The Erin Quilts II

I only had enough fabric for sashing and cornerstones for this quilt. Quilting the faces was so much fun a couple of the suns even wink. I went out of my comfort zone with the border of these two quilts but with a little practice it was an easy border to do. This quilt is listed on etsy.  --Ann--

Wee Beasties on Wednesday

Do I want to make a brown and pink quilt next or a blue quilt?  Ann

The Erin Quilts I

My youngest child and only daughter went off to college a couple weeks ago, she is a senior this year and living in an apartment, the quilt is on a queen size air mattress. The house is feels empty and very quiet. I miss her and our late night talks. She always wanted to chat about the time I wanted to go to bed, so I would postpone my bedtime for one of our chats. She would talk about school, friends, movies, actors, her job (she worked at a nursing home this summer Bless her heart) her future, anything and everything and occasionally get to the issue that was bothering her and I would listen more. Sometimes she would ask my opinion or what I thought so I would tell her but mostly I would listen.  This is the quilt I made for her to take to the dorm as a freshman.  She picked the pattern and the fabrics I added a few as needed. I did the 8 point star the easy way with the split squares in the corners and split triangles. The machine quilting was so much fun I put the faces in each sun. I used a small plate to draw the circle then free motion quilted the rest. There were diamonds left from each strip so this quilt has a sister quilt which I will post on Thursday.  This will be a seven part series of the Erin Quilts on the T days. ~~Ann~~

Red and Butter

This quilt has been sitting basted for almost a year.  The color of the thread to use was the big obstacle. The red threads I had were not right and neither were the yellows, then when I was choosing thread for the Summer Salad quilt Color Challenge I tried a green to tan and a multi colored varigated thread with orange and I laid the green to tan thread on this and it was perfect because there is green running through all the prints. I quilted it with concentric teardrops. My favorite all over design with lots of pivots. Linking to PatchworkTimes Design Wall Monday  and  Leah's UFO project. This quilt is from one of Barbara Brandenburg's books and it has a bamboo cotton batting that was wonderful to quilt.  --Ann--
P.S. if you have been following my blog or just perusing through it and there are big black spots where some pictures used to be...... I foolishly thought I should clean up my picassa file because it was getting full. Little did I know I was deleting photos from posts so I will try to replace photos and buy more space on picassa. And in trying to replace photos in the Drama in the Sky post of last June it moved to September.  Always learning things the hard way. --Ann--

Drama in the sky

 These clouds seemed to form in our backyard and moved on east.

Today is a clear blue day with no clouds in any direction. I have to play with boring paints today like primer on the molding on my front door and then paint it blue again.  ~~Ann~~

on the needles

My daughter was home for the weekend, the guys were off fishing so we watched movies without interruption. I started a new pair of mittens knitting mittens when it is 95 outside. I wanted to knit larger stitches so I could watch the movies. We watched The Help,  We Bought a Zoo,  Larry Crowne, and  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Dirty Dancing again. We didn't eat a lot of junk good for us. Son's dog gave us a few really good laughs. When the wind went down Sunday night we had a fire in the chimniria and watched the moon rise and the stars come out and not a marshmallow in the house so we just had a piece of chocolate. Enjoying our mother daughter time.
The socks are getting longer and they fit so nice. Link to on the needles at Patchwork Times. --Ann--

Turtle Pond Quilt

 This was an unfinished project for a very long time. Sewing the quilt top was easy, the curved piecing takes less time than sewing a nine patch. But after it was done it sat for a long time as in a couple years because I knew the quilting would enhance it or ruin it. I took a machine quilting class and bought lots more books and it still sat. I finally traced around one of the turtles and photo copied the turtle onto a couple dozen sheets of paper and got busy with my pen and just drew and drew turtle shell designs. Then I picked out the most "do"able and free motion machine quilted to my hearts content. No two turtles are alike in either fabric or quilting.  The fabrics used in this quilt are also from Merryvale bales of 6" x 18" strips of fabric from several collections. I machine quilt on my Bernina Artista 170.
Have enjoyed this forum and am learning lots from Leah's blog.  I also recently sold this quilt on etsy. two quilts in two weeks I'm on a roll so better do some sewing today. Happy quilting--Ann--