Quilting

I posted about making a t-shirt quilt for a friend of mine. It is finished! Yay! That took me quite awhile with how busy I've been. I also couldn't decide exactly what to do. I would normally just use a simple plain color for the border and backing but my friend requested "soft and pretty". That threw me a loop. I didn't end up with the "soft" but here is what I decided on for the "pretty". My friend is the US Army and most of her shirts were Army. I couldn't find a print that I really liked to go with the T-shirts, so I decided to keep it "Patriotic"(which is the second idea I went with. I actually had almost completely constructed another quilt but just wasn't liking it for this particular one, so I changed and made the Patriotic one...whew, exhausting! But so worth it!). This is now a reversible quilt as she can display whichever side she chooses. 

The T-shirts:




The Patriotic Side:







I went to a great quilt shop today and LOVED IT!! This is the one I'm raving about on the blog's home page. And I just had to post a picture of this block. I couldn't find the pattern so I had to take a picture, I would love to go back and get the fabric and make a quilt of this, it's so beautiful!! I just had to share! www.quiltersjunctionusa.com




  Isn't this gorgeous!







My first quilt. I made this picture quilt for my husband while he was on his second deployment in Iraq. I had never made a quilt before or been shown how. I was inspired by an old family block quilt. I just designed and measured and came up with this. I picked the colors because his favorite color is blue. I was pretty proud of myself and my husband liked it too. 

I would apply the pictures differently than I did on my first two picture quilts. As you can see in the picture, the pictures have spaces around them. They were Iron-on and worked great, but have learned that after washing a few times they start to pull up. So I would advise cutting your picture the same size as your block and sewing with your row instead of centering them. This way they are sewn in and will not pull up from any amount of washing. (I hope that wasn't confusing, Lol)



Below is my Patriotic quilt that I love. I posted the step by step instructions for how to make this. You can find on my home page. I'm still navigating my way thru setting all this up, so bear with me. 

Again, here is my breast cancer quilt that I made for a friend of mine. This is also on my home page with more of a description, along with the pattern for the smaller ribbon. 

A good friend of mine showed me how to make this pattern, known as the "Grandmother's Flower Garden". She made a King Size quilt with this pattern and it is beautiful. This pattern is all hand-sewn. I have made about 40 of these flowers, but have yet to make the ones that will border them. This is very time consuming but such a beautiful pattern. I did recently find a machine-sewn method on another blog that is great too. I'm not sure if I can mention them or how I do that yet, but as I figure it out, I will let you know :) For now, here is a picture of my hand-sewn version:

The next patterns below are just blocks that I was playing around with. I used scrap materials to make them. I was also playing around with colors. These were not for use in quilts. I was more interested in the pattern than the fabric matching. 

I really like this pattern. I think with the right colors it would make a beautiful quilt. 

In this pattern, you can see on the right side I didn't match up one of my blocks correctly. This was my first attempt at this pattern and just a scrap piece so I left it as is. 






This pattern I also really love. I am currently working on this star pattern for a quilt I'm making for another friend. I am using different fabrics and colors tho. I made this scrap block with a rainbow color theme just for fun :)