a lovely heap....and a finish

I have several quilts going right now. I am enjoying the stage each one is in. Gives me something to do, no matter what mood I am in.

First up is "Gypsy Dream". This is to be our summer quilt, so it is on its way to a "king-size". Made from 2 FQ stacks, Kaffe Fasset and Brandon Mably, along with a Laura Gunn off-white print. Currently 90" square, I need to add borders to increase the size. I am in the process of designing my borders before I complete this.

Next is a commissioned t-shirt quilt. I have cut and fused all the shirts, now I need to do my sashing before assembling.

I started this last night! "Pave the Way" by my friend Karen Gray made from a Fat Eighth sampler of Amy Butler's "Lark". I am amazed at how quickly this is going together.

This has been a week of recalibrating since the passing of my beloved mother-in-law. Early in the week was horrible, then mid-week, I finally slept all night and had some small "cries" each day, Friday was good. My husband is also sleeping a bit better so we are working on processing this grief. 

I quilted each night, and finished this, I call her "VooDoo":

 
72" square, the batiks are all scraps from previous quilts. The pattern is my own. The dark gray is "Manatee" a Free Spirit solid, the light gray is Kona "Ash".

Free-motion quilted with YLI Variations, a variegated tri-lobal polyester. The pictures do not show the luster of this yarn! I love it and will be buying additional colors.

Quilt in process

I am quilting a bit each evening. Here is a sneak peak on my current project.

So much fun. So comforting.

MY Pillow from TMQG Swap

Made by the lovely and talented Colleen of luckyduckdreams! She made a modern Dresden, on Kona Ash, using bright beauties from her stash.

I love the orange, the Amy Butler prints, the dots. And I really love the hand quilting! Thank you, Colleen!

Deep Water

The last 2 weeks have left me feeling like I was underwater. Swimming in a strange ocean. I need to sew, it has helped me work through the beginning of my grief. I have thought about my sweet mother-in-law as I have stitched. She sewed, made most of her clothes in her young adulthood. She also quilted. So a lot of this is inspired by her, and her encouragement.

(pardon the color shift-I tried to correct, still looks a bit too red)

I completed Rumba a couple of weeks ago, and so enjoyed the process, that I wanted to do another in a color story fashion. So here is Deep Water.

Measures 36" by 48" (same as Rumba). 

(pardon the blur-dog at my shoulder)

I used a variegated YLI thread. The stitch design is my own, I just sat down and it happened. I like it and plan on doing this on a larger quilt I am piecing.

TMQG Pillow for Swap (updated)

Our February swap for the Triad Modern Quilt Guild was a travel pillow (approximately 12" x 16"). Our swap Mama gave me an easy, and tough swap mate: Angie! Easy, because she loves Kate Spain, tough because she is an awesome sewist, so I needed to be on my game. Our guild has a Flickr group, links to blogs and we follow each other on pinterest, so stalking Angie for ideas was fun. I found one of the last charm packs of Terrain, known to exist (LOL) and some Kona Charcoal and Free Spirit Manatee solids.

I pieced selected charms with the gray solids for the front, the edge and added an accent strip on the envelope flap on the back.

I did minimal straight line quilting, just to accent the shape. I really like the contrast that the gray lends to the bright colors of the charms.

I am also enclosing the remainder of the charms, I know Angie will find a use for them. I hope she likes the pillow!

She DID like it!!! And I love my pillow!