This quilt is the 3rd wedding quilt that I have made this year. I felt a little rushed getting all of these done, and I think I'll be doing another one a little later on in the year.
My son Michael and his wife Anna received this quilt. I really enjoyed making this quilt from lots of leftover pink and brown fabrics from other projects. This pattern I copied from a mailer that came to my house. I just used graph paper and played around with dimensions untill I got the size that I wanted. Quilt #41

As with all the other married sons that have received quilts, I sure hope they get many good years with them. Can't wait till I can make more baby quilts!

Quilt #40 is probably the largest quilt that I have made. Its 99"x 99" square, machined pieced and machine quilted. I made this humongous quilt for my Son Brian and his wife for a wedding gift. Ashlee is really into polka dots, so many of the fabrics involved here incorporate the dot theme together. Each of the blocks is a 1/4 of a log cabin square.

Quilt #38 was a wedding gift for my son Stephen and his wife Jodi. It was meant to be larger, but it sure makes a good one for snuggling. I think that I fell in love with Batiks with this quilt, only the cream in the background wasn't batik. This quilt has lots of greens and purples in it, just right for her eggplant and sage green wedding colors.

Last July I was blessed with my first grandchild. Her name is Esther. She is the joy in both her mom & dads life and in mine. Anyways, Quilt #35 was for her. Before I even knew she was to come, I found this paper pieced pattern at a local quilt shop and had to have it. Shortly after that the news that my son and his wife were expecting was announced. Ann has always loved Pandas and so it was decided that the theme for the baby's room would be just that. I knew I had the pattern! Yeah. She is just about to turn 1 and she sure is a cutie.

It has become sort of a tradition now that we try to make something, small or large, when we travel out to each others home. Sometimes it just not feasible, but when that happens, we at least get in a little shopping at local quilt store. My sisters Laura and Lisa live out in Pennsylvania. On this occasion we started making this tulip applique panel. We each ended up doing something different with that panel. Mine ended up in another curtain quilt for the springtime. My profile picture is from this same sister's craft time. Quilt #34

My sister Laura and I got together and made these little snowman quilts. Mine was designed so it would act as a curtain for my carport door. This quilt was the motivation for me to create other Curtain quilts for other seasons of the year. Quilt #33

My sister Lisa got Quilt #32 for Christmas. I hope she likes it. I love red white and blue. Red White and Blue don't neccesarily have to be patriotic for these colors to work. Hope she is snuggling with it right now.

A few years back rag quilts really became popular. Denim has always been popular and has been a fabric other then cottons that I really like. Old ragged soft denim. I can think of lots of projects to use denim with. Wish I had more time! This quilt #16 of course was made with total scraps. Some of which is donated by others who "Spring Clean" their closets and donates them to me. I admit, I do pass on donations to others but a lot of them get put into my own closet.

Remember my post on the pillows. Well this is the quilt that I made for my son Brandon and his wife Ann's marriage. This has been used so much that I have been told that it is now "retired" for safe keeping. Its a beautiful quilt. this was Quilt #14.

I lot of my quilts come from patterns that I get from subscription magazines that I receive in the mail. One year it had a article about patriotism and a project that a lot of people were making patriotic quilts and this was the featured item she shared with the magazine. So of course I made one. Once in awhile I'll hang it up outside so it can flow with the breeze, but most of the time it stays inside. Quilt #13

More photographs photos! Quilt #17 is a baby quilt that I made for my Brother Johns 1st child. I did sneak in some poly cotton on this quilt and learned very quickly that I didn't like that. I'll stick to cottons from now on.

Quilt #12 is probable not worth showing you. The glare is very bad. Never-the-less, this baby quilt was for my Brother Joe and his wife Elaine,s baby son Atticus.

Quilt #11. This quilt was a gift for my son's good friend James when he got married. Its hard to see the colors on this quilt as well. The colors were lavendar and sage green inter mixed with cream blocks. James by the way makes great pizza!

Quilt #10. This quilt sometimes hangs on my wall year round. I intended it to be up for just the Christmas holiday, and replace it with something else for the rest of the year, but it seems to fit and so it stays.

I watched a quilting show on t.v. when they started displaying the patterns measurements for this quilt on the screen. I was frantically scribbling down on a peice of paper because I didn't know and I wasn't prepared to do this. I remember having to look up the episode on the computer to search out the rest of the instructions that I couldn't get. lol

Yep - more photos of photographs. Quilt #7 is a table runner that I did make 2 of. One for my brother John and his wife for a wedding gift. You probably have noticed that I like to make in duplicates so that I can keep one myself. Once I do make a quilt, I like to go on to another "quest" and don't like to start over and do another identical one. Its better for me to sew in quantities at the same time.

