Sayonara 2017! Yōkoso 2018!!! 🐕

Welcome 2018!!! Here's a Grace and Peace Quilting review of 2017 and what's to come in 2018, the year of the dog. First, 2017:

📕 Every Quilt Has A Story 📔 ...

And this one is super sweet! Kathy's granddaughter asked her if she would make a quilt for her out of her old pajamas. What grandma could refuse such a request!

This is Kathy's first quilt and she went with simple squares consisting of knit, flannel, polar fleece, gauze, cotton and more!

🎌 Dr. Who Goes To Japan 🗾

My son is a Dr. Who fan. Here's the quilt I made for him for Christmas this year:

On the design wall, being arranged and rearranged:

🍼 Arabella's Quilt 🚼

Michele made this sweet baby quilt for her newborn granddaughter, Arabella. Isn't that a beautiful name!


It's a Dresden plate quilt made with adorable animal prints and coordinates:

✂️ Staff Retreat ✂️

     One of the benefits of working at Quilt Cove is the twice yearly staff retreats. Our owner, Sue, runs a beautiful retreat home in New Prague, Minnesota, called "The Getaway" that can accommodate up to 20. It overlooks Cedar Lake. 
     We each had our own table. Here's my set-up:

I'd like to highlight some projects the 9 of us were working on. First off are all these adorable Dresden plate Christmas ornaments that Cindy finished:

❀ Plum Blossom Quilting ❀

My sister, Quilter Bonnie, made this quick quilt from a stack of indigo blue and off-white charm squares.

Bonnie requested some quilting that would spice it up a bit:

🚗 A Quilter's Road Trip 🚙

And a quilter's DH's road trip! We took a 4 day trip last week, and left Minnesota during a ❄ blizzard ❄. No snow by the time we reached Iowa. Our first stop: Iowa Quilt Museum, in Winterset. Who was behind the counter but Marianne Fons herself!

The view from the mezzanine floor:

🎄 He Is the Reason For the Season Quilt🎄

Vicki made this soft, beautiful throw quilt from a faith panel.

I loaded it the narrow way to accommodate the quilting design:

A Scrapbaggers Christmas Quilt Swap🎄

My small quilt group, the Scrapbaggers, had our Christmas party recently at Laura's beautifully decorated home, featuring a sparkling 10-foot tall Christmas tree and many Christmas quilts, and a delicious potluck meal. My bad--the only photos I took, besides our quilt swap, were Patty's Christmas cookie tray--Patty and her cousins amazingly made 30 varieties of Christmas cookies over Thanksgiving weekend!

And this bundt cake, also made by Patty, which was as delicious as it was beautiful, with jelly filling inside.

The big event of the evening was our Christmas quilt exchange. At our October meeting we brought a charm square pack in a brown paper bag. We then drew a bag, not knowing who's charm pack we had, or who had our charm pack until the big reveal. The guidelines--make a small quilt or tablerunner for the original charm pack owner using at least 75% of the charm pack. Here are the results:

Logs ⽊ & Fire ⽕

Vickie made this lovely quilt in memory of her son, for her daughter-in-law.

It measures 86" X 86" square. Here it is on the bars:

Kay's Kwilt

Kay made this beautiful quarter square log cabin quilt!

On the bars:

On Ringo Lake: Clue 1㊌

This is my second year to sew along with Bonnie Hunter and her 
(free!) Black-Friday-to-New-Years mystery quilt. You can see my finished En Provence from last year's mystery here at the very end.

I'm using the colors she suggested, because I've never made a quilt out of this color combo before. I'm covering all the stash--old, new and Japanese.

A Christmas Jelly Roll

My sister, Quilter Bonnie, made this adorable Christmas throw from a "BasicGrey" jelly roll. Don't you love the mint green in this?!!

I quilted it with "Just Curls", and Glide thread in gold:

A Traditional Beauty

Shelley made this beautiful traditional quilt for an upcoming wedding!

It is a king size quilt and took up most of my longarm bar length, as you can see on this next photo.

A Rainbow Scrapbuster

Happy Thanksgiving!
This king size quilt is Debbie's original design!

