Tina's Quilts

Happy Friday! Three finished quilts to show this week courtesy of Tina C. It's still hot as blazes in Texas, and I know a lot of the rest of the country is in the same boat. I can't wait for us to start cooling down in the Fall.

This first quilt has amazing tiny piecing.  It's a Jen Kingwell pattern, "Long Time Gone." Most of the fabrics are shot cottons or peppered cottons and they are sooo soft. 

I took a bunch of close-up pictures with my hand so you can appreciate the precise piecing.  I also really love the rich autumnal colors. 

These next two quilts are in a very different but equally pretty color palette of corals. 

This quilt is made from blocks in the "What is Love" Quilt-A-Long earlier this year. They are all interesting, modern blocks. 

I thought this broken heart block was especially interesting. 

This last quilt proved very hard to photograph. As you can see, I gave up on the idea of catching the sun in the right position (and preferably not 100 degrees) to take photos outside and just did my best inside. 

There is definitely more contrast in real life and the coral solid with the floral is a nice soft combination. 

Sundae showing off her yoga moves. I tried some pilates the other day and got sore in muscles I didn't know I had...

Linking to Finished or Not Friday

Circling the center

Hello, friends! Louise here with more quilts made with your orphan blocks. Today's post will feature pieces that have medallion-style centers. Check out the two gorgeous blocks in the middle of this first one! I believe they were both donated by Jan. I surrounded them with two borders made of various smaller blocks in bright colors, many donated by Priscilla. I tried to keep each color grouped together for a bit of cohesion.

On the back, I used this pretty red and white floral. This was also donated, and I'm always grateful to get big pieces for backings. 

Next up is a subtler color palette, featuring more blocks by Priscilla. It was a bit of a puzzle to make 10 small blocks and 10 medium blocks work as borders, but I love a challenge like that.

The center medallion was stitched by Christine. Isn't it lovely? Tumbling leaves with multiple delicate borders. Nice piecing!

Someone donated this super fun Wizard of Oz fabric for the back. I hope this quilt ends up in the hands of a Judy Garland fan!

Last but not least, here's another autumnal quilt. Lots and lots of different blocks making for a kind of grown-up I-spy piece. My favorite is the little cat on a dark green background on the left edge.

The center is a very nice pineapple block panel donated anonymously. It looks like it was very complicated to make! Sometimes while finishing quilts with these fancy blocks, I think, "I'm so glad someone else made this so I didn't have to," and I'm grateful for the reprieve! 

Many thanks to the many hands who stitched up these blocks and sent them in. And thanks to Kat for both washing and photographing this batch for me.

 

Dangerous Depths

Happy Friday Quilters! I have been working on this batik Mariner's Compass quilt with a sea monster theme for a while now and I finally got it done! 

This isn't a CiL quilt, it's a personal one. I really enjoyed the process of brainstorming, looking at references, sketching out a design and taking it to completion. Designing a quilt and seeing the design come to life is my favorite part of quilting. 

I made a somewhat similar batik mariner's compass way back, so it was fun to approach the same design in a different way.

I tried something new with the quilting on this one, mixing in some ruler work with the FMQ. I used a ruler to make the straight lines and the wavy ribbon of quilting in the outer border. 

The center was paperpieced and I thought that would be the most difficult and time-consuming part, but I seriously underestimated how tedious it would be to line up all the diagonal borders where they pass "under" the square borders. 

After quilting I used a (machine) blanket stitch to applique the sea monster's tentacles coming around one of the corners. To make these I traced templates from my computer screen and used those to cut out the fabrics. 

Initially I was going to put the cardinal direction into the points like I did in this quilt (so I guess I've actually made 3 mariner's compass quilts.) But I decided on monster eyes instead. I made them by essentially arranging 4 cathedral windows around the yellow fabric. (How many different techniques can I use in one quilt?)