Quilt #9 - This quilt was made for my son Brian. After tying quilts for the other ones, He was wondering when he would get His quilt. So. I thought let me try to make an Arizona Diamondback Quilt for his favorite team. I was totally making this pattern up. Brian helped with the design of the "A" and this quilt was the 1st attempt that I did at free-motion maching quilting. Boy, have I had to learn a lot about maching quilting. But it was a start, and thats what it is all about.

This quilt is also very special to me. It was my very first quilt pass the beginning stages and hand quilted. I keep this lap size quilt on my bed to take naps with. Quilt #4.

OK, at the beginning of this blog, I talked about starting off with the beginnings. My intention was to start blogging about those first quilts and go somewhat in a chronicle order. I ended up not doing that because the excitement in starting to blog was basically "impressive to me" that I was able to do it in the 1st place, that I immediately jumped in and started posting all the photos that I had handy.

Well here it is folks. QUILT #1 - Christmas patchwork, tied quilted. Quilt #2 was a turquoise colored patchwork that I had my son Dallin help tie. Quilt #3 is the strawberry,mint green railroad patch and likewise, had my daughter Karen help tie for her bed. Skip #4 and with Quilt #5, the Blue and Big Red stars, tied, for my son Chase. These quilts were when the kids were 6 or so years younger and helping with the tying was much easier to coax them into. I just wanted to practice with the blocking and 1/4 seams etc, plus I was always wanting to get them to learn a little about sewing just for their own benefit.

Now the embarrassing part is that I actually photoed real photographs just for the sake of getting them on this blog site.

My son Chase served in the South Africa Cape Town Mission as a missionary. While there, he sent home a large piece of fabric that had about 6 different panels of African animals. Held on to it for a long time trying to decide what kind of quilt I could make with it. Close to the time he was to be coming home I chanced upon a quilting pattern that was just perfect I chose a lot of batiks, and African style prints and did sort of a Stack and Whack for the center. I then broke up the panels and border all around it. I gave this to him for his 1st Christmas home as a token of his missionary service in South Africa. One fun thing for me was that I was asked to have this quilt put on display at a Quilting Display at the Gilbert Museum. Kind of a Honor for me. Quilt #37

These are just a few color combinations of quilted purses that I made. I love the large capacity and also love the comments I get from people while shopping. This was quilt project #39 a,b,c etc

I made a couple of these pillows for my son Brandon and his wife Ann for Christmas. The purpose of these pillows was to go along with the quilt that I had made for their wedding. The photo of that quilt is ?, but it contained the same fabrics and design that is here on the pillows. Quilt project #26

My son Brian had a very good friend, Robert, that I made this quilt for his wedding. I was trying to make it romantic! I think his wife thought it more romantic then he did.

This quilt had a large center square in the other wise typical log cabin. If you look closely, you can see the puffed heart created in each square. Quilt #27

This flag quilt was project #7, and again, using lots of scraps.

One year I decided to do Nativity projects for Christmas gifts. I paper peiced the pillow and the wall hanging, and of course I had to keep one of each for myself. And just in case you are following, these projects were Quilt projects #24 & 25

This quilt is #20. I am very proud of this quilt. You get to see my sister Laura and me standing in front of it because the disc that had that particular photo is missing. Oh well!.

This quilt hangs on my living room wall. It was my first attempt at applique. It also contains a great deal of scrap, which I am always happy to use. This quilt was one of the first few at 9-patching which I have grown to love.

Quilt #18. This quilt was probably 80% scrap. I did keep this one. Too pretty to sell!.

Heres 2 more quilt tops that sold on ebay. I wish that I could keep all the quilts that I made, but that wouldn't really be feasible for someone who lives in the Arizona desert. I do really love the log cabin and look forward to making another one that I will keep. The top quilt top was bought by a lady who owns a quilting store! How fun is that?

Here are 2 of the scrappy quilt tops that I have sold on ebay. The one on the top I wished that I had kept. I only hope that the person who bought it loves it as I do. The quilt top on the bottom I wanted to bring it all together, so I chose a bright color that would stand out.

Before I started making quilts I did lots of other sewing which I accumulated tons of scraps. I became aware that I must do something with them or else I would eventually be overloaded with fabric scraps. I have come to know that most seamstresses and quilters alike, that its painful to waste fabric. Therefore - I have made scrap quilts. Some quilt tops I have sold on ebay, and others like this one that I have practice machine quilting on to further improve my skills. I also like to be more creative with patterns so they would be more interesting to look at. All quilts are beautiful, old, new, traditional, artsy or modern, so, sorry to say this - un-patterned patchwork to me isnt all that wonderful - there are rather boring to me.

This is quilt project #8. A baby quilt that I made for my neice, Trisha, for her birth. I think that this one was one of first hand quilting jobs that I did.

Closer image.

Every snowman is just a little bit different.

This was the 14th quilt that I did. Someday, I'll figure out how to put quilts 1-13 on the computer.

I did make 3-4 of the same quilt, handed some out to friends for gifts