Kaffe Lollipops

 This is Lisa's Kaffe Lollipop quilt. 

 

 I just love how she fussy cut all those fabrics on the appliques. 

 We kept the quilting simple--an edge to edge design to provide texture and to hold it together, but not to compete with that wonderful applique and fabrics.

 the thread is an apple green magnifico--light enough to not be obvious on the white backgrounds, but neither does it stand out on the colors of the fabrics.  Just right.

This blue one above makes me think of a butterfly.

 and she found a fabulous backing fabric too

Two at Once

These are quilts for the church, and as you can see, I loaded and quilted two at once, it's a very efficient way to use a wide backing.

I also pieced them at the same time--gives a little more variety in the blocks.   I've made quilts with 4 strips and with 5 strips before, so thought I'd try 6.  It's a strip tube quilt, each block has 3 colored strips and 3 neutral strips.  So 42 colored and 42 neutral strips resulted in 2 lap quilts. 

With these tops I had to let go any hope of great points--the neutral strips were often wider than 2 1/2", but I didn't figure this out until well into the process....the great thing about using the strip tube ruler is that the blocks are all square, so they go together nicely, it's just a matter of forgiving the points, and once these quilts are washed and loved a little, the points won't matter.

 The two tops are quilted differently--this one got a square boxy meander...

 and the second one what I call a Maori fishhook. 

En Provence #2

 This is Vicki's En Provence, which was 2016's Mystery Quilt at Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville.

 Vicki chose great fabrics for this quilt--we went fabric shopping together, and have two common fabrics.   Bonnie Hunter's quilts are notoriously scrappy, but Vicki went for controlled fabric choices, which I think calms it down nicely.  I love the Tula Pink fabric she chose for her pink/orange stars.

 It's so hard picking fabric for a mystery quilt--you don't know quite how anything is going to look.

 It's hard to see in the photos, but Vicki used 4 or 5 fabrics in her neutral patches, so up close that adds a lot of dimension and character to the quilt.

 A simple, curling, E2E quilting design was all that was needed on this quilt--the piecing is strong and stands on its own. 

Log Cabins x 2

Two lap quilts, the same but different

If I recall correctly some of the fabric placements are different in the two quilts.  These are quilts for the church to give, and I'm quite pleased with them....we had bought a quilt kit for a fabulous sellout price of $20.  Didn't care for the pattern, but the fabric was good.

  So then I took all the fabric amounts, and figured out a pattern whereby we could make 2 lap quilts.  One has blue binding, and one pink, of course, neither of these photos is bound, so you'll have to use your imagination on that.   And they are quilted differently. 

Handprints

This is such a marvelous quilt!  Nancy and her sister Peg organized the ENTIRE extended family to each put a handprint on a block...and then assembled it for their mothers 90th Birthday.

 The label was a block.

 Blocks were left for Dorothy and her husband (it was a surprise at the birthday party), and they have since placed their handprints on the quilt.

I"m disappointed the house block is blurry--it represents the home Dorothy's children grew up in.  The house was only sold this year, so it is very fitting to have it on the quilt.

 Hands can be hard with little ones--they don't like to unclench them, so these would be Great Grandchild's feet.  I love the smear of blue on the side of the block--even feet can be tricky with babies.  What a great time capsule

 I love the creativity with the two-toned hand. 

 and for family members that have passed, there were line drawings.  What a special way to include them.

En Provence 1

This is Lori's En Provence, which was Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville Mystery quilt in  2016.  There were 5 of us who each did this quilt, we had so much fun fabric shopping, and comparing units.  It has been really fun watching each of them come together, and how different they are.

 Lori has gifted this quilt to her sister, who had a significant birthday.    We are all convinced Lori loves her sister very much, as there are 841 3" units in this quilt, only 64 of them are not pieced.  Lori calculated something north of 3000 pieces.

 A simple open curl provides nice movement and texture to this quilt.

Labyrinth

Noreen brought me two Labyrinth quilts at once--this one and her Labyrinth Walk

I loved her choices of Stonehenge fabrics in this quilt.  The labyrinth is very subtle.

this picture below you can see the more beige-y square intertwining with the brown square.

LOVE this fabric on the left below and it's colour variations.  

The split photo above shows the difference  between having the lights on (left) and the lights off (right).  I quilted with the lights off--just the side light from the windows showing the texture, that way I could see where I'd already been.