Ann's Gift Quilt

       One of my best friends has taken up quilting with some assistance from me. She is an accomplished home dec seamstress (I am not). She asked me if I would quilt this quilt which is a present for her son and daughter in law. I do not usually quilt anyone else's work as it is too nervewracking. I did this for her, although it was queen size and double sided. Most of the quilts I longarm are about 60 x 80 finished.
      We went over designs and sketched out ideas. The hard thing is she made a second quilt top for the back. While the idea is lovely, you can never center a back top so it coincides with the front one. I told her to add a lot of white fabric at the sides. The designs are not going to match up. Ok, she got that finally. I did not have any trouble quilting over seams. The front top did not lay flat enough, so that was always a struggle. Her batting had a hunk cut out and I had to remedy that on the long arm because I did not see it when loading. I used fusible knit interfacing strips, ironing it on while on the longarm. I trimmed it, but she bound it. They are getting it for Christmas while they will be here from Perth, Australia.

The Front

The Back

Comfort packages continue to roll out

      Over the past months, I continue to receive referrals for quilt packages. It was good that I had them ready.

     This one, the strips from Quiltdiva Julie, went to a young man with 2 small children that has Stage 4 Pancreatic cancer.

     The Scrap Jar Stars went to a young woman battling nasty Stage 4 cancer.

     This Branches quilt went to a woman from my church with Stage 4 Lung Cancer. It went out so fast, I did not get to take a picture of the bag and contents. It is not as big as I like to give, but she is short. She started chemo last week.

Lots of trees in winter

      The 2024 Christmas cards are ready to be written out and mailed. I was able to stamp, paint, add pastels and glue them all up and they are just ready to write out and send. All the mailing labels on the envelopes. Now just to gather up the strength to write them out!

Painted many strips

Over 100 ready to write!

Back to business

      I feel like a huge weight has been sitting on my head and have been unable to write and post. The longer it went, the harder it is to get back to it. I want to write and post, but I feel like I was stuck in cold molasses. I have been working on lots of things and I will post photos of them, but I am not going to try to go in order, but just get them out there.
    I am posting what is on my wall at the moment- a very scrappy In and Out top (free pattern, Jo's Country Junction). I had made one before, but a ton of strips from Quiltdiva Julie had me try a scrappy low volume background one. I think it looks happy which is what I was going for.

     I think the Helene disaster has affected me deeply. I visited Asheville in March and drove through WNC and was stunned by the beauty and people. When I saw the places I had seen and photographed just totally devastated and left to fend for themselves, I tried to do what I could and still am. I sent quilts to Keepsake Quilting which they distributed with help (over 3,000), sent support to Samaritan's Purse (mudding out, rebuilding), Operation Rescue (brings donated campers to families in tents), Valley Hope Church (Christmas presents for families), Mountain River Campground (rebuilding), Montgomery Sky Farm (feeding thousands) and others that I vetted. All of these places have great followups on Instagram. Please let us not forget these fellow Americans who have lost literally everything, especially in winter and at Christmas.

Kaleidoscope Korners and Judging

      I finished sewing the Yenter kaleidoscope blocks and put them on the wall. The borders will go on after the blocks are sewn. I tried half orange and half turquoise. Yuck! I then put all the orange up that the pattern calls for. Better, but then I found the identical fabric in blue and green on a big Quilted Twins sale. So, I will wait until that fabric comes in before I sew anything else.

     Also, got the results for the Quilts Unlimited Show from The View in Old Forge, NY finally after a 5 day delay. No more show entries for me.

Flannel Fabric plans

    Every year I make members of my family flannel pillowcases. I used to buy woodland themed fabric in the Adirondacks on vacation from a store in Inlet, NY. They sadly retired, closed, sold the building and a great tradition vaporized. I have searched for another source for a while and was able to get a bunch of it from Hancock's of Paducah and equilter. Some even on sale. I used to love the quality I bought- it was mostly Moda and Northcott, but they don't seem to be making it much anymore. I like to feel the fabric before I buy and can't do that online. If anyone knows of another source, let me know. It seems plaids and pastel baby print flannels are the majority of what is out there, not useful to me.
    All the fabric I bought seems ok except the blue plaid- not a great texture for against the face. It is all washed and ready to cut. I usually sew all them on retreat in November all at once. Easier that way and I leave all the mess there. I will use the gray dot and green dot as cuffs for a lot of them. I use the taco or burrito method to sew them. I don't own a serger, so I use French seams.

Yenter Kaleidoscope

    I think I have only bought 4 kits in my whole quilting career. I like to make my own choices and tweaks. Two of the kits I remade differently. One I changed from raw edge applique to set in strips. And then I saw this Floragraphix V Jason Yenter border fabric with pattern at the Quilted Twins and bought the fabric. I read the instructions many times until I understood how the borders were cut and layered. I made  kaleidoscope quilts before that were cut from the full fabric (Maxine Rosenthal book), so this was different plus they are much bigger. I bought the orange as in the pattern photo, but I am wondering if a turquoise would be better.

Would turquoise be better than the recommended orange? I only have a scrap of this turquoise, used it for color idea.

The pattern and fabrics cut.

Have to press seams open on this type of block!