Diary Quilt - My Version of Quilty 365

I've been doing a good job keeping up with my plan to cut a strip a day to reflect a year of my life. I began this mid-November last year after reading about Audrey's project featuring circles, Quilty 365. I have almost four columns at this point. There will be a total of 13 when I've circled back around to November this year.

There have only been a few days when I've had a struggle to choose what felt like an appropriate print for the day. I have quite the selection of novelty prints. They've been a big help. For example, one day I spent quite a bit of money online and the next day I made Ohio Star blocks.

Here's a section where I worked on a basket quilt, bought a new print, then bound the teal and cream quilt that we sent to Ohio for our F2F playmate. I had quite the headache the day after that.

Audrey started her circle project by pulling from her scrap bin exclusively. I've chosen instead to pull from my stash, wherever the right print might be found. Others have put their own personal spin (pardon the pun!) on Quilty 365. Audrey is hosting a link party so you can click over to here and see who else is playing along and how they're participating.

Now the question is, what to do for Leap Day? ;- )

Endings and Beginnings

While I was away from the blog I finished the twin-bed-size quilts for our twin granddaughters.

Fronts on the left, backs on the right.

The top I built out of my Parts Department was backed, quilted, and bound. Here it is at our local quilt guild meeting this week, photographed by one of our guild members:

about 85" x 85"

I pulled together most of the 12" Ohio star blocks I made over the course of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge last year to make this top, also photographed at the guild meeting:

about 84" x 84"

I think quilting will really make this top sing.

I've just completed another large top too but I think I'll give it it's own post. (Hopefully I won't forget or get distracted!)

Now it's time to get back into making blocks. Late last year Gayle and I were pushing each other to make orange Ohio Stars. I've lost track of what she may have accomplished since then. I only had half a dozen when I put my head down to begin building these bed quilts. The other day I had occasion to get out some orange prints so I made another 9" Ohio star for the collection. That started me wondering how to set these new blocks. Right now I'm considering an alternate block to put between the stars...

At the moment my plan is to make a quilt I'll keep for myself. A personal quilt is going to feel small after building the bed size tops I've been working on lately!

I believe I will whoop it up on Friday and link up with the other rainbow scrappers Saturday morning. :- )

We Did It

In our Foot Square Freestyle block swap Miss May/January had almost a week with her completed quilt before she passed away. Kate informs me that it was exactly one month from the time we decided to move Pat up in line to accommodate her shortened life span to the date the quilt was shipped to her. What a relief and a blessing to be able to get that assembled and quilted and then shipped overnight. You can see the image of the virtual quilt and the work in progress in my previous post. Here's what the end product looked like, photographed in my local quilt shop:

James Brown did the quilting for us and Kate created the label.

There were some struggles when it came to choosing thread color and quilting design. James wanted to do his best work and display his talents but the feathers he was planning to use proved to be too much for the quilt. In the end we chose leaves. They speak to me of hope and new life.

With a Hobbs 80/20 batting the quilt turned out soft and fluffy. I was surprised by how pretty the color palette was too. 

Kate has written up a memorial page about Pat and her quilt. I encourage you to take a few minutes to go over and read it.

After that concentrated effort I had to take a break. That's one reason this blog has been so quiet. I have been stitching however, working on a needlepoint case. I love Stitch and Zip kits for mindless stitching. C~ asked me to make up this e-reader case for her:

It's nearly finished. I've already purchased another kit that I'm looking forward to working on. There's a new quilt project on the design wall too. I'll save that for the next post though, and hopefully you won't have to wait weeks to see what it is!