older primitive quilts I have made.......

These are two oldies but goodies made from Jan Patek patterns. One is her block of the month called Collector's Series. I. Love. This. Quilt. The other is her Primitive Primer. My gosh. These early Jan Patek patterns are my favorites of hers.
There are still a couple more of her early patterns I need to make.........they are somewhere on my to do list.

catching up

Extra basket blocks I made were turned into these sweet little mini's that I made for one of my sisters (I have 8), my mom and one for myself. Great for tucking here and there! Have always wanted a little red and white school house quilt so after the red and white quilt extravaganza in NYC in March, I used a small block from a Judie Rothermel pattern and stitched this for myself. I machine quilted it in the style of some old doll quilts from the 1800's you sometimes see. Washed it right away so the cotton batt would shrink and make it look older instead of brand spanking new.

A biggie finished..........

My basket quilt from When the Cold Wind Blows is finally finished. I am so happy with how it turned out. I appliqued the basket in two pieces so I could use a different handle fabric in some of them. Mine is hand appliqued and hand quilted. There are 600 hours of my life in this quilt. It is huge and heavy and beautiful. A ton of work but so worth it. There is quite a bit of quilting on it. I made my background pices a half inch bigger than the original pattern to give me more room
for the applique......this also meant less baskets. I have 265 and I think 45 of the side fluer di leis (spelling?) which I also changed the shape of for easier applique. It turned out better than I even hoped for. Now on to other projects
that were put on hold for the quilting of this beauty.

meet Jo Morton.............

meeting Jo Morton

Last summer I was lucky enough to take a hand piecing class with Jo Morton in Columbus. Some quilting friends and I sat together in her LeMoyne Star class and had a fun day. I began my quilting life hand piecing and it was nice to revisit
the technique. The sweet little quilt with the 5 stars is the one we were to work on in class. I managed to finish my stars after the class but have yet to make the
top. I must get back to that one sometime soon. Too many projects and too little time. If I could only work on some finishes and quit starting new projects.
A national quilter's lament, I'm sure.

A bonnie blue cheddar quilt

Last summer I was able to go to the AQS show in Columbus, Ohio and take a quilt class with Jo Morton that I will post pictures of later. When we took a lunch break
we were able to view the show and vendors. I am not one to look at quilts much at a show as I would rather see the variety of vendors and see what different quilty things they offer. Since this was a large show, I scoped quickly for the booths that
I wanted to see and took off working my way thru the crowds. Sometimes I wished for a long hat pin to stick in a few slow moving fannies, but I controlled myself and went with the crowd flow.

Bonnie Blue Quilts had the most stuning booth and went 3 or 4 times just to gaze and be mesmerized by their beautiful work. I feel for their navy blue and cheddar quilt and purchased the pattern and later the next week drove to Good Wives in Marion to buy the chedda! I have tons of navy blues to use and they worked so well in this. I love this quilt. I had it machine quilted and Good Wives even had it for viewing a while. My mom remarked when she saw all this cheddar that she wanted to lick her fingers off as she felt like she just ate a bag of cheese corn! How fun!

Pictures of Jo Morton late! Thunder storm outside and I want off the 'puter.

Happy April!

I decided to make the quilt from the book GONE TO TEXAS....................I love that book and quilt. Do you know with all those little pieces that quilt went together perfectly? How unusual is that?
Also started a quilt top that was my version of a quilt in the book CLASSIC QUILTS FROM THE AMERICAN MUSEUM IN BRITIAN.
On page 30 there is a great 9 patch strip quilt from the early 1800's that I loved.
I wish there was a reproduction fabric of the border print. Decided to make up my own pattern and used civil war prints in the one I made. I'm happy with the end results. This is a jumbled quilt in the book and the one I made but being goofy from surgery, it was a good project to work on. Both were machine quilted by a friend and I am enjoying them.