Auntie Green's Garden

For about a year I've been day-dreaming about making an antique quilt that I fell in love with the minute I saw it - Auntie Green's Garden.  I searched the internet to find the pattern only to learn that there wasn't one available.  I found a few possible leads but they all fell through.  One of the ladies I exchanged emails with suggested I try to draw the pattern myself.  I've been carrying that idea in my head for all of this time and finally decided to see if I could do it.  It's a large applique quilt so seemed like a challenge I wasn't sure I could handle.  Yesterday, I finally decided I'd give it a whirl and see if I could make it happen.  Here's my drawing of the center medallion and a picture of the antique quilt I saw and fell in love with.

My drawing of the center

The quilt that inspired me.

A reproduction of this quilt that I found on the internet.

Stone Soup Challenge

I've been program co-chair of our guild chapter this year (Foothills Quilters).  One of my responsibilities was to create the yearly challenge.  This year we did a "Stone Soup" Challenge.  What is that you ask?  Well, whoever signed-up to participate received a packet that contained an appliqued toy block, a 9-patch block, a nickel square, a fat eighth, and a strip of rick rack.  They were to use a recognizable piece of each item, add their own fabric, and create a quilt.  This year we coordinated the challenge with our charity chair, Mary, so had the gals make children's quilts.  I made up a few too many packets in anticipation of the challenge, so decided to turn them into quilts, rather than have them sit here as orphan blocks.  So, you guessed it, I made more than one quilt for the challenge.  Below are pictures of the appliqued toys that each person chose from, a picture of one of the packets, and the three quilts I made for the challenge.  Following those pictures, there are pictures of all of the quilts the ladies made for the challenge.  I was so pleased with the amount of participation.  What a fun time we had with this challenge!

Toy Blocks

Example of Packet

These are my three quilts:

These are the quilts the other Foothills Gals made:

Mary's

Patty's

Sharon's

Linda H's

Viola's

Jan's

Joan's

Mary Ann's

Louise's

Cheryl's

Bobbi's

Group Picture:

Twelve Days of Christmas

I've been wanting to make a Twelve Days of Christmas quilt for some time.  I discovered that my favorite applique' instructor, Arlene, was teaching a Twelve Days class.  Unfortunately, I joined the class when there were only a few blocks left to complete the quilt.  Not to be deterred, I decided to use the block patterns that I'd get during the last few classes, combine them with other patterns I'd been collecting, and with my own ideas.  Rather than make the twelve individual blocks they were making in class, I decided to put mine all together in one large center block.  There's a primitive wallhanging that I've always liked so decided to base my quilt on that layout (picture below).  I got on the internet for inspiration and ideas, thumbed through a few of my quilt books, pulled out a few of the patterns I'd been collecting for my "some day" quilt, and then started drawing on some freezer paper to see if I could make my vision happen (see below for my drawing).  I just completed the "swan a swimming" - now on to the "maid a milking".  Here's a picture of my progress so far.............

Here's my drawing............

Here's the quilt that inspired my layout (from Primitive Gatherings)................