Brimfield as of July 25

I recently started working on Brimfield blocks along with 4 other friends.  We are each doing something a little different, and gather once a week on Zoom to chat about our progress and basically visit.  Its one of the highlights of my week. 

Here are the blocks I have made so far.  I am using a mixture of Granny Chic and Farm Girl Vintage fabrics.  They do make me happy as I think of Granny and her Granddaughter living happily on a farm, with no Coronaville, protests, election campaign ads, economic woes ...going on.  Represents to me a simple, happier time.

Glorious Nine-Patch and Temperature Quilt

Today I got my Seasonal Temperature Quilt  caught up.  It never ceases to amaze me how quickly the days seem to go by.  I thought I had just updated it 3 days ago, but I was ten days behind.  I call it seasonal as I started with the first day of Winter on Dec 21.  Winter months are silver/grey, Spring is green and summer is yellow. The large white areas name the season. the White small strips in the winter months indicate when the low temp was 25 degrees or less - only six days in Winter dropped below 26 degrees.   

This is a partial row that I have started, beginning July 20.  Notice the first strip on the left - I call this my fire fabric, and it us used whenever the high temperature is 95 degrees or higher.  Only one day this summer so far that has happened, and then it was exactly 95 degrees.  I use Weather.com to get the highs and lows and it sure does not agree with my car.  I had to take my husband to the doctor on July 20 and had to sit in the car to wait for him. They would not let me come in to go with him - not even to the waiting area.  So I found a shade tree to park under and I had brought my book to read, rolled the windows down and made it ok.  My car temp read 97 degrees when we left the house.  Once he was done and we were on our way home, the car temp display ran got up to 103 decrees and stayed around 99 - 100 all the way home.  Once back near the house it was back at 97.  According to Weather .com, our high for the day was the 95 degrees.

This is my most recent baby quilt for my church ladies expecting babies.  This will go to a mom who already had two cute boys, but is expecting her first girl.  I thought she deserved something pretty and sweet and I always love scalloped borders on baby quilts for girls.

I did a simple cross hatch quilting with variegated thread.Did a little pattern just for interest.  The backing is a soft pink and the floral binding is the same used in the quilt top. 

Coronaville Quilt Top completed

This is my Coronaville Quit top with 120 houses.  I arranged the blocks in a topsy-turvy block surrounding a cross I embroidered on the center square.

I am not done with the houses yet, just the quilt top.  I plan to keep making houses until we can go out without wearing a mask or practice social distancing.  South Carolina is in worse shape now than it was back in March and April....so I guess I have a lot more houses to make.

I will put the blocks I make from this point on the back of the quilt.  Not knowing how much longer I will be making houses, I decided to make the backing houses smaller so that I can get more on the back.

I hope and pray by January we will have a vaccine and can get back  to some kind of normal lives.  My quilt club's retreat is the third weekend in January and I sure want to go!

Four Baby Quilts

I enjoy making quilts for the pregnant mom's in our church and this years seems we are having a bumper crop, with 5 babies on the way and one born in March.  I have to wonder how next year will be after all this "stay-at-home" time.  So far, there will be three new baby boys, one girl and the gender of the other two is not yet known.  I completed one quilt back in February to give to the mom who delivered in March, but did not get to give it yet due to this corona virus.

Schnibbles design that I enlarged to make ta baby quilt size.

Backing and bow for the Schnibbles quilt.  I found the cute cowboy flannel and could not resist using it for the backing on this quilt.  This is the way I wrap the quilts for the baby showers, with the label on the outside.   I use the same label on all these baby quilts.

A simple four patch that I used to highlight the cute animal print.  I fussy cut the various animals for the blocks that go between the four patches.

Backing for the four patch.  I did have to add a little strip to the sides to get the backing wide enough for the quilt, but I think it is so cute.

I saw a quilt like this on pinterest and used EQ to get my sailboat design.  I added the pennant flag and that is dimensional, so the baby will have something to play with.

A Lewis & Irene fabric for the backing

The pattern is Jelly Nation by Katrina Hadjimichael.  All the fabrics are Lewis & Irene jelly roll cuts which made putting the quilt together quick and easy.  I am thinking this will be for a baby girl, although I think it would also be ok for a boy.

Backing for the Jelly Nation quilt - also a Lewis & Irene fabric.

I have two more baby quilts to make, and have started a girl quilt using the Glorious Nine Patch pattern I found in a 2002 McCall's Quilting magazine.  My first attempt at making one of these quilts, and having a few problems.  Wish I could find the acrylic templates for cutting out the pieces.  I have had to draw them from the pattern sheet and then cut them from plastic, and  I am sure they are not quite right.  I did find one of the patterns with the templates on line and have ordered it - should be here Wednesday.  I am determined to master this pattern, and heaven knows these days I have the time to work at it.

Hope you are staying safe, healthy and happy.

Pemberley pictures

Pemberley - Finished!

Its finished!! I began this project on Feb.5, 2018 and was so excited to get it started.  A few days later I fell and broke my wrist, and it had to sit for a few months while I recouperated.  Then that same year in November, I fell down a flight of stairs and once again, had to set it aside.  Its a lot of hand piecing and needle turn applique.  I completed the top and started hand quilting on November 16, 2019 thinking it would take a long time to quilt.  Then....the corona virus came on the scene and I had many days at home to get it quilted. Took me 373 hours, 24 minutes to complete the quilt.   Hope you can see the quilting on the back.

I have a bunch of pictures I want to post as my blog is like a quilt diary to me and I print it out at the end of each year or two.  My next post will just be a bunch of pictures.

HQ Day 89 - 88 Coronaville houses

Today is Day 89, but I just finished working on the first 88 days of my Topsy-Turvy Coronaville houses.  I have renamed it to Topsy-Turvy Coronaville.  I am going to put sashing between the "quads" of houses and add a 3" border.  Found what I consider the perfect fabric for the quilt as I believe my poor Coronaville has been covered by storm clouds since this all first started.  Covid 19, Economic disasters, protests marches, riots, looting, and unbelievable talk of unfunding police departments. One brave 38 year old officer was killed in an ambush last week - left behind a wife and small child. The majority of our police are good, brave men and women seeking to keep us all safe...but you are going to find bad people everywhere, even on the police force.     I think it is good thing to review all policing policies, make changes where needed, bring justice to those doing wrong but also wrong to judge all police officers by the bad actions of a few.  I think it is a shameful thing in our country when innocent people are killed by the police, but it is also a shameful thing the number of police officers who are killed in the line of duty. All lives matter!