Judge Memorial School Pride {Quilt}

"Live, Laugh, Love, Bulldog"

At the end of 2017, I decided I was not going to take on any commissions or obligations for the New Year.  I needed and still need to refocus my attentions on where and what I'm doing as a quilter.  The only obligation that I knew I had was my two son's high school auction quilt.

To make this simple, I did the exact same pattern as the one I did for Button's school auction, using

Riley Blake's School Spirit Quilt Pattern.

The goal was to keep it simple and use the cutest fabrics I could find....in my stash!

I happened to have some fun stripes and dots I have collected over the years and a few I picked up recently for some Christmas projects.

 Along with the theme of simplification, I quilted it with a freemotion meandering pattern.

I had this black and white fabric with the intention of using it as a backing for a particular bee quilt, but I finally decided will probably never happen and used it on this one! 
It made the decision to use white thread to quilt even easier!

I love how the quilt label popped on it!

 

 I don't usually go "easy" with applique, but this year I really wanted to simplify this process, so I used wonder under, layered the logo, and used a blanket stitch on the raw edges.

Black dot binding seemed to put a stamp on my idea of a fun quilt!

Quilt Stats
Measures: 54"x 61"

Pattern: School Spirit by Riley Blake

Fabrics: Joann Fabrics

Quilted: Freemotion meandering on HQ Avante

Judge Pride Quilt 2017

Judge Pride Quilt 2018

I think it definitely was different using mostly prints over solids only like the other two quilts the past years.












I'll leave it up to everyone else on which of the three is their favorite!

Lancer Spirit {Auction Quilt}

"Go, Fight, Win, Stand Up and YELL!!!"

If you have followed me long enough, it has become a habit of mine to find and make what I call School Spirit or Pride quilts.  I love to donate a quilt to each of my sons' auctions in their school colors.

Part of the fun is finding new patterns to use and I lucked out when I stumbled upon this pretty simple pattern at Riley Blake's School Spirit Quilt HERE.

I tried to use most of my stash, but it was getting a "muddy" feeling that felt forced, so I made a quick run to Joann's Fabrics.

 This is where I'm supposed to tell everyone that hubby picked out some of the important fabrics.  Insert rolling eyes emoji and saying "oh yeah...like I wouldn't have found them myself....."

This year, I finally braved the school logo for the first time and made a layered applique.

I will admit here and now that the embroidery was intense to design and execute with my multi-positional hoop.  The love-hate relationship with my machine and software saga still continues.

When I bought the fabric, I really wasn't sure what binding I would end up choosing.
 I had to use both the blue and green dotted fabrics to cover the entire perimeter.

I've learned through the years that it isn't always prudent to overdo the quilting.

To get a nice texture without spending hours, I did a free-motion quilting straight line quilting.
I'm not sure what to call it, but you can see it is almost like giant horizontal oval bubbles, of a sort.

I had to add a printed label to the minky quilt backing.  I can't help myself.

Quilt Stats:
Measures: 54" Square

Pattern: School Pride by Riley Blake

Fabrics: Joann Fabrics

Quilted: Freemotion on Handiquilter Avante

It did a little better than the School Spirit Twister Quilt and took a lot less work (other than the logo) and I hope even the smallest amount of money goes to the operation budget of a very small and wonderful school!

Habitat {Auction Quilt}

  "An education in the fullness of humanity should be the defining feature of Catholic Schools"

~Pope Francis

I was asked to help the Kindergarten class of Button's school make their quilt for the school auction.  Since I had full control of Button's class project last year with the Sweet Silhouette Quilt, I told the kindergarten teacher to have the theme whatever she would like. I sent her a few patterns and she said she liked the auction quilt Lee at Freshly Pieced had made.

She decided to tie in the project with the Habitat unit that they were learning about.  I gave her general sizes for the artwork.  When she returned them to me, I scanned and arranged them into a yard of fabric that I had printed by Spoonflower.

I was happy to see how the fabric turned out.

Lee had used the Lemon Square pattern from Faith Jones at Fresh Lemons Quilts.

It came together rather quickly.  I chose jelly roll I had laying about. 

And other fabrics from my stash that the artwork colors evoked.

Instead of using a white frame as instructed for Block F of the pattern,
I opted for solid green and yellow fabrics to frame the kids' artwork.

I was a bit nervous about quilting over the artwork squares, 

but free motion meandering seemed to be the right choice.

Button went shopping with me and chose the green dotted flannel backing and yellow binding.

It became officially finished yesterday when I added the quilt label!

Quilt Stats:

Measures: 54"x 64"

Pattern: Lemon Squares by Faith Jones

Fabrics: Kona White, Artwork printed using Spoonflower service, all other fabrics are from stash.

Quilted: Meandering with Superior Threads Bright White on Handiquilter Avante. 

