Janna’s T-Shirt Quilt

Posted on May 30, 2010 by Barb

What a fun day today with my niece!  She called me recently and asked if I’d make her a quilt with the T-shirts that she’d saved from High School band competitions, as well as some others that were special to her from High School days.  Well, since she reads my blog every day even though she’s not a quilter, how could I possibly say no?  Of course the fact that I love her dearly and she treasures every quilt I’ve made her also helps.  For those of you non-quilters out there who would love to have quilts made for you?  Here’s a little advice.  Just between you and me.  Ooooo and ahhhh a lot over your quilter friend’s works of art.  I mean really.  Make a big huge deal about it.  Quilters love to make quilts for those who will love them and cherish them.  Don’t tell them I told you.  It will just be our little secret.  And it’s imperative that you are very sincere in your flattery of the said quilter’s quilts.  Quilters are very smart and will know if you’re just pulling their leg to get a quilt of your own.  By the way – if you are my non-quilting friend, do not try this on me.  Because it is our little secret I will be onto you like hot butter on a biscuit.  So don’t even try.  Just sayin’.

This is Janna.  She and I worked together to cut the sleeves and necks off the T-shirts as we began the work on this project together.  By the way – I should mention that we first went to the quilt shop for fabric and we had lunch together.  Janna bought my lunch.  She’s a very good niece.  Buying lunch for your quilter friends who you want to make you quilts could also win you brownie points.  Just something you might want to keep in mind.

Notice the small pile of T-shirts on the table next to Janna.  That pile is no longer there.  I worked hard at eliminating piles today while Janna was here.  She was a big help with that, encouraging me all day!  She even had some good tips for organizing my piles.  The best one of which was to get some pretty canvas storage bins to store piles in on shelves.  Makes the piles less cluttering in the room.  And easy to stack and move around too – if they happen to land on the ironing board or cutting table.  It was a very good tip and one I will use as soon as possible!  I think some red ones would be nice since red is my favorite color.  But I’d be happy with a cluster of pleasing colors to cheer up the room.  I can almost picture them on the shelves.  Who knew that organizing could be such fun?  If your quilter friend is in need of some organizing tips, showing up at their house one day with some pretty canvas storage bins could win you more brownie points.  Just a thought….

Janna and I did start with this BIG pile of T-shirts.  But we whittled it down to a much more manageable stack of nice T-shirt quilt blocks before the day was over.  And Janna took all the leftovers with her when she left so I didn’t end up with a new pile.  Thank you, Janna!

Janna did all the ironing of the fusible interfacing to the T-shirts!  Well, I did one, which was hardly anything.  Then I did the squaring up at the cutting table as she finished the pressing.  And in between – because she had a much bigger, more time-consuming job than I had – I organized!  With her cheering me on all the way!  I didn’t just move piles around!  I found places for them!  You’d be proud of me!  I hardly even recognize my sewing room!  Quick!  Come and visit me before it gets all cluttered up again!  You’ll be amazed!  I think my exclamation point is stuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

It really does look nice.  I’m still admiring it late into the evening…. or should I say early into the morning?

And here are all the blocks up on my design wall.  Please notice that other than one small pile of fabric on the filing cabinet, the top work surfaces are totally free of piles.  It doesn’t show in the picture, but that includes the ironing board, the sewing and the cutting tables.  Amazing! 

The black fabric that you see behind some of the blocks will actually be the sashing between all the blocks when this quilt is finished.  It has little music notes on it.  We thought that would go well with the fact that these shirts were mostly from her band days.  Janna was pleased with the choice!  It was pretty much a no-brainer when she saw that fabric at the shop.  And since the school colors are black and green, we went with a pretty green batik for the backing fabric. 

And in case you’re worried that you won’t see this quilt again, I promise that I’ll keep you posted on the progress.  I am a blogger, after all.  Bloggers keep their fans posted.  It’s what we live for.

Boo had a job today too.  It was his job to hold down any fabric to keep the ceiling fan from blowing it around.  You can see here that he performed very well!  And he did this job all day today.  He is still, as I type, holding down this nice green batik backing fabric.  What a cat!  I can always count on him to do his job.  As long as the job I give him involves napping.

