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Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Into the Universe

I have thought about blogging, obviously, on and off, for some time. I have tried it a time or two and it just never "took."  I am motivated to try one more time, since in order to participate in a lot of the quilting world online, you need to have a blog to link back to.  For example, Let's Bee Social is a weekly event from Sew Fresh Quilts


I used to write a great deal on a number of sites, now defunct.  One was Open Diary.  I made a number of friends there that I still am in touch with now via the ubiquitous Facebook.  Ditto a forum that was my lifeline in a dark time, the Young Widows Bulletin Board, YWBB.  Both closed down as more dynamic forms of social media cropped up, and I miss them both a great deal.


I do spend a fair amount of time on Facebook now, not so much anything else. 


Since the last time I cast my words out into the great dark void of the blogging universe (blogiverse?) some things have changed, some things have not. Still a librarian, still a wife and a grandmother, but now to two more kids.  Still a quilter and a gardener.  I have lost several important people in my life, gained some new ones. Life goes on and all that. A constant in my life for many years has been my creative outlet, mostly quilts.  So far this year I have made and gifted five baby baby quilts, and started a few other projects.


Pattern: Curiosity, PS I Quilt; Fabric: Scoot by Deena Rutter for Riley Blake.

 I created the first quilt of the year for a little boy named Magnus. He was born the very same day, almost to the hour, of when my very dear mother-in-law finally lost her battle with pancreatic cancer. We were sitting vigil at her bedside when my husband got the call about the baby's birth. Since he was planning to be very near to Magnus' home the following week for work, I whipped this together for my husband to deliver.  I had the fq bundle in my stash for a couple of years and only had to buy the backing. 

Pattern: Hazel Hedgehog 2; Fabric: Various Cotton + Steel prints, Canyon by Kate Spain, and Kona Solids. 

My coworker had a little boy in February, and I could not resist this darling pattern.  My coworker saw the pattern and loved it, as he is a gamer and it reminds him of the pixelated look of the older games. I made this and quilted it with straight lines. This one, too was all from stash but the backing fabric. 



Pattern: Hazel Hedgehog 2 by Elizabeth Hartman; Fabric: various prints and Kona solids. 

I call this one Pop Art Hedgies. I was going for an Andy Warhol look, and I think I succeeded. I had intended to add glasses to one of the hedgehogs and forgot before the deadline rolled around.  This is one of the many baby quilts (13 total so far) that I have made for my husband's coworkers. This was mailed to Las Vegas for a virtual baby shower. I collected all the prints, but had the background fabric in my stash. 


Pattern: Charmed Baby, Elizabeth Hartman; Fabric: various prints and Kona solids
This was delivered to Georgia for the same virtual baby shower, a joint one for two of my husband's coworkers. I made this one from start to finish in a single day. The mom wanted Curious George, but I had no luck with George at all until late in the planning stages.  I knew she was a Yankees fan, so once I found a cute sock monkey print with baseball playing monkeys, my theme came together. I have several baseball themed prints and several solids. At the last minute, I found a Curious George sports print with George playing T-Ball. It was long out of print, and cost the earth, but Hubby splurged. I love this one--simple but effective. I used straight line quilting to enhance the modern feel. 


Pattern: Olde America Antiques: Fabric: Olde America Antiques, Art Gallery, Barbara Brackman.
I made this little wall hanging as a birthday gift for my daughter. She and her husband took a "bucket list" trip to the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley. I ordered the post card fabric and whipped this up to send her in time for the big day.  I used two prints--a civil war reproduction by Barbara Brackman from the Civil War Jubilee line, and a map print from an Art Gallery collection.   The dark is really purple, not brown.


Pattern: Sanctuary Boxes from Hyacinth Designs; Fabric: Various
This is a blurry picture of the quilt I mailed out just yesterday, the 13th baby quilt for my husband's coworkers in the 3 1/2 years he's been with the company. The mom-to-be wanted blue, grey, and elephants. I used a baby blue and white polka dot for the background, grey for the frames and the binding, and various elephant prints for the blocks.  The bottom fabric is Elephant Walk.  The next row up is from the Imaginarium collection from Camelot, as is the grey elephant print above that.  The top print is called Le Elephant.  The white fabric with the blue print is by Lotta Jansdotter and is called Ele.

Pattern: Elephant Parade, Sew Fresh Quilts; Fabric: Kona solids and various prints. 
This quilt is modified from a quilt along by Sew Fresh Quilts called Elephant Parade. The original pattern had a turtle and a frog, which I omitted, and I added an extra bird.  The original is bigger than this, and had one more mama elephant and nine more baby elephants. This is for the first grandbaby of one of my widowed friends from YWBB.  If you look closely you will see a mistake I made with the big elephants. It will be bound in the grey with a snippet of red, and maybe green and yellow, too. The elephants' ears have textual prints on them, a nod to my career as a librarian.





















2 comments:

  1. Oh Linette! You have such a wonderful line up of beautiful quilts in this post! What a prolific quilter you are. Your Elephant Parade is, of course, my favourite. So glad to read that you are looking to reconnect online with the quilting community and have started this blog to be able to participate with the likes of the Let's Bee Social. Happy to have you as a new quilting friend!

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  2. Linette, you have a gift of being able to pull together quilts for people that fit their likes just perfectly! They each are wonderful! I love how you mixed Curious George and the Yankees. And most of all I Love your Elephant Parade quilt!
    It sounds like you could really use becoming a quilt blogger.... it's a happier reason to be online, that's for sure. I used to be part of support groups for sad reasons too. Quilt blogging opened up a whole new world to me. I hope it does for you too. :)

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