Erica's Stitches

Last month I finally got to tour a friends new kitchen.  She loves color and painted the walls purple.  I assumed a nice muted purple but it was really bright.  I instantly thought of a fat quarter pack of purple fabrics I won as a door prize a few years ago.  Not being a great fan of purple I put them aside.  My friend didn't have any potholders to match her new kitchen so my purple fabric came to the rescue.  She likes potholders that are 7 - 8 inches square which elimitates most 9 patch designs.  So, the churn dash block has a larger center. I even made the backs purple.  My friend was delighted. While I had the purple fabric out I made some blocks for my next quilt. I made 3 blocks about 5 years ago and then stopped.  Now I'm up to 9 blocks and am not going to stop until I have a full quilt (final size is still undetermined).  These will be the only purple blocks.  The others will probably be b...

I'm warming up for quilting project and finishing up some quilt blocks that have been unfinished for far too long.  Killing 2 birds with one, stone so to speak. The first bird is this blue jay.  He's from the book Go Wild with Quilts by Margaret Rolfe.  The book isn't quite 20 years old and this was done early in my quilting career - the most complicated quilting I had ever tried at the time.  No, it wasn't paper pieced.  I cut templates for every piece.  I imagined making most of the quilts in the book.  So far, this is the only one of tried.  But, I leafed through the book again recently and still want to make the quilts in it.  Maybe someday. This hexagon block is only about 5 years old - the result of an English paper piecing class.  I didn't enjoy the work so at a certain point I gave up with what I had completed.  One small flower hexagon became a potholder and the rest became this lump of hexagons.  ...

Last year, in April, I was at a quilt show.  One of the best parts was admiring the quilted jackets that everyone else was wearing.  I wished I had one. Fast forward to a few months later, at a craft show.  I spied a quilted sweatshirt jacket.  The color wasn't quite right but I tried it on.  The sleeves were to short and the color looked even worse on me. Fast forward a few more months, while shopping in Target.  I saw a stack of sweatshirts and decided to make my own sweatshirt jacket.  I bought one and dropped it off in my quilt room.  There it sat for a few months while I avoided it. Finally I picked out scraps and started sewing them to the sweatshirt.  Gradually they all were sewn on and all that was left was the binding.  Since the quilt show is coming around again soon I couldn't ignore it any longer.  I couldn't decided on the binding and finally compromised on a darker gray.  I sewed it on. ...

The wildflower parts of last weekend are now stitched down. They look more like flowers now. The echo quilting makes them jump off the fabric. Now they are ready for binding.

My 35th anniversary sampler is now competed and hanging on the wall. I quilted it by hand using pearl cotton #12.  Each stitched square is quilted with a running stitch. And each seam is quilted with a different stitch, crazy quilt style.  And there is stitching along the border. I like this corner the best.  The ochre and blue fabrics were both used in a quilt I made years ago.  I enjoyed putting them together again. Disclaimer:  No supplies were purchased for this sampler.  Everything was found in my closet. So, the pearl cotton colors are not ideal. I would have liked something that stood out a little more.  From a distance you can't see the stitching.  But, the good news is you can't see any mistakes either.