support and concern. Things with CiL will be back on track soon enough, maybe changed slightly. In the meantime I'm incredibly proud of the community we've built which continues to send in finished quilts and support each other and me. 

Australia

I'm going to have to take more photos before I can make a quilt post, so you guys are getting pictures from my vacation to the Melbourne, Australia area instead! 

On my first full day in Melbourne I was up at 3:30 am with jetlag. I killed time until a nearby cafe opened at 6 and went for breakfast and coffee. Australia's coffee culture is influenced by Italy and everything I espresso-based, there is no concept of "drip" or "filter" coffee like we have in America. After some experimentation I found a Flat White to be my drink of choice, although still too small to be satisfying.

I went on a bus tour my first day to a wildlife refuge, some scenic overlooks, and finally to see the Phillip Island Penguin Parade. You should youtube the penguins, I don't have any photos because it was nighttime, but they were very cute. 

The second day in Melbourne was a little bit of a downtime day. I visited Victoria Market and took myself on a walking tour of street art around town. I had a great lunch and dinner in Chinatown and in the evening went to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

The next day was another bus tour to a National Park, the Grampians. This is Mackenzie Falls.

The next day I traveled about 1.5h out of the city by train to meet up with my friend in a little historic town. This is where the sitting around reading books and wandering the town square portion of my vacation began. We did take a day to tour the Great Ocean Road and Great Otway National Park. 

Even a tiny town with maybe 6 kids per grade in the school, there were no less than 4 beautiful old churches from the 1800s.

I was quite taken with the succulents growing everywhere. 

I also spent a day wandering the beach town of Torquay. I was a very damp and blustery day with wind blowing off the Antarctic. Beach combing and looking in rock pools is one of my favorite things to do. 

For the curious, I flew direct from DFW to Sydney which is a 17.5h flight, currently the 6th longest commercial flight in the world. Then there was a 1h hop from Sydney to Melbourne.  Because of time zone weirdness, on the way over I left DFW late on Sunday and arrived in Melbourne midday Tuesday. On the way back I left Australia at 6pm Friday and arrived in Dallas 4pm the same day...

The trip over was pretty rough, sitting in the middle seat in economy surrounded by crying babies and toddlers. On the way back I was blessed with not only an aisle seat but an empty seat beside me! I can only assume it was some kind of karmic pay back.

It was a great trip although the jet lag on the returning end kicked my butt until about Wednesday. I'll try to get photos taken by next week so we'll be back to your regularly scheduled quiltiness.

Longarmers to the rescue

Hello! This week I have a couple of tops completed by Covered in Love's devoted long-arm quilters. First this pretty, sweet top was sent in by Holly and quilted by Linda. There are lots of strawberries in the fabric and it makes me think of the strawberry shortcake dolls from years ago.

This quilt is a very generous size, so I was very grateful to be able to send it to a longarmer instead of wrestling with it on my machine.

Next is a top by Becky.  Some of you may remember that Becky drove to meet me and dropped of a whole bunch of tops kitted up with backing and bindings.

This large top was sent to Mel in south Texas. Meloney had a rough bout with Covid and I'm so glad she's back on her quilting feet. 

The wavy lines of quilting are perfect to complement the super geometric plus designs. Thanks ladies! 

Fudge has achieved maximum coziness.

Return from the Land Down Under

G'day quilters! I'm back from a nice trip to Australia visiting a friend and seeing the area around Melbourne. Thanks to Louise for doing some fill-in posts while I was gone. I always love how she puts together so many disparate blocks into coordinating quilts.

This week I have several quilts that came in finished from two different quilts. These first two are from Julie W. Firstly a very precise and impressive sampler quilt in a soft color scheme. 

Next Julie sent in this awesome purple quilt. I love the color scheme and how the simple design looks so complex. 

I also love the geometric quilting panto she chose, perfect for the design! 

Next, two quilts by Tina. I should have taken better photos of this one. It's a beautiful applique sampler of different flowers.

These lavender have fun tufted, textured flowers that I tried to get a close up of.

Lastly, another sampler quilt in a soft color scheme from Tina. Samplers are always fun to look at! 

Here's a photo of the famous "Twelve Apostles" rocks. Maybe I'll make a Friday post of some of the best photos from my trip?

More comforting quilts from your blocks

Kat is taking a well-deserved vacation so I'm filling in again this week. Here are a few more recent finishes featuring YOUR orphan blocks! Up first is this classic kitchen sink quilt with a little bit of everything in the mix.

