Rainbow Connection

I'm not certain why this quilt has barely appeared in my blog. I started this project in a class with Bonnie Hunter at the Vermont Quilt Festival in July 2012. Hard to believe that 2012 was five years ago. It is a free pattern, Scrappy Trips, on her website.

I finished the top at the end of last year. And then it sat and marinated for a while. Meanwhile my friend Kate moved to Florida and sold her long arm quilting machine and my friend Terri had a brand new grandbaby so she was too busy to do the machine quilting. I knew I wanted something more intricate for the quilting design than a generic pantograph.

Enter Marie, of Coady Quilts. Marie makes custom memory quilts and also does long arm quilting. I met Marie through my brother Gary. Ironically, Gary and Marie have never met. They have a mutual friend on Facebook. Marie quilted my top in an allover feather design (my choice) in a variegated pink thread. I asked Marie to choose the thread color as long as it wasn't brown! I'm not sure if she knew that pink is my favorite color, but it looks perfect on my quilt of many colors. Didn't she do a beautiful job quilting it?

Photo credit: Coady Quilts

Photo credit: Coady Quilts

Photo credit: Coady Quilts

Photo credit: Coady Quilts

Photo credit: Coady Quilts

Photo credit: Coady Quilts

The quilt is all batik and made entirely from my stash. It looks different from every angle. Below are some photos of the top before Marie quilted it for me.

I assembled it last October at our Brown Bagger weekend and several of my Brown Bagger friends helped me sort my blocks from light to dark in a rainbow like pattern. I made the blocks with no color pattern in mind, just combining different strips that I liked together. I also tried the layout as just random blocks of color, but I preferred it its color-sorted final version.

The quilt is huge, measuring 96" square, shown here on my queen size bed.

It looks better with a pug on it! LarryPug

LarryPug! My favorite quilt model! He looks good on everything!

Here's Kermit with the Rainbow Connection song. Warning, you may sing it in your head all day...

My quilt just needs a binding and it will be finished! What color would you choose? Or should I just go scrappy?

Thanks for visiting!

Pugs and kisses,
Nancy

Missouri Star Quilt Company--What We Bought--Part 2

The Great Reveal is here! Here's what we bought, or what we'll admit to, on our trip last month to the Missouri Star Quilt Company.

After we shopped all day on Thursday, we gathered in the kitchen of our Bed and Breakfast to display our purchases. Unfortunately I had shipped mine home already, but now my friends can see what I bought. After our show and tell on Thursday night, we went back to MSQ the next morning before we went to the airport in case we missed anything!

Joann's haul.

Nancy D.'s haul.

Joannie's haul.

Joanie's haul, part 2...We found a second bag after the first photo was taken...

Sue's haul.

Marion's haul.

The biggest part of my haul... new fabrics for quilts I am making for Logan, Cameron and Baby Nate. While I have a lot of conversation prints, I wanted some newer fabrics to mix in. I found some great fabrics for little boys. A special thank you to Jennifer and Hannah at the MSQ who helped me find all of these.

My haul, part 2.

True confessions... I bought these fabrics on my phone while I was waiting in line (in person) at the MSQ. I figured it would be one less thing to carry, although they shipped my entire order home for free.

Selfie with LarryPug

Sorry to have kept you waiting. The ending of my trip was bittersweet. I arrived home from my trip to find that Romeo had stopped eating. We took him the the vet who gave him IV fluids. He rallied for a week or so, while Mike and I hand fed him liquefied dog food with a syringe but he was losing weight and getting very weak so we had to decide to let him go. It was my worst day ever.

Thanks for all your sweet notes and cards. We are giving Elvis and LarryPug lots and lots of pug cuddles. They are such sweet boys and such a comfort.

Thanks for visiting.

Pugs and kisses,
Nancy

Joannie's T-Shirt Quilts

My friend Joannie is one of the kindest, most generous people that I know. She is constantly reaching out to help others.

Recently one of her good friends lost her son unexpectedly. He was a very young man. Joannie offered to make a t-shirt quilt for her as a remembrance. Her friend brought her a large bag of his t-shirts.

Joannie made FOUR t-shirt quilts. She gave one to his Mom, one to each of his two sisters and one to his Aunt. She spent several months on this project and quilted each quilt herself.

She designed original settings for each quilt and separated the t-shirts with a variety of pieced blocks including flying geese, four patches and rail fence blocks in masculine tones of blues and greys. The quilts also incorporated some of the young man's baseball hats and jeans. Since she still had some leftover t-shirts after making four quilts, she also made two pillows which I did not get a photo of.

Ironically, Terri didn't have time to do a commissioned t-shirt quilt order, so Joannie was pressed into service. Can't wait to see Joannie's fifth t-shirt quilt!

Linking up on Tuesday to Val's Quilting Studio special t-shirt quilt theme and to Freemotion by the River.

Thanks for visiting. I promise to post photos of our Missouri Star Quilt Company stash haul soon!

Also, a special thanks to all of you who reached out with condolences on the loss of our beloved Romeo. I'm going to print out and save all of your kind words and sweet wishes.

Pugs and kisses,
Nancy

Good night Sweet Prince

We lost our beloved Romeo on Tuesday. He was almost 15 1/2. He was able to die peacefully at home in my arms, surrounded by the people that loved him. There are no words. We are heart broken.