Thank you, Janna, for a fabulous day!  Let’s do it again soon, OK?
Love,
Aunt Barb

Posted in Boo, quilts | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

Bee Day continued….. The Quilts!

Posted on May 29, 2010 by Barb

OK enough already with the comments about the lack of quilts in yesterday’s post.  You know you loved seeing the food.  And the quilts were hidden.  You had to look hard for them in the pictures.  And you all failed the hide-the-quilts test.  So there.  And besides… maybe I was saving the best for later?  So…….. on with the quilts!

Hmmmm…….where to begin……
 

How about Susan’s sweet, intricate, fabulous, beautiful – OK I don’t have enough adjectives – embroidered 50’s dress blocks!  And she had loads of help with ideas for how to put them together.  Get busy, Susan!  We want to see this one completed by the next Bee, don’t we?  But you need to see some of them up close and personal.

Sweet……

Cute……. love the poodle….

I think this one is my favorite.  OK – so how many of us had these dresses in our closets?  Raise your hands.  I see you!  They are so cute!  Good job, Susan!

These are Cindy’s wool blocks.  We have a lot of diversity in quilting in our group!  These blocks have sent Susan on a frenzy of looking for wool projects now.  I think Cindy must be in cahoots with the wool industry.  She ought to get commission for all the business she sent them with just Susan this week.  She really went crazy.  I mean really.  Just ask her!  She’ll tell you.  Go ahead and tell them how crazy you went, Susan.

Look at that devious smile on Cindy’s face.  She knows she hooked Susan and reeled her right in with these cute wool blocks.  Way to go, Cindy!  The wool industry thanks you.

Some people in this group have projects that have nothing to do with quilting.  I think it just fits, Davene!  OK, maybe not……  Davene has the best laugh ever.  I can hear her laughing right now as I write this.

Look at these smiling faces.  Can’t you tell how much fun they are having?

Sue H made a cool T-shirt quilt.  My niece wants me to make her one of these with her T-shirts.  In fact we are meeting tomorrow to buy fabric for her quilt!  She reads my blog even though she’s not a quilter and she blesses my heart.  “Hi, Janna!  See you soon!”

This little quilt is a joint effort by Sue H and me so far.  I did some of the applique and Sue completed that and quilted it.  I believe it’s going to be bound by someone else?  And then it will become a Silent Auction quilt for our guild Quilt Show in September!  We hope it makes lots of money for the guild!

Betty is hand quilting this pretty purple quilt.  She makes more quilts than anyone else in this group.  Except maybe Lani.  But Lani has been busy moving to NEW YORK CITY?!  (You have to say it loud like the Pace Picante Sauce commercial – thus the all caps.)  Betty also does not have a computer and is not on the internet.  I could say anything I want here without fear of Betty reading it.  But I won’t – Betty is a sweetheart!  OK – now someone is in charge of telling her how cute she was in the blog this week.  Go ahead…. call her right now and tell her…… she’ll love it if she get 10 calls today telling her how cute she is in the blog.

Judy made this cool quilt for a friend who was supposed to be having a baby boy.  But it was a girl.  Oops!  This airplane quilt didn’t quite cut it for a little girl!  I believe this is now going to be given to a charity for auctioning.  Susan wants to win it and was very interested in information about the auction.  (Susan is a pilot and loves airplanes.)  I think we should all find out information and bid too and drive the price up for Susan.  Wait!  Susan just spent all her money on wool projects (see above.)  We’ll be kind, Susan, and not drive up the bidding on you…..

Isn’t the little biplane fabric cute in the middle of the stars?  Susan really wants this quilt….. more than she wants wool even.  I hope she wins.

Judy also made this little tool pocket thingie – what do we call these things? – for her little Featherweight machine!  Cute fabric to use with the FW.  It holds your scissors and seam ripper and other sewing tools and sits under your sewing machine – with the tools all in the pockets hanging down in front.  Somehow I think I just lost you all in that description.  Maybe we need an action shot of it, Judy?  Next time…..

