Blogger's Quilt Festival--Supernova in Black and White

Here's my entry for Blogger's Quilt Festival sponsored over at: http://amyscreativeside.com/ . Thanks so much to Amy and all the inspiration that oozes from her and her festival! Freshly Pieced's Supernova Quilt Along was inspiration for a quilt made for our nephew and his darling wife. She wanted modern in black and white, so I started looking around and just fell in love with this quilt: http://freshlypieced.blogspot.com/2011/03/supernova-quilt-along-join-me.html Backing is a high count beautiful grey sheet. Barb Smith, who longarmed, said it was more difficult to quilt because of that high count, but she did a beautiful job. She used the pantograph for block area, feathers in gold and cute black circly things for small black border which you can see on picture of a back corner.
Love pictures of folded quilts, so here you go!

Quilting on a corner. Block area done in white, black border done in black, gold border in gold.

There's a flickr group with lots of supernovas others have done and I did find one in black and white. I wanted to make it big enough for their bed if they want to use it there and fit their decor, so ended up with 25 blocks instead of original nine. These are BIG blocks--mine ended up being not quite 18 inches square, but they all seemed to turn out equal sized. I think there are 47 pieces per block! Had lots of fun picking out fabric as I decided there should be different corner pieces and centers for each piece. So that meant 50 different fabrics...making it "so very hard" to HAVE to shop for all of them!! :) Hubby and I had a lot of discussions about the borders. It's done differently than original to make it as big as needed. I would have been happy with just black and white for the whole top, but since gold is one of the couple's accent colors, my hubby wanted that and now I think that turned out very well.

Mock ups of several blocks. You can see number 8 sample and actual block. Block 8

Block 1

Directions were very good, but somehow I just couldn't get them straight in my head without doing little samples. It was time consuming, but only way I could figure out how to sew them. Honestly, I just got dizzy with all that black and white! Maybe it's a combination of my old, old eyes and tri-focals! I cut a lot of extras of each shape so have enough to make a couple smaller quilts--when I get some other things done. There's just something about black and white! There are so many darling fabrics...look for Route 66, Dr. Seuss, dog bones, newspaper articles about dogs!, lots of flowers, but no ants. I did get some fabrics with ants on them, but they were so real looking I just couldn't use them on a bed quilt. Think they'd be darling for a picnic quilt with reds in it and a jeans backing. Enjoy hundreds of beautiful quilts in the festival--you'll be so inspired.

BOUNTIFUL BASKETS TOP IS DONE!!!

So very happy to have this done and enjoyed just about every minute. I wish I had kept track of how many hours it took! April 5th this year is a post with pictures of each individual blocks and black border pieces, with some detail about how I do most of my applique pieces. Mostly I used templar plastic for the templates to iron fabric around. For all baskets cardboard from cereal boxes was used as there wasn't much detail and several were larger than the plastic sheets. I have re-used many of the templates for other applique projects--either as is, or cutting a smaller template.
http://fligamapoof.blogspot.com/search/label/baskets%20in%20bloom

The pattern is by Janice Joyner for Sisters' Scraps Quilt shop. http://webstore.quiltropolis.net/stores_app/Browse_Item_Details.asp?Store_id=722&page_id=23&Item_ID=1021 Didn't she design a beautiful quilt? I saw it and fell instantly in love. The pattern wasn't cheap, but would have taken me hours and hours to design something like that. If my daughter doesn't want the pattern, I might do a giveaway one of these days.

CLOTH FLOWER BOWLS

Time to sew and flowers with words fabrics, go together. Red print and red floral go together.

While looking for directions for making a cloth tray, I came across a tutorial for cloth flower bowls at Poppy Lane: http://vintagehouseholdtas.blogspot.com/2008/10/sewing-tutorial-fabric-flower-bowls-ive.html Such a great tutorial with fantastic pictures. I'm including some of my rather sad pictures taken with my phone, because the fabrics are different from hers and just wanted to show you! She said to make the stitches about 1/8th inch in from one of the notches, mine are about 1/4 inch and wonder if up more would make them a bit deeper.

Also think it would be fun to put some batting into bottom of dish, then put a piece of plastic (cut our from one of those flexible cutting boards?) under that and sew around to make it a pin cushion. My friend is using hers for collecting business cards.

This is a place for square cloth trays: http://www.skiptomylou.org/2011/09/13/fabric-trays/ at bottom of that post are several hot links for other trays/boxes, etc. Have only done flower ones and they are super easy.

SURPRISE AND FAMILY QUILT

Thirty-some years ago, while living in Germany with my active duty hubby, I designed this wall hanging to represent our family. The house is the family home in Utah of my husband's grandparents. He spent many happy times there and I was privileged to spend a few myself...including in the VERY cold upstairs bedroom. My very talented sister in law, Dianne, did a block print of it as part of her studies at BYU and is the inspiration for the house.

The orchard, mountains, and lake represent my side of the family. My mother's family was and some still are orchardists, my father's was and some still are farmers. We've always loved the mountains and lakes and ocean with their fishing possibilities of Washington state. The people are myself, hubby, our girl and boy and my brother. At the time of this, my parents lived on a 5 acre orchard, and we now live in the home, but on just one acre without orchard but lots of greenery mostly planted by mom and brother John.

I entered this in a contest sponsored by a military publication and won honorable mention, so was very pleased that others enjoyed it, too. All the sewing was done on my then new Pfaff machine and free hand. Had a lot of fun making it and still love looking at it now.

This above is the surprise. It's part of a very rough drawing of a quilt in progress for a special couple. I LOVE the colors and layout so may have to someday make me one!