I love old blues and browns

These are my favorites..........add in an old red and some tea dyed tans and beiges and I am in quilt heaven. Needed a little project in between ufo's recently and decided to just cut some simple squares of blues and browns, whack them in pieces and stitch back into squares for a simple little doll quilt or table topper. Ooo, I love the rich deep shades. Once I get some projects finished up from hand quilting, me thinks I will draw out a template for a large tumbler block and maybe use these same colors into a lap size or bigger tumbler. I think a bigger quilt in these deep tones will be a beauty mixed in with my other quilts. It's a plan. Now
to just get 3 good sized wall quilts finished and hand quilted sometime and the plan can go into motion! I'm trying my best not to start anything new until my ufo pile gets slimmed down. But starting new is soooo much fun..........

What if a fabric company used your swatches and then you never heard back from them after the fabric was printed????

For many years I have collected old indigo pieces of fabric from the late 1800's or early 1900's. My favorites being the stars and especially moons. Many times over the last 15-20 years I have dreamed of having new fabrics made from them. In March 2010 I sent antique swatches to Blue Hill asking if these could be made into new fabric as I have
wanted repros of them for years to buy. That April I got a call from Blue Hill Fabrics saying they were using some of my swatches and they would be in a small line called the Moon and Stars Collection. How fun! The line came out early in 2011 and I have been buying up the ones I liked in the navy, burgundy and browns and have used some in my projects. They didn't use every swatch I sent in but did use my favorite ones. There are some striped ones in the line I did not send in and also a cheater piece they combined the pieces in. The line is credited to their house designer, Sara Morgan, who is an imagined name used by the Blue Hill
people. They did send me the ordering flyer to see the samples from.

Would it not have been nice to get some free fabric????? Yes! I didn't get any free fabric but am happy to see it in print and able to buy what I have lusted for these many years. I think my quilt friends will get very tired of seeing moons and stars in my future projects. So fun!

While I was so happy to see my antique swatches made into new fabrics, I was disappointed that Blue Hill never contacted me when they were due to be in stores. Bummer, I had
to find out on my own.

When I told hometown quilt friends and mentioned it to the online Yahoo group I am on, so many quilters asked if I received any complimentary fabrics from Blue Hill from the swatches of mine they used. Hhhhmmmm, no I did not receive any complimentary fabrics. It was suggested to me a number of times that I write to Blue Hill and request the mentioned complimentary fabric so I did. It kind of felt like begging to me for something that would have been a nice guesture on their part. Then I did write to RR, the man who put the production of my swatches into gear and I never heard anything back from him.
So while I was happy at the fabric being printed, my experience with the process was
not that great. Seems once my swatches were used, I was left hanging to be a consumer (which I was happy to be) and only left with a copy of the swatch ordering leaflet.

Quilters, I would be interested in your opinions on this matter..................

needing to finish some UFOs

Last summer I passed around small blocks for special quilt friends to sign as a memory/signature quilt using a Jo Morton pattern. This summer I want to get some UFO's finished to the basting stage where at any future time they will be able to be picked up and hand quilted. Have a number of these to get to that stage but this one
is a beginning. It is now basted and ready for stitching when the time permits. Now to get a few more to this stage. I don't like too many ufo's around so hopefully they look more finished basted. Friends from my applique group, a local quilt guild and the ladies from Good Wives signed memory blocks. This was a good project. Where
I didn't have names for the size of quilt I wanted, I wrote in little quirky quilt sayings like: dull women have clean sewing rooms. Ha! I know my sewing room is in a constant mess.............

More Jan Patek patterns I made.....

These two other Jan Patek patterns were made a few years ago. The larger one is named Country Paths. I worked on this while my husband was in hand therapy some time ago. While his therapist put him thru pain, I was happily stitching the time away on the applique. I will always remember this when looking at this quilt. The basket quilt's name leaves me right now. Love the way Jan Patek makes normal objects look so fun and wonky.

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.