Thea's quilting trials and tribulations.

My DH built me a front porch - okay it is like most he does not finished yet - but I can put my chairs out there covered in my quilts and when the mosquito population dies down I will sit out there with the kitties and watch the sunset.  I air quilts out on the chairs - the chairs are ugly so this way i put some color out front.  Some of the ladies down the street asked me if I worried about the quilts fading I said no - they don't get much sunlight underneath the big Maple tree but they are to be used - I didn't make them to sit in the cupboard and not be used...lol 

So here is my front porch - a couple quilts haven't been shown before - One is the blue one that Tipper is sitting on - there is a site that does a mystery quilt each year on New Year's Day - I have done it a couple times - this was the quilt from I think 3 years ago - then there is my first log cabin - it is about 10 years old now - and then the cheater applique from thimbleberries... it is about 5 years old. 

My little heaven on earth is my front porch - you will find me out here a lot when I can get rid of the mosquitos... right now they are thick - I change out the quilts all the time and usually bring them in each evening...

I made these 3 quilts for the "girls" daughters - Not sure who is going to get which one yet - but thinking Brianna will get the yellow/green one - Chelsea the Blue one and Sidney the Pink one...  I love Lori's daughters and hope to make her Grand daughters happy too by doing some small things for them... Their Mother / Grandmother was my best friend and her girls are very special to me!

in 2003, I was picking my DH, Jay, up from work - we were on our way home - actually ready to turn down our street.  It was a left hand turn and I had my blinker on - waiting for traffic to clear so I could turn - we knew it would be a minute so i was turned in my seat talking to Jay - it sounded like a bomb went off in the back of the truck - I went forward and backwards - watched Jay do the same and reached to hold him back as I thought he was going to go through the windshield... I ended up being transported to the hospital - we had been hit by a car that put the bed of our truck in the cab... it was a bad accident.  I had surgery on my shoulder and my neck...

I was signed up to take a class from a local teacher... it was a hand piecing class and we were going to make an Oklahoma sampler - my arm was in a sling but that didn't stop me I went and took the class... while at home though I couldn't sit still - I would stand for 20 minutes cutting out pieces then I would sit down and hold the pieces up close to my face and sew them together - I wasn't supposed to move my arm much and this was the only way I could do it. 

After they allowed me to use my arm and removed the brace from my neck, I hand quilted my Lone Star... here is a picture of it...

It turned out pretty good ... where there is a method there is a way - and a crazy woman can do anything...

I took a class from Linda Everhart for a technique called fusique... this quilt looks so difficult but was actually fairly easy to make - I can't explain her technique.  She has a website that explains it all - if you go - look at her quilt called Quilt Police.  That is another pattern of hers that I hope soon to make - www.quiltingamongfriends.com  My DH loves this quilt and it hangs in his pool room.  He wanted me to embroider #s on the circles but at the time I was finishing it up my embroidery machine was at the repair shop.  Maybe someday i will do that for him.

I saw this quilt kit before Christmas and I loved it but it was too pricey for my budget - in January it was on SALE...lol and I just couldn't pass it up - it is such a pretty wintery scene...

I had this quilt hanging on a hanger in my close - the stars with just the sashing - then I was stash shopping for something else and ran across that piece of star fabric and realized it was perfect for the outer border on this quilt  - so sewed it on - sandwiched and sewed the quilt together and another UFO was finished.

I hang this quilt on the wall at Christmas time - here it still has the pins in it as i was quilting it.  I satin stitched each piece down - even the 1/4" windows in the town scene.  I think this is one of my favorite quilts.  If you ever do a McKenna Ryan quilt she gives very easy instructions to follow - This quilt made me smile while I was making it - I finished this quilt just before Christmas 2008.  Don't you just love her snowmen and the reindeer fighting with the snowball...