 Sue O had a great log cabin quilt to show with a cool Baptist Fan (or Methodist Fan, according to Sue) quilting pattern on it.  She had a story to tell about this old quilt, but I can’t do it justice the way Sue can.  So just ask her about it the next time you see her, OK?

Look at the cute toes in this picture!  All polished and ready for sandals and summer in Texas.  Sorry.  I think we’re supposed to be looking at the quilt blocks from the Kaleidoscope class that Sue O and Nancy went to last weekend.  I just got distracted by the toes for a minute there.

More blocks…….

And more….. you can blow those pics up by clicking on them if you want……

Nancy wants Sue to explain why her fabric was so much easier to cut out for Kaleidoscope blocks than Nancy’s was.  Good thing Nancy bought a LOT of fabric!

Judy R’s fabulous wool blocks.  Don’t look, Susan!  Quick!  Scroll past this one!  Too late….. I bet she’s on the phone right now ordering more wool.  Poor Susan.  The wool industry is very happy today.

Patti’s quilt – very nice, Patti!

Peggy’s beautiful quilt – I think from Jo’s Club.  Is that right Peggy?  Boy!  I’m going to have to take better notes to go with the pictures for this blogging stuff!

Pat’s beautiful Lone Star quilt.  Good job, Pat!

Pat’s It’s OK Sampler quilt.  Several of us are going to take the class to make this quilt in June.  It will be fun to see how different they all look with the different fabrics that I’m sure each one will choose.  Pat might even make another one of these – and she already made this quilt twice!  It apparently is a fun quilt to make.  I’ll share pics of the new ones after our class!

We had several Moms join us this month.  This is Cindy and her Mom, Donna, who recently moved to Texas from California to be near Cindy.  Please pretend you are also seeing pictures of Karen and her Mom, Sue H and her Mom and Suz and her Mom here too.  They were all there, but I failed to get pics of them……sigh…….

And here is my Show ‘n Tell…….

In all fairness, I do have new projects at the shop where I work.  They are class samples and they are hanging on the walls there.  You’ve seen them in previous posts here too.  So I’m not a total slouch when it comes to completing projects.  Half a slouch, maybe, but total slouch?  Definitely not.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

And one last picture….. just because I took it and I have to share……

Isn’t Suz cute?  Don’t she and hubby make a cute couple?  Sorry….. just had to share that one.  Too cute!

Now I expect good comments today, girlfriends.  A quilting blog with lots of pictures of quilts – what a novel idea!  I hope you enjoyed them all.  Until next time……

Happy quilting!
Barb

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JSS Bee Day!

Posted on May 28, 2010 by Barb

JSS Bee Days are definitely going to be the highlight of this blogging adventure.  I have the best quilting bee in the whole world!  But before you get any ideas about joining us……no.  You can’t.  Sorry.  We already are busting the seams (that’s quilting talk) and packed in like sardines or anchovies or some such fish-in-a-can at the hostess’ home each month.  So you’ll just have to enjoy the Bee days via this blog.  There were 22 ladies at Suz’ house!  You remember Suz….. you saw pictures of her back yard way back on May 9th when I went there for lunch with my friend, Sally.  You can read all about it here, if you missed it the first time around.

 

Meet Suzanne, the Absolute Hostess with the Mostest!  She wins the prize for Best Hosting of the Month.  Since our Bee only meets in homes once a month, someone else will win the prize next month.  But Suz gets to claim the prize all to herself for May.  We don’t actually have a prize, but if there were one, she’d win.  Hands down.  We wouldn’t even have to vote.  First of all she had the best breakfast imaginable.  A fabulous Pioneer Woman recipe!  She’s our hero – Suz’ and mine.  We love to cook her recipes.  They are always crowd pleasers and this one was no exception!  It was Cinnamon Baked French Toast and you can click on those words to go to PW’s site and print the recipe for yourself!  And see fabulous pics of the process and read all of PW’s funny comments.  She will make you laugh.  Out loud.  I promise.  She’s a hoot.  But wait!


