Friday, March 16, 2007

Stashbuster Queen - wannnabee! :)

Wow, the quilt show is finally over, am caught up on customer quilts, and I took a few days for myself. What a novel idea! I managed to turn 3 UFO's into TOPS. Granted they aren't quilted yet, but one of them is on the quilting machine, so it's closer.

The Pineapple quilt was started waaaayyy back in the 1980's. BEOFRE the Gore invented the Internet. This was when there was just bullitin boards, and I was swapping with some other quilters. Probably only 5 or 6 of the blocks are actually from the swappers, as most of the blocks I received had to be either re-pieced or tossed. I finished putting the blocks together on Thursday, nearly 20 years later! Whoo Hoo!


Next, put together the last blocks of a "4 Patch & Furrows" quilt (ala quiltville.com) that I started on the quilting cruise in January 2007. Tell me what you think I should do for a border (if anything). Should I do the scrappy blues or one of the furrow colors?

The blocks are made up of two sets of 2 4-patches (total of 4 4-patches) for each block. I used the same background for each set of two, although the backgrounds vary through all the blocks. All of the 4-patches came from my stash, I did buy some of the Nantucket fabric for the furrows.


This next quilt was inspired by a quilt that my great-grandmother made (Hattie Marsh), and that I remember seeing as I was growing up. I recently saw a similar quilt at an antique store (but couldn't afford the price they were asking), so I took some mental measurements and went home and drafted this top back in 2005.

At Quilt festival, I saw a similar quilt again, and knew that I needed to make this quilt. Hatties' quilt had all different colors of the pink and browns (they might have been pink & green) centers, then I used stash fabrics reminiscent of late 1800's and early 1900's for the square in a square. (this is basically a patch, in a square, inside another square).

Then I quilted 2 charity quilts for quiltville.com and is pictured on her site) . My Friday Bee was so taken with this quilt top, that we chose it (done in Fall colors) for our Tin Can Raffle donation at the quilt show. It was one of the top 3 money earners in the raffle! (Thanks Bonnie!)

11 comments:

Nicole & Phil said...

Betty, these are looking terrific! I hope they will be quilted soon!
cheers!

Mary Johnson said...

Betty, I love them - don't you feel good getting all those UFO's to the finished top stage? I'm working on a Pineapple myself - king size - so I'm going to try and keep my momentum going and not put the blocks away until the top is done!

Trisha said...

great looking stuff!

Carole said...

WOW, you've been productive! Nice quilts. I like the way they turned out. I find that the machine quilting can take time. Perhaps it's different for you as a long arm quilter, but for me, I sometimes need to sit on it until I figure how I will quilt it, which means I need to own lots of safety pins! lol Happy quilting!

Sweet P said...

Nice job on getting tops completed.

swooze said...

Pretty quilts! You really chose stunning color combos!

Nancy said...

All of your quilts are very nice but I especially like the 4-patch and Furrows. For borders I'd probably do a narrow inner border using the dark furrow fabric followed by a scrappy blue border.

Alycia~Quiltygirl said...

I love your quilts! What if on the 4patch and furrows you did a narrow solid border - and then a 4 patch scrappy outer border? Maybe too much but might look cool?

Jennie said...

Boy, I wish I could make that kind of UFO progress!! When I get a top done, I find myself stymied. And I can't make myself count a top as a finished UFO. How long have you been longarming, and what kind of machine do you have?

Saska said...

Looks good. Finishing lots of UFO's always feel good.

I just finished the B&StepStone quilt too. It's such a fun quilt.

Bonnie K. Hunter said...

The quilts are looking great! I think your 4 patch and furrows could use a dark inner border (is it blues you are using? Maybe a navy?) and a red outer border.....give it a shot!

Bonnie