The center block was made by Stephanie M. Isn't this little birdie and his house just so cute? She used this block to teach a class at her guild on how to do starch turned applique. Her applique work is amazing, so I'm sure the class was a success!

Next is this bright, happy piece made with a variety of 9" blocks. I spy crumb blocks, leftovers from a Bonnie Hunter mystery, rail fences, strings, and many more. I added drop shadows to make them pop out and add consistency. 

There were lots of these teensy nine patches that I set with grey fabric into bigger nine patches. So fun!

This quilt used up another group of rather miscellaneous blocks, all around 12". I know some of these blocks were sent in by Jan, Karen and Priscilla. You might remember that the ones across the diagonal were a block drive from a couple years ago. Kat often ends up with a few drive blocks at the end and those work their way into my studio. It's our goal for each and every drive block to end up in a Covered in Love quilt! Sometimes it takes a year or two, though.

This block, which doesn't show in the photo above because it is flipped over the top of Kat's railing, is made from small hand-stitched animal pieces. They came to me as round shapes, so I machine appliqued them onto squares. With only 7 critters, it was a bit of a puzzle to figure out how to arrange them, but I think this works pretty well.

The back of this quilt includes a long skinny pieced panel with roses and text fabrics. I love a good blowsy rose floral fabric, don't you?

No old fashioned roses in this next quilt! This one is modern fabrics, geometric blocks, and a crisp analogous color scheme. I love purple, green and teal together.

These blocks made from wedges are super cool. I think they were cut using a Dresden ruler, then set against various grey backgrounds. I made sure to place them next to the classic Dresden fan block.

Kat sent me a bunch of loooooong strips of fabric, probably trimmings from backings. I had fun piecing some of  them together for a back to this quilt. The one second from the bottom, with flowers and paisleys, is my favorite and I wish I had yards of it.

Speaking of block drives, these should look familiar! Yes, it's the ever popular red, white and blue star block drive. Since there were only ten or so leftover blocks, I added other shapes in the same colors to fill this one out. It still packs plenty of patriotic punch.

And finally, this last quilt uses some pretty "square in a square" blocks that were donated along with a similarly colored charm pack. I used the "Charms on Point" pattern to make the center and added the blocks along the top and bottom. The top row is flipped up over the fence for the photo. Stephanie, the bird house maker, donated the sweet floral yardage for the border. So pretty!

Kat will be back next week and I hope she'll share some photos from her trip to Australia! 

Sibling quilts

Hello, friends! Louise here again to share some of the latest quilts made from your blocks. Today I'm featuring what I call "siblings." Siblings are groups of blocks that were made by the same person, usually the same design and often the same fabric line. They are fun for me to put together into finished quilts.

The photo at the top is a cool modern design made with blocks from our very own Kat! She sent me a big bunch of finished blocks and a few precut bits and pieces that I used to made enough for a nice size lap quilt. I love how the colors glow against the gray background.

The homespun stars marching neatly across this quilt were all cut by Priscilla. She also stitched a bunch of them together and sent them in with all the remaining precisely cut pieces. All I had to do was follow her lead, finishing the rest of the blocks and adding sashing and borders. 

I don't have any of these woven plaids in my stash, so it was a nice change of pace to use Priscilla's to make this dignified and masculine quilt. Thank you, Priscilla!

These red, white and blue churn dash siblings clearly needed to stay together for family harmony. I like the secondary patterns that form between the blocks when they are set without sashing. A fun lighthouse print border gives the whole quilt a jaunty nautical look. 

Here's another more modern example of sibling blocks. The columns are made of blocks that are each two contrasting fabrics. They arrived all together in a ziplock baggie. It was a simple matter to stitch them into long skinny strips and offset the columns in a neutral background. I think the fabric line is from Tula Pink, with glimpses of birds and flowers. 

And finally, these siblings arrived as a VERY tight knit group! Donated by Diane N., most of the blocks were sewn into a long, skinny wall hanging, featuring over a dozen unique machine embroidered designs.

Look at this cool seashell!

Some of the blocks were embroidered onto batting, so they were prequilted.

Others were stitched onto a layer of stabilizer and needed batting. I used scraps of batting and the purple fabric from the back of the wall hanging to piece this together. It was similar to a "quilt as you go" project, with lots of head scratching to make it rectangular!

This butterfly block is one of my favorites, and arrived as a separate "bonus" block. Many thanks to Diane for sending in this unique project!