I love this little poem... and saw this cute little pattern - I got out all my cat fabrics at the time and used them in it...

when you make the donation quilt for the PC guild - they buy the material - pay for the long arm quilting... the scraps you have left over are to make something for the guild that will be done on a raffle basis... Last year the woman who made the quilt made bags from the left overs - I decided to design another quilt - I put a scrappy Christmas tree in the center and did the same squares that were in Rose - but then the next round I used my embroidery designs and did all the 5" snowflakes that I had - the ones in the corners are the same - I then put piano keys for the final border but only 4" instead of the 10" - I didn't have 10" pieces left...

So here it is... it is an inhouse raffle at the PC guild...

I don't have a picture of it after it was quilted but it is beautiful.. another member of our guild Jackie Wagner has a Statler quilting machine and she quilted it with Christmas designs - if I can get a picture of it quilted I will share it with you - it is spectacular the job she did...

I went on a bus trip with my DSIL, Sherry.  We toured 2 quilt shops in Kansas.  They had this Redwork Snowman quilt on the wall.  I bought the pattern and brought it home.  My SIL bought the same pattern - she made hers and had it finished before me - but in my defense I was making a quilt at that time for the Enid guild raffle quilt... Anyway, I decided that I didn't want to do mine in red and white - so did mine a little bit scrappy - with blue, red, green and purple... I just couldn't make the snowmen's noses Red... they are carrots - and who has ever seen a red carrot...lol  I, also, added another border around the outside of the quilt.

This is a close-up of one of the blocks in the center - it was hand embroidered... I machine embroidered snowmen in the pieced blocks round...

I found this Rose quilt kit at Nancys Notions - I absolutely love Roses and have been trying to find a really good Rose applique... I have found beautiful ones that you could embroider but I wanted one that was great in applique.  I have found Rose of Sharon appliques that are great but the rose is a difficult flower to do as it has so many small petals and the shading has to be just pefect or to me it just doesn't look right - I really like how this turned out though...

The little table below the quilt has a bouquet of roses that my DD Steva sent me for Mother's day - plus some of my collection of Jim Shore's cat figurines...

I found Beth Ferrier's Yahoo group called Appleboms.  It isn't really her site but a site devoted to doing her BOM each year - the first year I found it they were doing A Year in the Garden... I did it - and then went on to making 5 others of her quilts.  i am trying to do her quilt this year.  I absolutely love this woman - she is a great teacher... I was priveleged to attend her class in Lawton Oklahoma... She is a very good teacher - I will post some more of the quilts I made that were designed from her as I find the pictures - In my hands is my cat Buddy... he is a mentally challenged siamese... but that is a story for another day...

Here is another view of most of the quilt - I couldn't hang it as it hangs from the ceiling and folds up on the floor - the quilt is very heavy - the woman who did the quilting for me did a lot of McTavish quilting - it is beautiful work but made the quilt very very heavy.

This quilt was featured on Embroidery Library ... I bought this beautiful alphabet file from them and did them all - I then did Echo's name on the top and embroidered that this was a gift to her from her Nana and Pop...  Of course, I had to embroider some cats on it... I put them in the rows that I only put 4 letters in... I had a lot of fun designing and making this quilt - I machine quilted it myself.

Echo is my first Grand daughter. 

After my friend Lori passed on from this world, I started making 2 quilts - one was EB's Basket Quilt and then this one... I thought all the time while making them about my friend... there were a lot of tears spilled on these 2 quilts but it did a great job letting me mourn - I lost myself in the work.  I gave the quilts to Lori's daughters last year.  I don't have a picture of the Basket quilt finished - thought I did - but have just pictures of the blocks... I did both in the 3D method...

I wanted to add in the picture of Baskets that I have - it was in the stage where I was setting all the Baskets up in their position so I could do the sashing...

I can't believe that I didn't get a picture of this quilt before I sent it off - but I think I was crying so much during the making of both these quilts that when they were done I just wanted to box them up and send them off... but here are all the Basket blocks on my design wall.

After I designed and pieced the Red Rose quilt for the Ponca City guild, a friend Jackie asked me to make her one - so I changed the pattern a little bit - redid some of the rose and made this quilt for her - it is called Blue Rose

those are my angels hanging in the middle of the picture - One for my MIL and one for my Dad.

God bless,

Althea