Jean57 | Quiltsby.me

Floral Fiesta 2007

Another from my Mom’s stash. She wanted it to practice her free motion quilting. But never could get past the keeping your stitches the same length part. I was a bit anal going around each petal and detail and changed thread color for the flowers and worked my back into a spasm! Aw well, it turned out ok.

By Jean57

8 LIKES | 374 VIEWS

Ring Around the Rosy

Well, that was always the name in my head! Blocks that I liked from other projects and plenty of blank space to do more “arty” quilting. Fabrics were left from a lady I helped finish her quilts before she passed away last summer. Just needed to find backing. And feeling more confident after the Dresden plate quilt, I whipped this one out in half the time and it is much bigger. Those cross hatch designs are slow! This one was just a play on feathers! And I turned the “rings” into roses via the quilting design.

By Jean57

5 LIKES | 322 VIEWS

Dresden Plates

Another from the fabrics my Mom sent home with me. Scraps from my Grandma, Mom, and my stash that I cut into squares and put into bags by color. More in that later. Then wondered what to make, I did try to make other things from them, I think there is a blue one posted here. Then I saw Jenny’s tutorial called Checkered Dresden on the scrappy Dresden plate. So I stacked a 2.5 square and two 3 inch squares and then cut my “feathers” for the plates. And boy, did I not really care about colors other than it shouldn’t be the same or really clash. I appliquéd them to a giant piece of white. Then went on a mission to find a border print that was reminiscent of these older fabrics. Since I had all these big white areas I really wanted to try some of the big “arty” designs in my quilting. I sat and drew with my chalk pencil right on the quilt until each part of the design came together. What I learned, well as I hinted above, I won’t whack my scraps into squares, it really limited what I could do. I will drag out my sheet of stiff plastic and my water soluble marker and design on that.

By Jean57

4 LIKES | 299 VIEWS

2021 Roxanne Carter Mystery Quilt

Usually I am too OCD about mystery quilts, need to see it and decide if I like it enough to even work on it, and color placement…oh, that’s a killer isn’t it! But decided last year to give this one a try; so I picked my colors and a friend posted them for Roxanne to weigh in. (I don’t use Facebook, not a recent choice. A since the beginning when teachers were told don’t do it choice). I got each week’s clues from my friend and waited until the end. Which I was very happy I did. Because I had two of my colors reversed and the stars never would have shown up. Then it sat all sandwiched and ready to quilt while I tried to come up with a way to quilt all that busyness of the piecing. I never could, so it is just what I call my nickel sized meander. Something I tell myself as I’m quilting…I do a pinky toe nail size, (tiny), dime sized, (small), nickel sized, (medium), and quarter sized, (large) meanders - where those items can be placed in the swoops and loops so it stays consistent. Enough of my goofiness. I backed it with flannel and will put it on my chair as my iris blooming time of year throw.

By Jean57

5 LIKES | 326 VIEWS

Winter Star

Was helping a friend pick out fabrics for her project when I saw this line of blue fabrics. Didn’t know what I was going to do, just knew I had to have them. I believe it is the Fairy Frost line. I really liked this pattern, with one small adjustment-I changed the corners so it created a “circle” instead of a checkerboard as I wanted the stars to stand out. I stitched in the ditch in all the white areas again to make the stars pop. The fabrics are so pretty! The backing is a flannel. Sorry I don’t know why my pictures are always blurry. They aren’t until I load them here.

By Jean57

10 LIKES | 346 VIEWS

Stash Laprug

These are more of the fabrics from my Mom’s stash. It was just an idea borne from something else I was working on that made me think…oh! That would be so pretty to pull this green and deep burgundy floral and make something. Then because it didn’t turn out very big, I decided it must be a laprug and so I played with several quilting designs I wanted to try as fillers, but they would highlight their space.

By Jean57

3 LIKES | 320 VIEWS

Practice lap rug

Using more from the Mom’s Fabrics stash. This star just kept getting bigger and bigger so on these four I stopped at the middle size (Mystery Medallion) and created a lap rug size that I could practice three different designs…working on muscle memory. Find that I had a lot of trouble keeping the swirls small, so they are a “middle” sized swirl. Which I meant to do, right! The other thing to see in the close ups would be my sewn binding.

By Jean57

5 LIKES | 335 VIEWS

Mother’s Favorite

This is created from all the blue scraps (well, unfortunately it didn’t use them all!) from my Mom and Grandmother’s boxes of scraps. I pressed and whacked into 2.5, 3, 4.5, and 5 inch squares. I then used a piece of blue I had for the frames to reduce the scrappy feel. It is ditch in the ditch around all of the shapes to give it a poofy feel. I was worried that all the places so many different fabrics came together it would be hard to quilt, but a bit of pounding with my handy-dandy hammer and it all went pretty darn well. It will be a shroud.

By Jean57

7 LIKES | 366 VIEWS

Pinks and Greens

Another in the Mom’s projects queue. Not sure how old this one is, but boy are these not the shades of pinks and greens you can find today. It was an embroidery project. Each of the larger spaces were supposed to have fancy machine embroideries. Bag that! I had heard of a way of transferring patterns using petticoat netting. I did put it in a cardboard frame as I was afraid the netting would shift and stretch. (I was right, the frame really helped. I designed a feather “swirl” and did ruler and point to point quilting in the other blocks. It really took on an Art Deco feel from which, after a search on Art Deco borders, I created the border pattern incorporating elements from the other quilting.

By Jean57

5 LIKES | 311 VIEWS

Baby Girl

Another in the queue of Mom’s projects this one was on a back burner until she decided she could send it to the new great granddaughter in Sweden. If you are going to spend that much to send a box it might as well be full. Mom did the embroideries long ago and then it got pushed back. I just framed them, sashed it all and then quilted with small meander around the embroidery, stitch in the ditch around the frames, and a butterfly around the outside edge - because what else would you put on a bug quilt!

By Jean57

5 LIKES | 319 VIEWS

Blue Stars

Also from my Mom's stash were these three fabrics (blue prints) in fairly large quantities. Using the same pattern as from Granddaughters quilt, but putting one of the prints in the center. I ordered by guess and by gosh a white background and sort of turquoise print. Yeah! It worked well enough that with all these was able to get a queen-sized quilt. Rose Hook in the white and various point to point patterns in the print areas. Older sister helped pick quilting designs. Outer border is a repeat of the Rose Hook.

By Jean57

12 LIKES | 491 VIEWS

Tiny Gems

My sister lost everything in a wildfire a few years ago. One thing she lost was her wedding quilt constructed by our Mom. But in helping Mom organize her stash we found a box with leftover fabrics from that quilt! We decided to make her a wall hanging using those fabrics and fabrics from our childhood. If is smaller than the pattern specifics from one of Donna Jordan’s tutorials (she calls it Beads) because the spot we thought it should hang is a very small wall visible to my sister from her spot on the couch. Did the hook rose in the background and ruler work on the gems so they look faceted.

By Jean57

14 LIKES | 413 VIEWS

Jean57's projects