Play Ball! Finished!

Hello friends.  Remember that Sneak Peak fabric I showed you several posts ago?  Well, the quilt is finally finished!  As you can tell by the inspiration fabric I showed you, the quilt is a sports themed piece.

Besides this inspiration fabric, I also chose 4 other fabrics:  baseballs on green, basketballs on red, soccer balls on blue and footballs on green.  The center squares finish at 7 1/2", and each square has a 1" border in one of 5 different colors and patterns.  The border fabrics  chosen were a dark blue with stars, red, orange, green and yellow textural prints.  Each main theme print was bordered by one of these 5 colors.  No two squares are bordered the same.  In all, I made 25 squares.  I arranged the blocks in a staggered arrangement (thanks in part to my good friend and fellow quilter Cathy K.), and split two of the blocks to make a full square inner portion of the quilt. 

I wanted to set the blocks apart from the outer border by more than just their own smaller borders.  I chose a white tone on tone number print, to emulate the numbers in the inspiration fabric.

I used a blue flannel on the back, because this quilt is made to be cuddled with, and what is more cuddly than flannel?

I pieced the binding from strips cut from the five block border fabrics.  I like to sew my binding down by machine, and chose a fun stitch that reminded me of the stitching on a baseball.

And now, here is the finished quilt:

This quilt measures 61" x 61", which is Denis' maximum arm span (he's my P.A.--Photographer's Assistant).

Potato Chip Pillowcase

Here's the latest quick project I've just completed.  It is yet again another pillowcase.  This one was made for my grandson Conner.  His pillowcase story begins at Christmas...  Kristy is his mother, and she received two Packer pillowcases.  Corey is his little brother and he received two pillowcases during his recent stay at Children's Hospital in Madison.  Chris is Kristy's sig other and he received a golf pillowcase at Christmas.  Cameron and Cory are Chris' boys and they each received an M&M pillowcase at Christmas.  Kristy and Chris and boys have all recently moved in together.  It has not escaped Conner's attention that he is the only one without a special pillowcase.  Grandma (that would be me) just could not let Conner go without, so she made him a special pillowcase.  It is made of a potato chip print because, you guessed it, the boy loves potato chips.  The band is a chocolate brown print, and the contrast strip is a dark brown color.  It is waiting for Conner on his bed, and he will find it tomorrow night when he comes back home for the weekend.  What are Grandmas for, if not to make things right with the world?

To Conner, with Love from Grandma.

Ice Storm and Daffodils

Greetings all!

I've been busy the past few nights working on a project (unrelated to sewing or scrapping) for my daughter, so I haven't had much time for sewing this week.  This morning we woke up to no power and a nice little coating of ice on everything.  Power was restored about noon-ish.  The daytime temps didn't get much above freezing, so the trees have stayed pretty much as they were early this morning. 

 

Icicles on the deck 6:00 am this morning.

My poor Arbor Vitae all bent over.  Large pine trees in back all broken.

My front yard tree, a thing of ethereal beauty.

My daffodils are ready to bloom, as you can see.  I hope they are hearty enough to withstand this ice storm and some cold weather.

 

Weather service is predicting more of same starting overnight tonight and all the way through Friday.  Old Man Winter, release your grip!



 

COLORADO! T-shirt Quilt

I'm still working on Play Ball! and hope to have a completion report very soon.

In the meantime, I'd like to share another one of my recent projects.  This one is entitled "COLORADO!"  and is a t-shirt quilt.

Fran, my Mom, lived in Colorado for about 15 years, having moved to Grand Junction after she retired from her job in Reno.  Yes, Mom is a desert rat (and I mean that in the most loving way, Mom).  I was able to visit her and her husband Jim, many times and collected a number of t-shirts during that time.  They were, of course, collecting dust hanging in my closet, never seeing the light of day. 

I had contemplated making a t-shirt quilt for several years, but was unsure how to go about it.  I was visiting Mom one day early last year and we did a little shopping at a local quilt shop, Antoinette's Quilt Shop in Plover.  They had a t-shirt quilt on display there, along with the pattern and accessories.  The pattern is "Memories to a "T"" by Crooked Nickel Quilt Designs.  The foundation for the quilt is Pellon Quilter's Grid On Point.  It is printed with 1" wide grid lines, and quite simply, you line up your t-shirt squares, sashing strips, and setting triangles on the grid, press to fuse to the grid, and sew your seams.  The seams are all encased within the grid, so no raw edges!  And, your t-shirt knits are firmly stabilized!