I hope it does well at the auction.  I always get a little sick to my stomach that the kids hardwork doesn't bring in the funds the school needs because I didn't showcase their work well enough!

Judge Pride Twister {Quilt}

"Twist and Shout!"

I made another Twister quilt this school year for the older boys' high school auction.  I figured I would give my brain a break and just make the same pattern, just different colors.

I will admit, I still feel like I'm making two, just to have one cool twisty pattern.
 I decided do a tighter meander free motion quilting so it would wash really crinkly.

 Black binding framed it perfectly.

Sticking with Sew My Stash 2017,
I used a yellow dot backing with a pieced black and white chevron scrap.

Did you see the snow falling in the above picture???
The white thread really disappeared in the yellow dot backing.

I added a printed quilt label after I washed it framed in black.

Here is a pull out of the photo-shoot!  I have had this stand forever to display quilts and have used it to take pictures...but just recently realized I should extend the poles way out on the sides and crop them out instead of trying to hide the legs behind it.  It also would fall over when the wind blow.  Especially when I don't have quilt holder staff hanging about.   It seemed to work!

Quilt Stats:

Measures: 65" Square

Pattern: Twister Quilt inspired from School Spirit Twister

Fabric: Kona White, Tomato, Corn Yellow, Black, and Joanns yellow dot and chevron

Quilted: Free-motion meandering on Handiquilter Avante

Maybe it will return to my red chair for us to enjoy....

Sweet Silhouette {Quilt}

This was the first time I have had complete artistic control from start to finish on a school auction quilt and I could not have been happier!

I saw Angela Pingel's Profile quilt tutorial on her blog, Cut to Pieces, and knew that I had to make it for Button's Kindergarten year!
 

Her instructions on taking the pictures were perfect.  The only thing I made the mistake of was focusing in on some of the kids, when you should, ideally, stand at the same spot and make sure your camera lens is the same distance each time.

 
I had this great stack of solids I had picked up at Quiltcon in Austin and had used some of it for a quilt I'm working on for Button....just enough to do a quilt for 13 students. I found larger scale Alphabet fabric that I've used before from Joann's for the backing.

  I struggled to figure out a layout and decided to just do some empty blocks to make it a nice lap size.

I liked the idea of printing on fusible, but I already had a bolt of Pellon Wonder Under in my studio.
 I also really wanted my profiles to face the original direction, so I used a sharpie around the printouts, then flipped them over on my light box and made a line on the back.  Then I laid my fusible (sticky side down) on top and traced.  I cut up close to the edge, then ironed on, and then cut the fabric with fusible out.

My longarm ruler base was cracked in the move, so I didn't feel confident I could get the crosshatch that Angela's quilt had.  So I fused and stitched my applique and then quilted with it with a piece of scrap batting on my domestic machine.

I then cut away just to the edge so that it would help the trapunto effect I was going for with this quilt.


Before I pieced the blocks, I added their embroidered names.  I went in to the classroom and had each child write their name in the same size space.  I scanned and digitized them in my embroidery software so that they could be stitched out their EXACT penmanship.

Here is my confession part.  I told myself that a neutral thread throughout would work.
 I didn't want to change threads constantly.

And it looked alright-ish until I got to the end of the first row in the dark fabrics.....

I have not been listening to my gut the past few weeks and have paid heavily for it.
I spent six hours unpicking and reminded myself that sometimes there is a reason we should do the extra work.

This was the second time I used double batting on a quilt and I LOVE IT!!!
I chose a wavy crosshatch quilting on the empty blocks to make sure the eye always returned to the profile blocks.  They were fun and will definitely do it again!

I decided to quilt the profile blocks with free motion "doodling" and making sure I did an outline around the profile to emphasize the trapunto effect I was going for. I think it worked well.

See all the fun colors on the back?!?!  I was too hesitant to tempt fate and use a neutral color.  I'm thankful the backing was busy enough to handle it.

Had to share Button's little profile!  Unfortunately, I did not have a matching thread color for his fabric choice.  I'm not totally in love.  But his little handwriting!!  I melt....

I tried to match the letter backing, but soon discovered the lines just weren't matching.  So I added three primary colored strips.  I like how it draws the eye to the label though.

A solid black binding seemed the best choice to frame out the all solid quilt.

And, of course, I had to embroider a label for the back!

The thing I love the most is all the texture!!!

Quilt Stats:
Measures: 56" x 60"
Pattern: Profile Tutorial by Angela Pingel
Fabrics: Moda Bella Solids, Kona Black, Joann Fabrics Alphabet
Batting: 2 layers of Warm & Natural Cotton
Quilting: Diagonal Crosshatch on Babylock Symphony
 and Freemotion and Wavy Crosshatch on HandiQuilter Avante

And off it went to Auction....
and was successfully sold for a VERY generous amount to my co-room mom!
 I couldn't think of a better Mom-Son duo to win it!!!