I have pictures of Suz’ breakfast!  Well, at least I have one of the half empty dish and the fabulous fruit salad to go along side the French Toast.  To make it healthy and all.  So we could eat extra servings of the yummy stuff and feel good about ourselves because we had that healthy fruit salad.  And there was warm syrup to drizzle on top.  But there was that healthy fruit salad too.  Are you getting hungry yet?  OK, now you can go to The Pioneer Woman’s site and print out the recipe and make this for yourself.  So you can eat it while you read the rest of this blog today.  Just as a word of warning, you are probably going to need fortification to read the rest of this post.  So go get a cup of coffee and make this Cinnamon Baked French Toast – doesn’t the name just make you want some?  It’s OK – go do it….. I’ll wait……..

………Because I took 97 pictures at the Bee.  So this could be the longest blog in the history of blogging.  Well, actually I pared it down to about 57 pics after I took out the ones with eyes closed, duplicates, etc.  So you’re going to need coffee and sustenance to get you to the end.  Just sayin’….


Gasp!!!  Even Susan ate the French Toast and she has the syrupy empty plate to prove it!  All of you who were at our Retreat in April know that she only eats lettuce and cold, tasteless chicken.  But even she couldn’t resist the allure of the French Toast!  It was that good!  If you weren’t convinced before that you absolutely need this recipe, I’m sure you are now.  Better scroll back up to the link and go print the recipe……go ahead…… I’ll wait.

OK – we’re never going to get through this blog if I have to keep waiting.  You better have that recipe in the oven right now because I’m not going to remind you again.  We need to move on here people!

Here are some fun things I learned while strolling around Suz’ house and taking pictures……
 

1.  You can build a table with just a simple butcher block and two stools for legs.  Or an ironing board.  Or both.

2.  An empty kleenex box is a very cute thing to use for scraps of thread near your sewing machine.  And for the record, Suz had all the threads pushed way down in the box.  We had to pull them out so you could see them and understand what a great idea this was!  We are all now frantically pulling kleenex out of our boxes so we can have one of these too.

3.  It is virtually impossible for Susan to confuse her coffee cup with my coffee cup as I scream at her, “Wait!  That’s my coffee!” when she picked up her cup from where it was sitting next to mine on the table.  Mine is the one on the right, in case you were wondering.

4.  Suz has very neat, organized piles at her house as this picture shows.  I could use her help with my piles (see previous posts here and here.)


See?  Organized drawers too….. I need her help.  Help me, Suz…help, help me, Suz.

5.  Suz likes embellishing so much that she even gives earrings to her stuffed giraffe/donkey/llama/horse.  (There was some disagreement over exactly what kind of animal this was at our April Retreat when we all got one of these.  But Suz definitely wanted to give hers some pizzazz.)  And by the way – I love this picture….. the way the little animal is all crisp and focused, while the quilt in the background is blurry.  So cool!  Even if I do say so myself. 

6.  You can also make a workspace by resting a board on a shelf…….


…….. with some legs on the other end!  That Suz is one smart cookie when it comes to organizing and planning her sewing room!

7.  Suz also has some ingenious decorating ideas.  Like this lamp – a mason jar filled with fabric.  Cute!

8.  She also has some great works-in-progress in her sewing room.

9.  Arthas really, really, REALLY wanted to be inside with all the people instead of out in the back yard.  And speaking of the back yard….. I found some new treasures there today!  Let’s see if I can figure out how to give you some small pics all together here…..

10.  Bunnies abound in the yard, Suz collects rainwater to water her plants, an angel guards, the flowers in the cute container have grown, wonder who lives in the birdhouse? and Suz has been busy planting more flowers!  And you can click on any of those little pics if you’d like to see them bigger.

11.  This display of fabulous quilts could hardly be called a “pile.”

And then there was lunch……. when we’d barely digested breakfast!

Chicken spaghetti, crisp rolls and a wonderful cabbage salad.  Notice Suz’ motto in the kitchen…..

Here’s how it looked on the plate……. YUM.

And then there was DESSERT…..

Suz’ Mom came and brought with her this Caramel Apple Dump Cake…… double YUM. 

And there were brownies (recipe here) and homemade hot fudge sauce (recipe here)…… and we put it all in a bowl together with ice cream.

