My Quilting

I have seen lots of Blogs by other people and have decided to start one of my own. I love to share and help others and have a couple of Yahoo Groups one for Bonnet Girls and another for BE (Brazilian Dimensional embroidery).

I had these groups before but lost access to my email account through a glich in the system when I was processing a change to my password. It seems things got scrambled, and now according to Yahoo I don't know where I was born. LOL

With my large family I'm trying desperately to get each at least a quilt top finished. Once I've accomplished this I will then work towards getting them quilted. 4 children, 11 grandchildren and at last count 6 great grandchildren. Total 21 quilts - then I have some extra that I like and want to make - guess they'll grace my beds.

I like the art quilts - the ones that look like a photo, and applique over pieced quilts. At the moment I've chosen to make art quilts for children and grandchildren and pieced quilts for great grandchildren. Some I've chosen are just hand applique, some are fusible machine applique and others combine the two.

I learned several years back that shopping to collect all the fabric, even just purchasing fat quarters was time consuming and expensive. Since you only need small amounts of fabric, but you need many different colors, textures and patterns. If you are lucky to live in a town with more than one quilt store and/or fabric shop you fare better. If not then you have to travel and normally most shops wouldn't have all the fabric selection you need, so that means shopping at more than one store. When I started this project, gas was much much cheaper, but time was still 24 hours a day. I learned quickly that the expense of shopping for fabrics added up quickly.

Learning about BOMs I soon realized that even those costs per block seemed high, they were in fact very cost effective. Then I started my search online to find the quilts I wanted to make offered as BOM. I've been lucky and found most.

I have a number of the Calendar Quilt patterns by Piecemakers. Along with several from Maggie Walker, Carimae Simmons and McKenna Ryan. There are a few others that I like from other designers, and at the moment can't remember their names. The name Carimae Simmons may not be a recognizable name to you as she is a local Texas designer and I have a number of her quilts. I have all the blocks of one completed and together with the first border attached (my first quilt - other than a few quilted panel baby quilts I made for grandchildren). The outside border of this quilt has an appliqued vine running from each corner to center of border and I'm working on this. I have 6 of 12 blocks appliqued for another of her quilts, and several other BOM & kits for probably 4 of the designs by Carimae Simmons.

Right now I'm collecting BOM for the following quilts: Country Journal, Summer's End, Forgotten Barns, Spring is in The Air, In Full Bloom, Storybrook Farm, and Vintage Valentine.
I have the blocks for Vintage Valentine and have 6 of them stitched.

I did a calculation recently that if I made 3 blocks a week I could finish the quilts I need to make in a little over a year. But, with life as it happens at my house don't think that is possible - so, if
I make one a week I should be able to complete the tops in 4-5 years - hmmmm that is doable, if I can keep on schedule. Also think the fusible machine applique will move faster than the hand applique (at least I hope) so that should help me make my goal.