Spring flowers

Another dreary overcast rainy day here on the prairie.  I need color.  I need flowers.  I need something cheerful.  When I was working on the sunbonnet Sue quilt a couple weeks ago I found 2 1/2 inch strips that I had cut for half square triangles for a border for this quilt click.  I have been cutting triangles and got rather bored with that.  I pulled out a book of pastel appliqué and thought I should make an appliqué quilt and use up the rest of these 1990's fabrics.  This was much more fun and so much more cheerful.  The book was so poorly organized that I'm only taking suggestions from the book.  The cutting instructions refer to fabrics by number then the dimensions then it refers to the blocks by letter without referring to the fabric number or size.  There was a nice diagram which could have had letters and number for easy reference but it did not.  The book was not organized the way my brain likes things organized so I closed the book and I'm doing it my way.  Looking at my pile of fabric......I'm barely putting a dent in it.  Maybe I'll separate the blocks with little pieced checker boards and pinwheels, I have plenty of time to figure that out since I am going to buttonhole stitch appliqué.............my cheerful project.  --Ann--

Sunbonnet Sue Quilting

 Auditioning a binding and that one is wrong.

A short story:   Once upon a time there were two little girls, one lived in town and the other little girl lived on a ranch far from town but her grandma lived across the street from the first little girl so they became friends.  Kindergarten was the year of lots of snow so the ranch girl lived with her grandma most of the winter.  The two little girls would play together all morning then go to school.  Sometimes they played dolls, sometimes ponies and sometimes dress up.  The little ranch girl liked dress up so much that she wore the dress up clothes from the townie girl's closet to school then after school change back into her own clothes and go home to grandmas.  The townie girls mom made them matching dresses because they were BFFs.  Then the little ranch girl moved away then the townie girl moved away but they are still FBFFs.

I machine quilted in the ditch and around each sunbonnet Sue and palm leafy loops in the setting triangles.

As profound as I get words and the years of all her Easter birthdays.
1995, 2006, 2017, 2028 and 2090.

DD would frequently exclaim to me when I was sewing a dress for her "For Me!??!"

I always stitch my name onto the quilt along with the year.

The large floral print was a favorite sun dress with a ruffle at the hem and little bloomers underneath.

Little girls grow up so fast.........cherished memories.  --Ann--

Sun Bonnet Sue Design Wall

I thought I would share with you how this quilt came together.  I put these blocks on my design wall a couple years ago click and played with the blocks.  When I decided what was most important and what to eliminate the quilt came together  quite easily.  I say that now  as I forget the day I spent measuring and adding and measuring and adding some more.  The photos were all different sizes,  I measured the width, I measured the length, I grouped them by width, I measured how much I could trim,  I measured how much white to leave,  I measured how much sashing I needed to add to make it fit the row  because things fit together better if the are the same width.  I decided my intersections did not need to match up, my rows would be like clips of film.  I measured some more just to be sure.  Measure twice or three times or four times and cut once.  I remember very clearly now......all that math  my head hurt.

The photos were stitched together.  Next to figure out the sun bonnet Sues for the border.  The diagonal measurement for a 5 inch block is 7 and 1/8.  Not my favorite fraction to work with.  I decided to cut the setting triangles too large because I can always trim and I would add a border of sashing to the photos and cut it to fit.

Auditioning fabric for the setting triangles.  The outside setting triangles are cut from strips of fabrics from the many outfits I sewed for DD.

Not all the sunbonnet Sues made the front of the quilt.  The six who were left were the perfect length for the back of the quilt.

I cut the border around the photos extra large the I marked the center of each side and measured the length of each sunbonnet Sue section and marked the center.  I marked a chalk line where I thought the seam would be and hand basted the Sues to the center.  I was off by a quarter inch so I basted  again, this time the corners fit perfect.  I sewed and trimmed.  Basting is so worth it!
I need to come up with some profound words for the wide border around the photos.  --Ann--

Easter Birthday

I hope you had a joyous Easter.  My kids were all home sometime over the weekend so it was a weekend filled with laughs and too much good food.  Darling daughter had her third Easter birthday. To commemorate the occasion I finished this quilt for her.  The blocks and photo transfers have been sitting for years and every few years she would ask about it.  Still basking in the marvelous feeling of ta da da done.........I only wish I would have finished it weeks ago so I could have enjoyed the quilt a little longer.  --Ann--

out of the cupboard

Out of the cupboard,  actually off the roller.  This quilt has been rolled up on a cardboard tube for a very long time.  Its fun to see it again.  I don't know why it was banished for so long.  I completed this in 1993.  I remember the piecing was challenging because those narrow trapezoids in the squares did not want to match up with the green around each flower.  I machine quilted in the ditch around each flower segment and I was not doing free motion quilting at the time.  It was stitch stitch stitch and lift the presser foot and turn the quilt and stitch stitch stitch some more.  I quilted a vine and leaves in the border the same way.  Stitch and pivot and I did a double line for the vines and veins.  My quilting has come a long way since then.  The sunroom is the perfect place for this quilt.  --Ann--

Pastel IX

I started sewing Sun Bonnet Sue's out of the scraps from dresses I made for darling daughter.  They were a lot of fun to sew both the dresses and the Sues, then printing photos on fabric became possible.  I pull this out every few years and think of ways to put it together but still have not put any action with the thoughts.  I have 25 photos and as many 5.5 inch Sues to work into it. And I still have a box of fabrics from the 1990's good thing.  Right now I like grouping all the photos together and putting the Sun Bonnets in a border since the challenge is to keep it small.  But for now they are going back in the box.  Happy Memories.  --Ann--

Pastel VIII

 The pattern for this was in Linda Brannock's book Miss Jump's Quilt Album,  she called it Summer Garden aka Summer Pizza.  I think summer pizza is fitting.  I organized the background fabrics into diagonal groupings because there was just too much going on for them to be scattered randomly.  I need to add a border of checkerboards or maybe half square triangles  like the pin wheel quilt,  previous post.  It is a small queen size quilt.

The majority of these quilts were sewn in the 1990's specifically in 1999.  I must have challenged myself to use as much of this stash as I could before the new millennium.   I made a dent but I didn't come close to using all of the 1980's/90's pile. I could still make a couple more queen size quilts or 4 or 5 twin size.   One more 1990's fabric post to go. --Ann--

Pastel VII

My 1990's pinwheel quilt. This is a queen size quilt.  I think I made it before the twin size quilts for my daughter.  This is what was available and popular when I started quilting two and a half decades ago. I still love the prints and the colors.  It has never been used so the colors are still bright but enhancing the colors with the photo setting made them too bright.  The background fabric is ivory and it was quilted by a professional long arm quilter.  --Ann--

Pastel Series V

I'm of the generation that likes to pierce my garments not my flesh with jewelry.  I made this small wallhanging to pin my pins, I sewed on a few buttons  to hang necklaces.  The 4 patches were left overs from the Candy Stripe quilt. This little quilt was too wide to hang in my closet after another move so all pins were removed for another narrower pin quilt.  I finally got brave and tried machine quilting beyond puzzle piece stippling a decade or so ago.  The background of each basket is different and I free motion quilted a leaf and vine in the border.   --Ann--