This was a banner year for quilt production–I won’t bore you with how many and where they went, but there were a lot! Here are pictures of a few of my personal favorites. Where a pattern is involved, I give the information along with the picture. Where there’s no pattern, feel free to just make your own pattern to copy mine.

This is my version of the Bloem pattern from Zen Chic.

This little house quilt was made for Habitat for Humanity

“Blue Sky and Sunshine” was made from orphan blocks

This is from the pattern “Contrasting” by Zen Chic

There are many chandelier quilt patterns out there, but this one was free on the Free Spirit website

This pattern is BQ4 from Maple Island Quilts

This is my modification of “Mod Fish” from Colourwerx

This Quilt of Valor was made using a free pattern from Krista Moser’s website

I made this quilt from orphan blocks and was surprised at how much the side borders added to the composition

On to 2025!

I recently got a fancy little addition to my studio: a thread cabinet!

Husband Steve took a woodworking class this fall and made this beautiful little cabinet. Then we didn’t have a place picked out for it. After deliberation, it landed in the studio to be used for my cones of thread! Score!

At present the finish is fresh, so I get a slight smell of linseed oil and varnish when I come into the studio! It’s very pleasant, sort of like that new car smell.

And here’s another quilt going out the door for a good cause. The 8 year old grandson has a wonderful teacher this year, so he’s giving her this quilt for the holidays. I’m showing a detail view so you can see the beautiful snowflakes quilted by Linda Nichols.

Happy holidays to all of you!

I’ve mentioned that I’m taking Tara Faughnan’s Block Studies Class, and I’m happy to say I’m having new experiences. The most recent assignment  is to use the designated palate to make blocks in limited sizes/shapes (though she says we’re free to change any part of the prompt). The goal is to create movement/focus/etc. through use of color and value alone.

The assignment turned out to be MUCH harder than it sounded, at least for me. My first attempt at a block design using her formula (with one black/white fabric added by me) resulted in this block, which took about 10 hours to work out.

My second attempt took even longer, perhaps 16 hours. Here are some of the (many) iterations I tried

and here is the finished block.

Finally, I made this block which took only about 3 hours–maybe I’m catching on? Or maybe I just quit worrying so much.

And this block was made to use up scraps, totally without reference to her guidelines.

Whew! This class is closed for now, but I do recommend Tara’s classes if you’re ready for a challenge!

It’s obvious I’m not up to her standard (yet); look at some of her finished “studies” here. It appears to me she used a much wider range of colors than I did, so maybe that’s the next challenge!

Patterns are one of the things I look for when I visit quilt shops, because it’s always nice to find something new and unusual. That’s how I came to make these fish:

The pattern is “Mod Fish” by Colourwerx. Your LQS probably can order it, or you can get it here. The pattern was well written, easy, and fun. Of course I made a few changes, but those were just because I wanted to, not because the pattern needed modification.

Friends helped me choose the fabrics, all of which came from stash. This was a great place to use batiks because of their organic feel. I quilted it by zig-zagging around the fusible applique and along some of the stitching lines. Because this is intended to be a wall hanging, I used poly/wool felt as batting. (It’s firmer and more stable than regular batting, so you don’t have to quilt closely to keep it from sagging when hung.)

Luckily, we visited our daughter’s new vacation house at the beach over the Thanksgiving weekend, so I was able to give it to her as a housewarming gift.

Quilt Stats

Name: Fish!

Finished size: 35″ x 46″

Pattern by: Colourwerx

Pieced and quilted by: me

All of the quilt groups to which I belong make donation quilts, but one group (only 4 members) recently met and sent the following donations on their way.

Twelve quilts for Flying Horse Farm

24 quilts for Ronald McDonald House

Here are individual pictures of a few of them

We’ve heard comments like, “Wow! That robot quilt took so much time, and you’re GIVING IT AWAY?” We believe that donation quilts should be as pretty and well made as quilts we keep for ourselves.

Some of us make quilts because we learn something new with each quilt, or because we enjoy playing with beautiful fabric. We get satisfaction out of it, and the group member who delivers the quilts says the staff at our designated charities is always appreciative. Also, quilting keeps us sane! Just sayin’.