My goal this year was to finish strong by finishing three small quilts that I started back in the Spring. Check and check! And check! In the end I gave up on my dream of doing the quilting myself and sent them all over to Mary at Longarmed and Dangerous , who did a fabulous job of quilting. Mary's super-power is pulling together any project to make it beyond your expectations. I think they all came out fabulous. Here's California Poppies, a quilt design by Tina Curran . Made with all scraps plus two or three green fabrics I ran out to buy at Pins and Needles in Mayfield mid-project. (I didn't have as many greens as I thought I did. The problem has been rectified. 😉  Meet Audubon Society, a quilt design by Laura Heine of Fiberworks . Paper-piecing these birds, with all of their different personalities, was just too much fun. I used Even More Paper fabrics by Zen Chic, and some other neutrals I had in my stash for the background, and for the birds used anything I could ge...

I love making summery quilts in the winter. While cozying up in front of the fire, the evening before our first snowfall of the winter here in Cleveland, I put the binding on this quilt. It was fun to imagine the picnics and visits to the park that this quilt will be a part of next Spring and Summer.  This is Amy Gibson 's Triple Barnstar quilt in a throw size and featuring fabrics in blues, green, yellow and gray florals, plaids, checks and just plain fun designs.  I love the big chunky angles in this quilt. Modern but traditional at the same time. I couldn't resist using this quote on the quilt back, which was on the selvedge of the fabric in this collection. Linzee Cull McCray of  Seams Write  creates beautiful selvedges that are as pretty as the fabric they edge.  Yep, that's snow on the ground out there. But this quilt holds the promise of Spring. I love this traditional swirly quilting design by Mary, aka  Longarmed and Dangerous . This was my last gi...

  Dianne and I had a special friendship. The kind that is borne from being a stay-at-home mom with babies, toddlers and preschoolers, where you consider yourself lucky if you can find one kindred spirit, one other mom with whom you can share your heart, your soul, and as many laughs as you can afford. We shared so many adventures, and now that she's gone, there are stories too many to count.  Twenty years after her death, Dianne's stepmother, Linda, and daughter, Jasmine, were going through a box of sewing projects that Linda had stashed away. They came across "the infamous shirt-and-tie-quilt," a quilt that Dianne was working on while she was fighting her last battle with cancer. No one liked the quilt, not even Dianne. Especially not Dianne. "All she did was complain about that quilt," Jasmine told me. "We all got tired of hearing about how much she hated the stupid shirt-and-tie-quilt." No one wanted the quilt, not even Dianne's husband, fo...

  Have you ever made a quilt that you enjoyed making so much that It's almost criminal? This quilt is that, for me. Custom-made for a friend, I designed this quilt based on interviewing the recipient's husband and best friend-slash-sister-in-law. I thought I knew Karen before I made this quilt for her, but after spending three months making it, I sure do know her well. This quilt has everything plus the kitchen sink in it. Some blocks are pieced, some are paper-pieced, some are just fabric. One block is from a cloth bag of paprika from Hungary. Some blocks are fussy-cut from Spoonflower fabrics I ordered.  There's a story behind every block and I won't go into every last detail, but I represented her husband (Groundhog Day), her sister-in-law-slash-best friend (a mountain lion), her hobbies (gardening gloves, a shovel and a No Trespassing sign, and dominos), her favorite places (Disney and Hawaii), her daughters (two hearts), her sisters (a five-part heart), her fur ba...

  Hollow Diamonds is one of those quilt patterns that is just meant for  Tula Pink 's striking fabrics.   Free Spirit , the company that creates these beautiful fabrics, offers free quilt atterns with their designers in mind.   And that's where I found Hollow Diamonds, the perfect design for Tula's black and white fabric line  Linework , as well as slim pops of her bright colors. Who was it that said, "It takes a lot of work and planning to make a quilt look random." Maybe me. This time, I tried to let it just happen and I'm pretty happy with the results.  Lil' Stinker is a favorite Tula Pink critter.  This was my first bias striped binding and I absolutely fell in love with it. I see more Tent Stripe fabric in my stash's future. I love this backing fabric so much. It's Tula's Sketchyer , which represents her drawings, notes and plans for the whole line of Linework fabrics. The 108" wide backing fabric is done on a larger scale than the s...