 And I only got a picture of the aftermath……. but believe me when I tell you it was all wonderful!  The End.

Next post?  Show ‘n Tell!

Until then,

 

Barb

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Dear Jane

Posted on May 25, 2010 by Barb

For those quilters who have been living under a rock for the past 10 years…. Dear Jane is a book based on a quilt made during the Civil War by Jane Stickle.  There are quilters all over the world making the Dear Jane quilt!  It has 169 blocks – no two are alike.  And they are only 4 and a half inches square!  Plus some fancy pieced triangles for a border.  It is a fabulous quilt!  You can read lots of information about it at the DJ website – http://dearjane.com.

Monday was my Dear Jane Club day!  By the way – just to prove that I can procrastinate with the best of them, I’ve been working on my DJ quilt since 2000.  That’s like 10 years people!  It is a long term quilt project.  Obviously.  At least for some people (that would be me.)  I have taught classes on this quilt and some of the people in the classes had the nerve to finish their whole quilt top in 6 months.  But for most of us, this quilt requires a support group.  Or that we all be committed.  One or the other.  Padded rooms, here we come.  Crazy DJ quilters.  Hubby calls it a cult.

Here’s a little Show ‘n Tell from the group today……


This is Sandi with her basket quilt.  Please note:  there is not a single Dear Jane block in this quilt.  Sandi whipped out this quilt in about 2 months, I think.  And it is big!  We all oooo’d and aaaaahh’d over it today.

 

This is Sheri’s fabulous applique quilt.  It’s a Piece O’ Cake pattern.  Sheri won some major ribbons with this one at a recent Quilt Show including Viewer’s Choice and Member’s Choice.  I take credit for part of it because I helped her pick out the fabric.  She ought to share her ribbons with me, dontcha think?  (Sheri is shaking her head right now.)  Again note:  Not a single DJ block in this quilt.  Not one.  But we ooo’d and aaaaah’d over this one too.  That’s just the kind of supportive quilters that we are.  Even though deep down we all just wanted to steal this quilt right out of Sheri’s bag and take it home with us!

I asked Sheri which one was her favorite block and without a second’s hesitation she pointed to this one.  She loves orange!  My friend, Linda, would pick this block dead last.  She is not a fan of orange.

This is Jenni doing some hand quilting on a quilt she brought along to work on.  Good thing I told you it was Jenni because you’d never have been able to tell from the picture, right?  Not unless you memorized what kind of shoes Jenni wears.  And you guessed it!  Not a single DJ block in this one either.  Which just goes to show you, you don’t have to be actually working on a Dear Jane quilt to come to the Dear Jane Club.  And to be fair, there actually were some gals working on DJ blocks.  Perhaps next month I could actually take some pictures of those?  In the meantime, if you want to see what a DJ quilt looks like, I guess you’ll have to check out the link to the Dear Jane website.

Next month?  Dear Jane blocks!  If I remember.

Hugs,
Barb

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Fancy Tablerunner

Posted on May 24, 2010 by Barb

A deadline……again.  And guess what I spent my whole Sunday afternoon and evening doing?  Not quite finishing.  Story of my life.  So this morning while I’m meeting with my Dear Jane Club gals, I’ll be sewing on binding.  So that this quilt will be ready for the deadline.  Deadline is becoming my new most unfavorite word.  Why do I wait until the last day?  Is it a sickness within me?  Do others have it?  Is it curable?  After all these years, I think it’s chronic…. and perhaps uncurable.  Besides, if I finished anything early for any given project?  All my friends would faint.  And we can’t have all that fainting going on, now can we?

Remember what this guy looked like before the quilting and binding?

 

And now – with the binding nearly finished……

What a difference some added curves make!  And please disregard the binder clips and the unfinished binding on the lower side and just gaze at all the loveliness of the quilting and the finished upper half, please.  It will help my delicate psyche.  And it is delicate.  Not delicate enough, apparently, to actually have this finished, but that’s another story.  The Story of My Life.  And to be continued.  As usual.  Well, you get the picture!

Happy Monday!
Barb

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