Dee's Baby Quilt

Dee liked my wallhanging so much that she wanted to order a baby quilt. It was for her niece or something like that. She was having a baby shower and Dee wanted to surprise her with a quilt. Instead of the light baby colors, Dee likes the darker colors and in the end they looked really nice. The only thing that Dee said as far as the design is that the room theme was done in teddy bears so I found a maroon color with lots of brown bears. Then I cut the other colors into rectangles and placed them around the 9 bigger squares. It was the first time I had done one with the rectangles and I really like how it turned out. I also had it embroidered with the baby's name and the light blue on the dark blue center really made it pop out.

Grandma's Picture Quilt

(Sorry, don't know why it's on its side like this. I'll try to fix it but at least this gives you an idea.)

This is my favorite quilt that I've done so far. I made this for my Grandmother, the same one I gave the bird one to. Her husband died into their 11th or 12th year of marriage and she had to raise a small son and daughter on her own. As I've grown up I never saw too many pictures of Grandpa. It wasn't that she didn't love him or was too hurt to see his picture. I just think that she never really had a lot taken and since he passed on so early there wasn't the chance. (Maybe subconsciously that's why I take so many pictures?) I felt really bad for her so I decided to get some of her old pictures and put them into a quilt.

This was the first time that I had made a memory quilt. I used special paper/fabric that could be used to print out pics from the computer right onto the fabric. The pictures at the top were: in her graduation gown with her brother, a large pic of grandpa, them at their wedding, them cutting their cake, walking with my dad, my dad and aunt as a toddler and baby and the kids a little later in life (maybe around when grandpa passed on?). The pictures at the bottom are more recent: working with me on my first quilt, my whole family at the wedding, my grandma and I at my wedding, a family picture taken at Christmas, the two of us at the 4th of July party, one of her at the party and then the picture here is of her holding a rose, but I changed it with one of my aunt and her children. The fabric I used all came from pieces that Grandma had given tno me. I also had her full name embroidered in the very center to separate the timelines.

This was the last gift I gave on Christmas day. It brought tears to her eyes as her blue eyes scanned over the pictures from long ago. Tears filled them and she began to cry. It was probably the most emotional and wonderful moment I ever shared with her and I will cherish it forever.

Dad's Christmas Quilt

My dad has been a part of the Middlebury Fire Dept for over 25 years and for that I'm very proud of him. In fact, I'm also proud of his father as well seeing that he and his brother-in-law started the deptartment. In honor of my father, for Christmas I decided to make him a fireman's quilt. The pattern is called "Irish Eyes" although I'm not really sure why, but oh well...it's pretty none the less. I used a black piece of fabric with a fireman design mixed with two different shades of red to give a nice contrast. He was very impresed with it and uses it to sleep with every night now.

Dee's Wallhanging

I work with a woman named Dee. Her boyfriend's son has a girlfriend and so for Christmas, Dee thought she would get the girl something. Dee decided to have me make her (Haley) a wallhanging and since Haley loves frogs that's where I started. I had seen pink fabric with frogs on it that i thought was cute so that's where it started. It ended up being a pastel colored, fun wallhanging with her name embroidered in the center of it. I made fabric hooks and found a wooden dowel to place through it.

Rachel's Steelers Quilt

Rachel at Pizza Hut had already ordered a pink and orange quilt from me that actually looked really pretty. She liked it so much that she decided to order another quilt for her boyfriend. He was out in California and his favorite team is the Pittsburgh Steelers (who also won the Super Bowl this year!) so it was obvious what she was going to choose. I did an "Around the World" pattern again and placed a Steelers pattern in the center of the world.

A Hawaiian Baby

Justin's dad was in the army while Justin was growing up. This caused the family to move from Georgia, Virginia, Germany and Hawaii. While they were in Hawaii they became friends with a musician named Willie K. I guess he and his wife had a new baby the last year and Robin (Justin's mom) wanted to send them a quilt. She picked out all of the fabric and had me make it to send. This was the farthest that I have ever sent a quilt. It's kind of fun to think that something I made is now in Hawaii. This last picture is a picture of the back which we used just a piece of material without cutting it or anything.

Rachel's Quilt

Justin, my husband, works with a girl named Rachel. She was interested in buying a quilt but all of the ones around here were way too expensive for her so she asked Justin if I could do it. I was excited that it was my very first quilt that I was going to sell. I was excited that was until I heard her colors ~ pink and orange. What?! Um, yeah, that didn't sound as pretty as I would hope for, but I agreed to do it and hey, it wasn't going to end up on my bed so what's it matter, right? Well, I went looking for the fabric and found a great maroonish color with bright pink flowers on it and it all began. Finally, I finished with the garish quilt and came to a realization. I discovered that I actually loved the look of it! In fact, today I have a large portion of it as my computer wallpaper and I even was able to track down the flowered fabric and bought it for myself in hopes of one day having my own pink and orange quilt on my own bed!

Stacy and Jim Wedding

April/May of 2008 was the month of weddings. You see, my little, Kelsey, got married in April. Then at the end of May Justin's cousin, Stacy, got married to a man named Jim. I figured that the two of them might like a small quilt to put on the back of their couch or chairs or something. Their wedding colors were a wine and pink which looked really nice at their event.

Kelsey and Dane Wedding

In college I was in a Christian group/sorority called Kappa Phi Alpha Zeta. In the group each girl gets what is known as a "little sister." This is basically where the girls of the group each get to have a new girl who has decided to join the group. The older girl then becomes like a mentor to the new girl. Well, I was pledge mom and got to pick my own little ~ Kelsey. (And she's the best one ever! lol) In April of 2008, she got married to her fiance, Dane. Her favorite color is purple so when it was coming to pick out the perfect present it was easy for me to see that I was going to make the happy couple a purple and white quilt. To add a special touch, I took it up to an embroidery shop in Painted Post (yeah, that was an experience) and got their names embroidered in the middle of the "Around the World" pattern. I think they really liked it :-)

Stepping Stones Preschool

I did this for the place where I work. I'm a preschool teacher at Stepping Stones Preschool in Mansfield. Anyway, we were working on the letter "Q" and thought it would be neat to have the children put their handprints in paint and then sew them all together. Each of our five teachers did it as well. You can see that at the bottom I wrote the name of the school. I have since added a picture I drew of a small schoolhouse. We didn't do it this year but I think it would've been a lot of fun if we had.

Picture from previous post

So this is the quilt that I made for my grandma for her 89th birthday. It was the first "big" quilt I had made and as you can tell not all of my blocks were as straight as they should have been haha. But of course, Grandma LOVED it and cried because we all know that grandmas love anything their grandchild does. That's the power of a grandmothers love :-D Anyway, I couldn't figure out how to go back and post the picture with it so here it is.