Baby Quilts and Sunflower Quilt...

I had the most fun working on the twin baby girl quilts...

Aren't the names wonderful.

Sorry, but I am kinda tired of unisex names.

Sweet pink

Sweet green

The twins great grandmother came by yesterday and picked them up.  She is an old friend from my early Christian fellowship days

and we had the sweetest visit..

What a blessing to have "older" ladies in my life 

that have been wonderful role models.

And here is the Moda Bake Shop tutorial that I usesd...

Sunflower quilt progress....

this is also fun.

Blessings all,

Kathy

Quilting and gardening...

I have been busy the past week with many things...

Cliff has had a stomach bug that hit him twice, so we have been staying in and 

taking care of him, eating lightly and listening to a lot of needed rain!!

My high school girlfriend brought over some fabric for me to make TWO quilts for her

new grand daughters..yes, two...her only daughter is expecting twin girls!!

Here is her lovely fabric...

pictures of the quilts later.

While watching/listening to the rain, I have been working on my sunflower quilt.

I decided to machine quilt the sashing to hold all in place

machine embellish the border

and hand quilt each sunflower

and tack the center of each...

What do you think?

A few garden pics too...

Blessings,

Kathy

FInally...back to some hand quilting

I am finishing up my two year term as president of our Neuse Quilters Guild and my personal quilting has suffered to say the least...

So this summer, at our guild meetings, I am preparing to do some hand quilting.

You may remember my post  on my sunflower quilt from May 10, 2011

where I showed you my inspiration and progress on it.

Well, here it is all pinned and machine grid quilted and I am preparing to hand quilt around each sunflower

and the sashing and borders.

Which color thread to use...white, cream, or green?????

Packed all up in my hippie bag 

and ready for Wednesday's meeting...I will show you my work

along the way...

Give away time 

 over at 

Notes of Sincerity

take a look at Trish's lovely blog!!

Blessings all,

Kathy

Butterflies...something old...something new...

Out the steps... 

a package with my name.... ? ? ? 

Oh, I forgot. My package from Debbie J.

My new clothes pin bag !!

Gosh I love it !!!

We have been cleaning out my daddy's house and garden house

trying to get him ready to move.

In the garden house was my mama's clothes pin basket so of course, I took it home with me...

I remembered that Debbie sold these pretty clothes pin bags on her 

Etsy site

and I just had to have one.

She made me a pretty pink one with butterflies and mailed it right to me.

Mama loved pink and was quite a nature/garden lover

so the pink butterfly fabric is perfect.

Now here is the empty basket...what to do..

hmmmmmmm

maybe just keep it.

You know, some of my favorite times were spent in the back yard while mama hung clothes on the line and I stood there , in my bare feet, just talking while she listened and hung clothes and took them down...

Probably THE most important thing we give to children

is our time....

Blessings,

Kathy

Progress on my sunflower quilt...

Today at guild, Barbara and I pin basted my sunflower quilt.

My goal is to have it all quilted for our quilt exhibit to be held in early Spring 2012.

Kinston, NC is celebrating the 250th anniversary of our town's beginning and as you might imagine it is going to be an exciting event that will take place over several months.

I   really have not had much time to work on many quilts except small projects since I have been guild president last year and this year.

So I would really like to complete this quilt and have it all ready for the show.

My plan is to machine grid quilt the sashing  area and to hand quilt the sunflowers using cross hatch and outline quilt around the sunflowers.Not too sure about the borders yet but would like to free motion some designs including some butterflies !!

We will see......

You may refer to my post 

May 10, 2011

for pictures of inspiration from my garden

and the basting, appliqueing, methods that I used.

http://quiltrestoration.blogspot.com/2011_05_01_archive.html

Other things of interest...

new yarn for crocheting...aren't these pretty colors!!

and our lovely little favors from our 

Day of Sharing at the 

Twin Rivers Guild in New Bern, NC

from Saturday.

I selected the four little 9 patch coasters and are already using them.

Have a joyful and blessed week all!!
Kathy

Sunflowers to sunflowers...

Pretty sunflowers that inspired my sunflower quilt...

Well I just love all of my sunflowers that I plant in my yard each year. Last year I photographed them with the bees and butterflies. 

I decided to make a sunflower quilt and one of my Neuse Quilt Guild members, Frances Salt, had made a lovely one using large sunflower appliques.We displayed hers at our Lenoir County Fair booth a year ago and here it is folded for display but you can still see it...it is on the left with the medium blue background!!


Well, Betty Haynes and I decided to make our own sunflower quilt and started selecting yellow fabrics for the petals. Frances gave us a brown fabric for one of the centers so that we would each have some of the same fabric on all three quilts. Betty and I started appliquing our flowers on about the same time in 2010. I finished my top in 2011. I selected a light blue background fabric and sashed it in a gold daisy fabric.


This photo was my inspiration to use the light blue fabric for the sky...and also because our home is mostly decorated with blue and yellow...

I wanted to applique additional sunflowers on the brown border and used a green batik fabric for the vine and leaves.  I actually hand appliqued all of the sunflowers in the center of the quilt but elected to use a combination of machine and hand applique for the border flowers and vines. The button hole stitch on my machine seemed to make more of a decorative statement and I used it for the centers. I used  a yellow variegated thread for the centers and some green varigated threads for the vines and leaves that I purchased at a quilt show and they were hand dyed from England.

 You can see the butterfly here. It is not paper pieced but is a pattern that a fellow quilter from our "Night Owl" group gave me, Ruth Lee. The Greene County Needlework Guild in Snow Hill, NC used this pattern to make a wall hanging of their logo. The wall hanging is displayed in their classroom. I will have to take a picture of it the next time I visit them. It is lovely.
Here is the back of it...

Here are those lovely hand dyed English threads that I used and the variegated yellow thread.

Here is my diagram that I drafted before I started to decide on placement. I actually added an additional border of brown Thimbleberrries fabric. The final measurements are  79" X 62".
I am deciding now on the batting. I have the daisy fabric for the backing. Of course I want to hand quilt it BUT realistically, I might grid quilt the squares on the machine and hand quilt the rest for it for time sake. 


Visited the Green County Needle Workers today and took a picture of their wall hanging with the butterflies.
It is a great piece of work...

Here is that pretty little butterfly that was my inspiration...It is really not that easy to make and I only made one. They made them to surround the quilt in the border.  A lot of talent!!


I need to mention that the author of this folded fabric process is...
Rebecca Anne Harger. The booklet is "Foldin Oldies" Dimensional Quilting  Prairie Butterfly
1998.