Quilt Parade!

Imagine 5!!!  Count 'em, five days off to do nothing but work on your hobby with your best friend.  That was the last 5 days for me.  Julie is my dear friend from Colorado.  We used to work together here in Kansas City, but she retired and moved closer to her son.  She got in Friday night and soon we were discussing which projects we wanted to work on.

This is my dear friend Julie, who used to work with me here in Kansas City but retired to Colorado to be closer to her son and 'grand-dog'!!  She is my co-shopper, my quilting buddy, my giggle companion, my traveling cohort, and my best friend. 

I had several projects I needed to work on - I had made my sons' quilts last year, but I ordered their team basketball numbers and team names in chenille and added them to the quilts.  After all, high school jackets come and go, t-shirts are overrated, but QUILTS last FOREVER!!!   This is Brandon's (my 15-year-old) with his school colors of Purple & Gold:

 This is the chenille I ordered for his quilt.  He chose where to put the basketball and team name.  On the reverse of this quilt is a print for the Philadelphia Eagles, my son's favorite football team.

This is Justin's - (he's 13) and his school colors are Hunter Green & Orange.  Though his favorite color is Blue!  (I should have taken pictures of the reverse for Justin's, it's a completely different top.)  This side has prints from all the NBA teams.

Can you see the basketballs I quilted on this?  My son really liked it, he's always drawing basketballs on everything.  Detail on his chenille:

Okay, after finishing those I worked on the projects I dearly wanted to get to.  For the first time, I can say that the quilts I am working on are all FOR ME!!!  I'm usually making some for someone else.  But I so loved a similar pattern of a Batik quilt in a magazine, that I swapped it a bit and used brighter colors, and here's the top for my Batik quilt:

I'm going to have to shop around a bit to figure out what I want to use on the back.  I might leave the outside just like this; a sort of huge-prairie-point finish.  hmmmm.

Now here's my pride and joy!!!  My 'Tuscan Sun':

This was a kit at Joanne's that I just fell in love with because of the colors.  I bought the recommended number of blocks, and then made them, and thought it was too small.  So I went back and got some more, another row.  Putting them with the others was still too small, so I went back and got another row, and the green for the border.  That made it King size, which is what I wanted.  I have been hand quilting this quilt, block by block, for almost a year.  I finished the blocks this weekend and now will do the borders.  It's almost there!!  

I just love 'painting' and designing with fabric.  Next time you've got a couple days off why not spend some time on your favorite hobby and see what you can accomplish?  Thanks for checking out my quilts!

Mary/2008