Quilt inspiration

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Lowes logo

Inspiration struck me at my local Lowe’s store last week. I stopped in my tracks when I saw these huge posters of snowflakes.

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Not just any snowflakes.

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Huge, colorful snowflakes.

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Huge, colorful snowflakes that could become a quilt.

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Another customer saw me snapping these pictures with my phone and looked at me like I was wacky.  But that stop me from explaining how I saw the snowflakes as possible patchwork quilts.

After looking at them for a few seconds, he agreed with me.  And walked away rather quickly.

Inspiration in an unusual place.

Have you been inspired by anything unusual?

I am my mother’s child

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My mom would find ways to reuse things that most people would throw out.

Our house number changed last Fall because of a new 911 system to help first responders in rural areas.  Some residents had to change the street name as well.  We’ve lived in this house for 21 years and this is the fourth address.  The first address was a route and box number.  The second address was a real street and house number.  The third was the same house number and street name but different city (and I use that term loosely).  And now this house number change.

Over the years we accumulated address labels.  We’d get them with donations to various organizations and charities.  Sometimes our insurance agent would mail them to us.  We used them but since we switched most of our bill paying to on-line banking, we just didn’t mail much any more.

And now they have the wrong house number.

So last weekend I pulled them all out of the junk drawer and decided to do something with them…besides just throw them away.

Most of the labels had a cute graphic next to the address.  I cut the graphic off using an X-acto knife, my quilting ruler, and self-healing cutting mat.

address-label-cutups

 

Most of them are about a half-inch square.

Now I have to figure out what to do with them.  Use them instead of gold star on chore charts for my grand kids?  Advent calendars for next Christmas?

What would you do?

 

Box Bags strike again

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For the annual (but optional) gift giving this past Christmas, I made more Box Bags.

I love making these things but as usual they got put on the back burner since I had to finish two quilts by Christmas.

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You will have to imagine the finished product as I managed to capture a photo of the fabric but not the actual bags.

2/5 down 3/5 to go

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Happy Belated New Year!

I survived the last three Holidays!  Thanksgiving (US), Christmas, and New Year’s!  I gained Bluetooth headphones and only five pounds.  Fortunately I lost nine pounds before all the crazy eating and drinking of all the calorie-rich food and drink.  That is a plus for me.

Do you have a bucket list?  I do.  And I don’t.  One of the things on this nonexistent bucket list was to make a quilt.  Well, I made two quilts but still need to make three more.  One for each of my grandchildren.  That lifetime goal was made when I was 35 years old.  I’m a lot older than that now but having a bucket list was also nonexistent way back then.

So here are my two quilts.  The first quilts I’ve ever made.  I learned a lot from this experience…meaning I’ve made mistakes.

I posted photos of this project in 2013 and now I have finally finished them.

Without further ado…

Zs-quilt-front

I used the stack and slash or whack technique with eight different fabrics plus a neutral ivory solid and a sprinkling of khaki.

Es-quilt-front

I wanted the quilts to be a little bit longer so I added three rows of leftovers.

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The backs…

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The backs involved the first letter of each recipient plus some leftover fabrics to coordinate with the binding.

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Close-ups of the backs.

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Es-quilt-close-up

My sewing machine does some lettering/monograming so I made machine stitched labels sewn to the lower right side on the quilt backs.  In case you wondered, I am “Nona”.

Label

Straight line quilting, well, as straight as I could do it.

On the beds.

Zs-quilt-bed

Es-quilt-bed

So two down, three to go.