Quilts, Tomatoes, Pepper buds!

Ready for some garden pictures? Here's my banana pepper plant, with lots of buds all tucked in the center there. I bet I'll have blooms soon!

Again with the cherry tomato plant, from the top this time, with four easy to spot little green tomatoes, and a few more hiding in the leaves if you really hunt for them.

And last, the current quilt I'm working on. I can't share the whole thing with you, because it's a yet-unpublished pattern from Quiltmaker magazine that the Scrap Squad is doing. But here's a photoshopped picture that gives you a teaser of the colors of batiks that I'm using:

Charity Quilts

My guild just had a challenge to complete quilts for a hospice near us. I'm proud to say that we met and even exceeded the challenge, donating over 55 quilts to the hospice. Here's a few of them:


You'll see a nice mix in the pictures, everything from big block quilts to nickle square quilts, crumb quilts and heartstring quilts. We had a workshop on the quilt-as-you-go circle quilts you see there, they were a lot of fun to do. Here's more quilts:

Cat Quilts and Snowpeas Growing!

I'm still working on this quilt - but I did finish piecing my kitty borders. Yes, it's on a fence, and I rotated the pic so you didn't have to tilt your head... lol

Now to put (applique, uggh) the yarn balls on the sides. I've changed my mind and am thinking about only putting them on the long sides, do you agree? With a little scrappy bias tape tail, with one loop in it, I think.


And I've got snowpeas, growing like a weed! These pictures were taken just a little more than 48 hours apart - the top picture was taken Sunday, the one on the bottom, today. I can't wait to crunch into my first raw, fresh off the vine, crisp little pea pod. ;p

Website Updates

Well, haven't been doing too much quilting lately, mostly been watching the Olympics and working on web pages.

But I have made one block, here's the EQ design for my guild's block of the month. They could choose any shade of yellow, and any blue to make the six inch churn dash, then applique a red, pink, burgundy or maroon heart (or two) on it:


And the block I've made, but haven't appliqued the heart on yet, mostly because I dislike hand sewing. I think I'll do one heart with that pink fabric on the bottom of the picture:



If you want directions to it, it's on the bom page of my guild's website:

Churn Dash Heart

I've also been working on my own website, updating the contents page. Check it out if you like cats telling jokes. My favorite is the Matta Baby joke:

ForestJane's site

And I decided to try to collect all the pictures of my quilts and put them on my personal website, one or two pictures per quilt, to make a record of what I've done, quiltwise. It's a bit more complicated than it sounds, because I may have started a quilt in early 2005, and spent most of that year on it, sent it off to be quilted in November, then got it back and bound and finished it in Feb. of 2006... so does it belong on the 2005 page or the 2006 page? Right now the page is both years.

Quilt Record

I'll be working on this for many nights yet to come, I think.

Caps and Block Progress

Hi Everybody! Sorry it's been so long since my last post, but in addition to a booger of a cold, I've been busy! But first, a picture of something my Mom's doing... remember the incubator blankets the quilt guild is making? Mom's a knitter, and she's knitting away every night, making teeny caps for the babies that will receive our blankets. The orange and yellow tennis ball that's tucked in the pink cap is on there for some idea of size, aren't they little? Mom is making two sizes, small and extra small. This is only the first installment, she's still making more. :)



My quilt guild is doing a half square triangle swap for March - where people bring as many hsts as they want to make, swap even, and go home with as many as they came with, but in more variety. Here's our current block of the month page, if you want to see how we're doing it. I don't know if any of the blocks I swap for will end up in the jewel box quilt, or in an incubator blanket, or in a future block of the month project. A 3 inch finished size hst is useful in a lot of things!

Every night when I get home from work, I've been making the pieces that will go into my jewel box king size quilt. Since I haven't decided yet which of those three designs I'll be doing (either #2 or #3 though) there's not an exact count for most of the bits, but the color-to-blue half square triangles are at about 90 right now, and the color-to-white hsts about the same.