The hardest part of this project was finding just the right fabrics for the sashing, inner and outer borders.  The outer border and setting triangles (the green) is a forest print, which reminds me very much of the mountains of Colorado.  The inner border is a rust, and the sashing and binding is a marble print of rusts, browns, greens, white. I used brown flannel for the backing.   

Here's a close up so you can see the fabrics I chose more clearly.  The t-shirt from Vail says:  Caution Bear Dropping   (It's my favorite one!)

This quilt currently hangs over the railing in my front entry hallway, so it's the first thing my guests see when they come in the front door. 

Spring Tranquility Table Runner

I thought I would share a quick and easy little project that I made for the spring/Easter season.  It is a table runner made from a pattern called "The Big Easy" by Pieced Tree Patterns.  I found it at a recent quilt show.  I absolutely love the fabrics!  They are from the "Tranquility" line by Michele D'Amore for Benartex. 

The runner was made for a piano bench that sits in front of our living room window.  It is 42" long x 21" wide.  I used a large wavy stitch on the inner border and a large meander on the inside section.  It was perfect with my Easter decorations.  Although the Easter decorations have now been put away, I'll leave the runner until I decorate for summer, sometime in late May.

I've named it Spring Tranquility after the fabric line it is made from.

Play Ball Sneak Peek

I apologize to all viewers...I missed yesterday's post.  My daughter Kristy is moving this weekend, and last evening Denis and I were helping her do some last minute packing.  It was late when we got home, and we headed straight to bed!

I'll bet you've all been wondering if I've been working on anything recently.  As a matter of fact, the answer is "Yes".  I currently have a project in process for my oldest grandson, Conner.  He is 10.  The project is nearing completion and I hope to have it entirely done by the end of this coming weekend.  Here is a sneak peak of the inspiration fabric for this project:

It is perfect for him as he approaches teen-hood.  Shhh...don't tell his mother I said that, she is in denial!!

I'll post more on this in the next few days.  Stay tuned for the finished product this weekend.

Thanks for visiting.

Pennies from Heaven Shadowbox

This is a shadowbox that I made for both Denis and his brother.  There is a story behind the coins in the shadowbox.  Their dad, Bill, was a coin collector.  He would keep spare change (and would find it, too!) and would collect this change for an entire year, then cash it in at the bank.  It was his "mad money" while on vacation.  He was known to hide his stash of coins and money in the rafters of the basement at their home in Neenah.  Bill and Stella (Denis' mom) have both passed away, and Denis inherited the house.  He was doing some renovations in the basement (removing walls, etc.) in preparation to selling the house.  We often wondered about Bill's stash, if it even existed, and if we would find it.  The last wall to come down would reveal its hiding place, and at long last "the treasure" had been found.

I used some of the actual wheat pennies and rolls of coins as part of the display.  This is contained in a 12" x 12" shadowbox frame.  There are notations on the rolls written in pencil in Bill's handwriting. 
 

I gave this one to Gordon, Denis' brother for Christmas in 2007.  It was the WOW gift that Christmas.  It made him cry.  I made another one for Denis soon after.

Here is the write up from the shadowbox:  "Bill was well known as a collector of many things.  One of his most prolific hobbies was to collect coins, roll them in paper wrappers, and stash them in the walls ad rafters of his basement workshop.  During recent basement renovations, Denis had almost given up hope of finding this legendary treasure until the last of day of his work there.  The wall containing the door to the workroom was the last to come down, and there the treasure resided.  Rolls of wheat pennies dating back to the 1940's came tumbling down, as well as rolls of quarter and half dollars.  This display is dedicated to you, Bill.  Although you are gone from us, you continue to shower us with 'Pennies from Heaven'.  Thanks, Dad."

These photographs are the ones used in the display:

 Bill repurposed a variety of containers for his coins, including this Velvet tobacco tin.

Here are the tobacco tins and rolls of coins stashed within the wall above the door to the workroom.  This space was full of tins and coins.