After the first photos were taken I decided to make the eyes rounder by rolling the cathedral window edge back again, essentially making a double fold. I didn't take a whole new set of pictures, but you can see the difference in these last 2 photos compared to the ones at the top. I think it made a big difference. 

One of the biggest things I have learned in the past 6 months or so is how much I missed the creativity and freedom of quilting and how much I had let that go by the wayside because I was so busy with the charity. Setting aside time for personal quilting is definitely going to be a lesson I keep going forward.

Happy Quilting!

Linking to Finished or Not Friday

Another Friday

 Hello friends, sorry I've been MIA for a few weeks. I ran out of quilt photos I'd already taken and it's been too dang hot to get outside and take more.

Cousins with grandpa

I went on a couple of good weekend trips to see family and friends. I rediscovered once again that I am not built for the beach. 

Fancy wedding hair

Got to see one of my good friends get married in a beautiful state park in Tennessee and catch up with everyone I haven't seen in too long.

I have been sewing, still working on the batik mariners compass I showed a few weeks ago. It's almost done.

Me and the kitties are doing our best to stay cool. I'm finally putting my flooring back down today after repairing some water damage, so of course the AC started to limp a couple days ago. It's always something!

I'll get out and take quilt photos soon so we can get back to our regular posts, promise!

Linda & Wendy

Happy weekend quilters! I've got a few pretty quilts to share from CiL's wonderful longer-armers. Linda sent in this beautiful batik quilt with one of her recent boxes of block drive quilts.

I love the colors and textures on this quilt; the quilting suits it perfectly. 

Wendy sent in this quilt that shows off the scrappy fabrics with some of the tops she longarmed for us. 

I made a somewhat urgent quilt delivery to our main hospital this week. They got down to only one quilt left, which was a first! We're still doing well on our stash, thanks to so many of you!

The juvenile alligators are cruising again at the nature preserve. I'm always keeping an eye out for their mama!

Linking to Finished or Not Friday

Odds and Ends

 CiL received a nice big box this week containing yardage, some jelly rolls, and one donated quilt. There wasn't a name, so if that was you please let me know! Thank you!

I didn't put together a finish post this week, but I've got some in-progress shots of what I'm working on.

I paper pieced this Mariners compass center from batiks. I don't much care for paper piecing, but sometimes it's the only way to get a certain effect.  Every ?$!#! time I paper piece I think I've learned my lesson and I won't have short seams or run out of a fabric. And then there I am picking through the trash for the tiniest pieces to make it work.

Anyway, I made it stretch. I attached the compass to a solid background with bias tape and now I'm building out a top with interlacing borders.

Hambone here is always by my side and trying to help. Hope you're all having a good start to your summer!

Assorted Block Drive Quilts

Happy Friday quilters! This weekend I have quilts from Linda to show you. Linda has been such a busy worker bee for the past couple years helping to finish CiL quilts.

This geese quilt was Linda's contribution to the Sept/Oct 2022 drive, she made this one entirely herself. I really like this quilting design with the loops. 

This quilt is from the 2021 red, white, and blue stars drive. I recognize a lot of Mina's fabrics in there. 

Linda assembled and quilted the blocks. I know that quite a few of you helped Cynthia with her red white and blue churn dash drive. She's going to make that a yearly thing, so I hope it helps to scratch that patriotic quilting itch.

Next, 3 fall colored quilted from the 2021 Tall Nines block drive. There have been so many of these and I still love them!

Counting this post there are 29 done so far and posted on the blog. Six are done and not photographed yet. Two are out with a volunteer quilter. And 7 are still in block form. That's adds up to 44 quilts from this one drive once they're all done.

The Fall Tall 9s block drive was CiL's most popular block drive ever, by far!

I'm sure the runner up is one of the string drives, but I don't know which. 

I love the variety of patterns and color palettes these fall quilts have, the benefit of having so many different quilters participate! Hopefully soon I can have another block drive, but in the meanwhile watch Cynthia's blog, as the next block drive for Compassion Quilts should launch this weekend. 

 Linking to Finished or Not Friday