King Arthur's Castle

While quilting may be fun, and blogging may be enjoyable, 

You may have noticed that I have not blogged much

and I can tell you that I have not quilted much.

One project is finished - King Arthur's Castle.

I am entering this in the 

Blogger's Quilt Festival

Fall 2014

Original Design

You can vote for your favorite quilt in this category at this link.

Vote today!

It's a long story - I refer you to my daughter's blog if you are interested.

My daughter's Mother-in-Law (who happens to be one of my very best friends) suggested that we make a quilt for our grandson-to-be, Arthur.  We quickly thought of making a castle.

I designed the castle on graph paper and pieced it.

We made its door like a draw bridge, and made the whole quilt able to hang on a tension rod over a doorway... so our granddaughter could play in the castle.

 Note the black windows on top: they have pockets to hold princesses, and Winnie the Pooh.
Note the real windows on the bottom portion.

Note the FLOWERS ("shra shra" in 19-month old language)

And the lovely leaves sewn by the other Grandma.

And I am very late- so I will write more later! Cathy H

Modern Quilts - Blogger's Quilt Festival

I'm a math teacher.  And I love Geometry.  And I love Quilts.

And I direct your attention to the 

Blogger's Quilt Festival

Spring 2014

Modern Quilt Category

You can vote for your favorite quilt in this category at this link.

Vote today!

I had so much fun making this quilt!!

Like the Star Quilt in the previous post, this quilt is made primarily of favorite old shirts.

I started with two smaller quilts comprised of 4 rectangles.

(I got carried away making it - and forgot to take very many pictures along the way)

I sliced the rectangles into 1.5 inch strips and then staggered the strips.

For instance, one of the 'starter quilts' had the burgundy shirt in it, 

the other 'starter quilt' had the dark blue shirt in it.

At the top I have a strip with the dark blue, then the next strip has the burgundy.

Blue, burgundy, blue, burgundy, blue, burgundy .... all the way to the bottom of the quilt.

In addition to the every-other-one concept with each strip, I also SHIFTED the strips left and right to create curvy patterns with the strips of fabric.

Lest you think I am uniquely clever in this - I actually saw this technique used by Lorrie Cranor

and it is described so well in this post:

HOW TO MAKE AN INTERLEAVE QUILT

When I was working so closely with the little strips, it was hard to see what was actually going to happen with the strips.  These pictures just make me smile as I see the curves and the motion made with the strips.



The back is pretty unremarkable, because I used a quilt-as-you-go method that just sewed each strip to the batting and the back even as I was piecing the front.  (Again, these instructions are available with the HOW TO MAKE AN INTERLEAVE QUILT link above)

 You can see other categories in the Blogger's Quilt Festival, also.

(click on these words to get to the quicklinks)

It's like going to a quilt show without leaving your home!

And you can be a part of the voting to select the winners in each category!

I might have to make another quilt like this someday...

CathyH

It's Been a Year - Blogger's Quilt Festival

It's been a year since I last posted.
It's been quite a year.   But I finished a few quilts.

One project I started and finished involved shirts.  A dear friend lost her husband to cancer - - now over two years ago.  Our Quilting Bee (Seams Like Sisters - more about them in the next month or so) gathered his (mostly plaid) shirts, cut them up and and put the pieces back together into the quilt pictured below for his wife.

But this scrap quilt is not what I wanted to write about.

I decided to make a small quilt for each of their grown children from the left-overs.

And this star quilt is maybe my favorite.

I had so much fun designing this quilt!

And I have decided to enter it into the Blogger's Quilt Festival, Spring 2014

Almost one year since my last Blog post!!

You can see the other 

ORIGINAL DESIGN QUILTS

Entered in the Blogger's Quilt Festival here

Since I am a math teacher - - - I LOVE to use graph paper.

I sketched this design 

And added to it as I went.

I had to use the pockets from the shirts in order to get enough fabric for the quilt blocks.  You can see the button from the white shirt's pocket pretty clearly in this picture.

The thing I love the most about this quilt is the spiral quilting.

I just started the spiral in one of the larger white stars near the lower right side of the quilt and 'eye-balled- about 1/2 to 5/8 inches away.  The size (about 36"x 51") made it easy to just spin and spin the quilt as I stitched it with my little Singer Sewing machine.

It was almost remarkable how the spirals went through so many of the stars in a fashion that made them MOVE.  made them FLY.  

My husband had the good idea of having the stitches fly off to the top right corner to create even more motion.  Of course, on the back, then, the stitches fly off to the top left.

I had so much fun making this quilt!!!

Be sure to visit the Blogger's Quilt Festival.

Click here to vote for your favorite of the ORIGINAL DESIGN QUILTS

 - and the winners get PRIZES!!

There are other categories in the 

Bloggers Quilt Festival also.

Be sure to visit soon!!

(Click on these words to access the quick links to all the categories)