I wish I could be the kind of scrappy sewer that doesn't obsess about placement of fabric, but I'm not... lol First I'll divide my fabric squares and hsts up into fourths, by color, to spread them out in the 4 different quadrants of the quilt, then make sure that none of the blocks match each other, THEN make sure that none of the fabrics in the blocks are in adjacent blocks. Do any of you go to these extremes or am I the only one? But I have made a few sample blocks:



This quilt is really helping me clean out my scraps - anything I can get a two inch strip out of gets used in the 4 patch blocks... and I'm sorting thru my 4 inch squares I bought on eBay for a lot of the half square triangles. Black, browns, creams, and beiges are about the only colors I'm not using. And since this one is for MY bed, I'm making a special point to try to use fabrics from previous quilts, like a memory quilt. See the navy 2 inch square with what looks like pick-up sticks in the block above? Those are knitting needles, and I used a FQ of that fabric in the fan blades and depression blocks of the quilt Mom got for Christmas. :)

Some Finishes

This pink and brown one I started at our guild retreat last November (well, actually, we had some homework to precut our squares before the class, but didn't start making the blocks till the second weekend in November.) We had a great instructor, and almost everyone finished the top during the weekend, a few finished top AND borders. I sent mine home with my longarm quilter, to Missouri, and just got it back from her a couple of days ago.


I'd used up most of the fabric that matched it in the piano key border, but I was lucky enough to find another yard of the one I wanted (the dark reddish brown one) at the store.

Here's the back of a smaller couch-throw quilt... remember the floral windmills I put up on the blog a month or so ago?


And here's the front of it. Mary S. really did a great job quilting both of them. This floral one's already been washed, and really came out all soft and nice. Too bad I don't need a couch throw this time of year! I like the look of the pieced binding - it might have looked better against a less dark final border, but since this one was completely from my stash, I wanted to use up the last few floral strips.



Nothing new on the mashed van yet. Because the delivery truck hit me, then a car hit the delivery truck, they'll have to argue about who has to pay what percentage of the repair. A guy from the insurance company is meeting me at work tomorrow to have a look at the damage.

And finally, a question... have any of you seen the quilts that fold in on themselves and become pillows? Is it too late for me to do that and attach it to the floral quilt, or should I just make a separate little zippered pillowcase for it? If you attach it, do you put it center bottom or on a corner or?

Double Star

Yet another Heartstrings quilt top... this one again from the blocks people in my guild made for block of the month. I picked all the brightest ones I could find for the stars, eight with a red stripe for the points, and 8 with a blue stripe for the centers. Some of these blocks had center strips that were too large or too small, but in this layout, it's not as noticeable, I think:


The blue is actually a snowflake print, bought on sale, but the snowflakes are much smaller than the dark blue bubble shapes or the white asterisk shapes you may see, so I think I'm getting away with it. :)

One more blue border on the two long sides, do you think? It could stand to be bigger, so I COULD put even another border all the way around, red, maybe? It's going to be donated to a nursing home, so bright and cheerful is good, and any sizes from wheelchair to crib to twin are needed. I only used 24 heartstrings blocks on this one, so I still have plenty left to keep on playing with (and I'm getting more donated every time I meet with the guild members.) Those side borders made from the half blocks are a GOOD place to use the slightly 'maverick' blocks. I cut the red centered ones in half with the stripe leaning to the top right, and the blue centered ones with the center stripe leaning to the top left, so I got the zig zag effect.

I got another bit added to all 100+ of my bright squares that were in the pizza box, AND got all of them ironed, made another 6 kaleidoscope blocks for the king size quilt, AND got those ironed. I really appreciate all the name suggestions for it too! I haven't decided on a name yet, I like the beach references, because that tan/beige does look like sand with water, but I also like the windmill and diamond ideas a lot too. Thanks, everyone, for the super suggestions!