Thursday, October 29, 2015

Barn Bat Pillow {Quilted Pillow}


"When witches go riding, and black cats are seen, the moon laughs and whispers 'tis near Halloween"


I think I've mentioned it before, but my love for Halloween decorations can probably be correlated to the fact that I grew up in a No Halloween/ No Trick-or-Treat house. Every year I end up making a pillow or a quilt for the holiday.



I thought doing my nails would be enough. But it just didn't satisfy my need for a quilted thing. 


Thankfully I had this special stack of scraps that my friend Lindsey had sent me. I really was trying to stay strong and not buy this amazing Witch Hazel line from Riley Blake. I'm still sad I didn't buy any. 


I knew it would have to result in a pillow or some abstract quilt. Luckily, I stumbled onto Elizabeth Hartman's Barn Bat Tutorial. I had the right dimensions and only needed to add four solid black blocks and one Essex linen block.

I adored the bats with the very first strip.   


Before I knew it, I had made a pillow top, hidden zipper back, and binding. 


I decided to just outline the bats in black thread on my domestic machine.  Stitched the front and back together and attached the binding. I love using the binding like a piping. 


I'm already thinking about next year's Halloween project. 

Friday, October 16, 2015

Flowers for Eleni

"Where flowers bloom, so does hope."
~Lady Bird Johnson


#flowersforeleni


This quilt. It is just amazing. I've been so honored to work on group quilts before, but this one?  This one just means so much to me. 

In the spring, a very loved quilt blogger, Rachel Hauser at Stitched With Color, and founder of Do. Good Stitches had something happen to her that I could so relate to.  Something was wrong with her baby.  She was so beautiful and shared her fears and worry over her baby daughter after her delivery. She wasn't sure of she what was in store for her darling Eleni's future.  I remember saying out loud. "Please God. Please do not let her join the babyloss club I joined in 2009. None of us members are excited to see new members". 




Then. In a flash. Jodi Godfrey of Tales of Cloth was doing a shout out for a bee blocks. Hashtag Flowers for Eleni. The irony was that I had just started making a mini charm pack of Simply Color by Vanessa Christensen that I had won in her Quiltcon class.



Within a day, I had six blocks for her to send to Australia.




As I packed them up, I had already noticed that she was receiving a huuuuge response for the flowers. And then I thought about how large it was going to be. And then I thought how expensive it would be to ship a quilt back to the states.  

Then, as if my darling Jamie Lynn had whispered in my ears "tell her you can quilt it" 


The back:  TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY QUILTERS NAMES!!!!

Fast forward to the finished top. It took Jodi a bit longer to send it to me than we had anticipated. Because she had received 
550 Flowers. 
From 240 quilters. 
From 4 continents. 


It took the efforts of my tallest son and husband to hold this mammoth quilt up!

Amazing, right?

Here's the ugh part. I had to take down Ole Betsy right before for our move to Utah within days of its arrival on my doorstep in Texas.  Bummer.  I reminded myself that I could get up and running pretty quickly. But then I ran into a big problem. We didn't realize someone had smoked in the house we bought, and most of it happened in what was to be and is my studio. 




Finally. Gloriously. The flooring was finally installed and I was able to load her up. 



And I might have had a bit of stage fright when I first started.




But I finally found my groove and decided on treating each hexie flower as an individual.  




I quilted leaves and swirls around each flower.




And tried to do individual designs on each flower center.  




Of course, there was repetition...but I really tried to be thoughtful for each flower.




And I would be lying if I didn't say I poured all my love and prayers into it.



Jodi sent along the great fabric for binding.




But it was a shy short, so there are two pieces of this V&Co orange added in.




Rachel should receive it soon.  But it was a crazy mail week with Columbus Day around these parts.  I sure hope she doesn't mind it came later than planned.  And I hope she knows how loved she is by her fellow quilters!  

And I love that they all Did.Good Stitches




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