Silent Sunday

Stitched

The top of the t-shirt quilt is finally stitched together, but it's a little on the small size...only 45" x 55".  I think I'll see if I can use the leftover backs of the t-shirts for a border to make it just a little bit bigger.

Quilters Are Everywhere!

Thanks to a kitchen remodel, cutting and hauling firewood, and just general cold, dry, winter weather, my hands are a sore cracked mess!  I stopped into our local drug store the other day to shop for some heavy duty hand cream.  I was standing in front of shelves and shelves of lotions when a clerk asked if she could help me.  I told her what I was looking for and she recommended O'Keeffe's Working Hands by saying, "Quilters swear by it!"  Confused, I asked how she knew I was a quilter, but as it turned out she was also a quilter speaking from her own experience.  Of course, that led to a half hour conversation about quilting, an invitation for her to join the guild, and me leaving the store with some quilter recommend hand cream (which is helping heal my dried out hands)!

Designing Process

Now that the interfacing is fused on to the wrong side of the t-shirts, I can start cutting blocks and try to figure out what is going to go where.  I'm not sure that this will be the final layout, but I think I'm getting close!

Silent Sunday

Silent Sunday

Interfacing...

Oh my!  I have a feeling that fusing the interfacing to all of these t-shirts is going to be the most time consuming part of making this quilt!  I used a tutorial from Quilting In The Bunkhouse for this step...lots of great advice for what kind of interfacing to use and how to cut and fuse it to the t-shirts.

The First Cuts

The first cuts into Tami's shirts were the hardest and yes, there were tears, but the job got easier as I went along.  Lots of happy memories of growing up together came back as I worked while listening to some of our favorite music of the 70's and 80's.  Summers at the pool, talking as we walked back and forth to school, bike rides, shopping trips, sleepovers, cooking disasters, cruising the neighborhood together the day I got my drivers licence, dances...all those things that best friends do when they are young.

Silent Sunday

Labor Of Love

On November 4th I lost one of my oldest and dearest friends, Tami Boehmer, to metastatic breast cancer.  She left behind a loving husband and 16 year-old daughter.  Being 500 miles away and feeling terribly helpless, I offered to make them a quilt from her t-shirts.  The box of shirts arrived in the mail the other day and so my labor of love begins...

Does Printing The Patterns Count?

Between the holidays and a kitchen/dining room remodeling project, about the only thing I have completed in the Moda Sampler Block Shuffle is printing off the patterns!  Hopefully I'll be able to get back to work on the blocks now that the holidays are over and the remodeling is about finished.

2015 Finishes

After a discussion with a few friends last week about the projects they had completed in the last year, I decided to take a quick look back at what I finished this past year.  I was surprised at the numbers! Three quilts for myself, two quilts that were given as gifts, three quilts for foster kids, and twenty-one quilts for veterans.  Twenty-nine quilts!  And that's not counting the fleece blankets and knitted projects.  I guess it's true that I most always have a needle and thread in my hands!

Silent Sunday

Happy New Year!