In my last post I said the quilts were next, and they are.  But, before I get to all the quilts my machine, Frida, has been putting out, I want to add that before I went to Amana, I put a ceiling fan up for my hubby and then put up another one after we got back.  I still have one more to put up when things slow down.  I am busy this week getting ready for a garage sale.  I used to teach English Language Learners (grades K-12) in the public schools.  When we moved back here in 2009, I was unable to get any job in education, not even a teacher’s aide.  The budget cuts were so severe at that time that schools were closing and teachers were being laid off.  Anyhow, I have moved on in my life and no longer need any of my teaching stuff, so I am selling it in a garage sale this weekend.  I don’t remember garage sales being this much work, but I was much younger the last time we had one, which was a very long time ago.  Hopefully I will make enough money from this garage sale to fix my front porch.  Last summer when we had the drought, our porch sunk quite a bit, and the insurance does not cover it.  I am not complaining, but quilters just do not get rich doing what they do.  They do it because they love it and no other reason.  Therefore, I am forced to be creative with our finances and the porch has had to wait.

So, onto what Frida, my quilting machine, has been up to, spinning her magic thread… This is Wilma’s One Block Wonder quilt.  I love the way Wilma works magic with colors.  This picture doesn’t do her quilt justice.  The fabric is silky soft with leaves and music notes.

So, she asked me to quilt leaves in the middle portion and music notes in the green.

       

Can you see it?  What a lot of people don’t realize is that I customize my customers’ quilts by adding personal touches.  Wilma is okay with me quilting little surprises into her quilts and in the past, I have quilted bugs, birds, and butterflies into her quilts.  This time I did something different and put a poem into her quilt.  She never did find it – that’s the thing about quilting.  People look at the colors, blocks and quilt first and tend to notice the quilting as an afterthought.  So, you can sneak stuff into there.  The poem goes like this.

One Block Wonder

Spirals around

Creating magic

With fabric found

Like leaves in the fall

Dancing down to the ground.

I also quilted a quilt for Wilma to give to Velma’s family.  Velma passed away a couple of months ago, and her family donated her fabric to the quilt guild.  Wilma generously made a quilt from Velma’s fabric, and I quilted it with a quick E2E (Edge to Edge) design.  Wilma will be giving it to Velma’s family soon.  Once again, you will see Wilma’s got good color sense, imho.

Hang in there!  Only three more quilts and a coverlet to go!

Cindi very graciously took a chance on me and had me quilt 3 of her quilts.  She is a newbie quilt-maker, and I think she did an absolutely fabulous job on her quilts!  Of course, she is still in the stage where she notices her mistakes and points them out to others, but she will learn that others make so many more mistakes than the very few that she did, but they don’t, or won’t admit to them!  I love this girl!

Here is the first quilt I quilted for Cindi.

She wanted simple straight lines quilted on it and numbers in the borders.  I used her numbers as the guidelines for the numbers I put into her borders.  I think if I had put different kinds of numbers, such as skinny numbers, etc. it would not have accented her work as well.  Anyhow, this was the procedure I followed for the numbers.  First, I copied what numbers she had on her quilt and then I looked online for numbers that matched her numbers and made them the same size.  I then took a piece of vellum (actually, I think I used onion skin on this one) and traced numbers in a random order on the the paper that was the size of the border; 1 piece for each side.  And, then I poked pins straight down into the paper and fabric and stitched the pencil drawn numbers.  You pull the paper off when you are done with the row of numbers.

    

Here is the back and binding of this quilt.

  

The above quilt and the next one are for her grandsons, if I remember right.  All three of these quilts will be at her lake house, so if you notice a theme going on here, that is why.

It was hard to stitch any surprises into this quilt with the straight lines and the numbers.  Of course, after I finished them, I thought I could have put faces into the numbers.

Front, binding, and back…

And, this quilt is for Cindi.  I LOVE this quilt and think she did a stupendous job on it as well as the 2 above.

Front and back… By the way, the numbers are representative of birthdays/birth months/birth years.

  

I think we can figure out how old Cindi is by this picture, but trust me, she DOES NOT LOOK IT!!!  I thought she was younger than me!  Cindi wanted straight lines for the quilting on this one, except she wanted fish quilted into the light blue border.  It’s always nice to find out things about the people you quilt for, so I try to listen for bits of information so I can personalize their quilts.  This was an easy one to personalize.  I knew she had grandsons from the 2 earlier quilts, and I knew they were at the stage where they might like monsters, etc.  So, I stitched some monster fish into the light blue border, along with a bunch of “normal” (if there is such a thing with free-hand quilting) fish.  I also stitched a hook next to an open mouth of a fish, and I stitched a shark looking at a “surprised” fish that is looking back with bulging eyes.

 

I was so happy Cindi asked me to finish these quilts for her and hope I did a good enough job that she will ask me again (surprises and all!).

Finally, this next “quilt” is actually for an interior designer, Robin.  She is making a bedspread for a customer, but she does not quilt.  So, she just had me quilt this “coverlet” for the top and she will add piping, etc.  All she wanted was the designs outlined/traced.  Some people call that custom quilting, but I call that Edge to Edge.  It was easy peasy!

 

I would love to see what Robin does with the rooms and the homes she decorates.  Maybe one of these days???  Who knows what the future holds?…

Anyhow, as you can see Frida and I have been busy, busy this past month.  I am glad for it, because I do love spending time with that machine and creating what I consider works of art and many future heirlooms.