It reminds me of a giant box of crayons all set up in a neat order!

Seeing Triple at the Longarm

Alice made three Seattle Seahawks quilts for her family in Washington. They're all three made from the same quilt pattern, a sort of arrow design.

I quilted the first one with an edge-to-edge design called "Spring Thing".

Desk Top Cubes 🔲 & Nova💥

I made these Desk Top Cubes from Japanese yukata fabrics to give to my quilt friends at the retreat we had this past weekend! 

Baby Elephant Walk

Kathi made this sweet quilt for a baby boy that will be coming into this world in the next week or two!

This is the cutest mother/child fabric:

🎄 It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas ❄️

We've been having some early snow here in Minnesota. Snow + quilting a Christmas quilt makes one start to feel like Christmas!

Jane bought this beautiful Christmas quilt kit at a quilt shop up north.

A Flamingo, Micky, and Minnie

Peggy has been stitching up quilts! This first one features a flamingo made with the "Twister" template. If you're not familiar with the Twister template, check out this link for a search result on the many different Twister quilts on the internet.

I quilted this 28" X 33" quilt with a design called "Soap Bubbles", going for a splashy look:

Delicate Disappearing 4-Patch

Kim, a co-worker at Quilt Cove, made this super cute quilt for Claudia, her grandson's girlfriend. 

It's a disappearing 4-patch made from soft-hued batiks:

Star Wars 7 Quilt

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Regina made this quilt for her grandson who will be turning 8 years old. His twin sister will get the Shopkins quilt posted on my last blog, here.

Shopkins Quilt

Do you know what Shopkins are?! They are 1" high collectible plastic figures based on supermarket items, with faces and names. There are a lot of them for children to collect and play supermarket with. 
     Regina made this adorable Shopkins quilt for a little girl's birthday.

On the longarm bars:

Square Peg Mini Quilt

I made another mini for our quilt gallery! The pattern is "Square Peg Miniature Quilt" from the book, "A Piece of Cake" by Peta Peace of She Quilts A Lot blog.

The quilts in this book are made from layer cakes. But this mini quilt is made from a 2 1/2" Candy Charm pack and finishes 15" square. (There's a larger version that uses a layer cake.)

Nine Cats Doing Dance Quilt

Jane made this bright, educational quilt for a young boy's birthday gift. 

On the bars:

Christmas Table Runner 🏃 Finish

Jennifer, of The Inquiring Quilter blog, posted this free table runner 🏃 pattern as her stop on the "12 Days of Christmas in July Blog Hop". You can find the table runner pattern on her blog, along with a full size quilt pattern now, The Inquiring Quilter.

I custom quilted mine with swirls, point-to-point quilting, meandering and figure 8 quilting. But with all that sparkle and pattern going on the stitches aren't very visible:

50 Needle Cases for OCC!

Our family loves making shoebox gifts for Operation Christmas Child! This involves packing a shoebox full of gifts for a child in need. We have prepared 50 shoeboxes for girls, ages 10-14 this year. I made these cute needle cases to add to the boxes, pattern by Natalie Barnes of Beyond the Reef, Teeny Simple Needle Cases for Friendship Group.

Here's the assembly line-up. I discovered that strip piecing the shorter way, with four strips rather than with 6, makes the needle holder fold easier.

Quilted Puzzle

Judy made this amazing puzzle of a t-shirt quilt for her daughter's high school graduation.

On the bars:

A New Handbag 👜

Yay! I made a new handbag! One of the perks of working at my LQS, Quilt Cove, is that I can take classes for free. Last Saturday I joined a handbag class and made this. I had it partially done at the end of class. I went home and sewed until midnight to finish it: 

The pattern is The Essential Tote by Around the Bobbin:

Something Rose Made

This beautiful coins quilt was made by Rose, of the blog, Something Rose Made. 

She blogged about the making of this quilt top here and finishing it here.

The Most Colorful Quilt

Jody made this colorful batik quilt! Isn't it beautiful?!!

It measures 103" X 113". I loaded it the long way and it pretty much took up the entire length of my bars:

Quilters Blog Festival--Fall, 2017--Part 2

The Quilters Blog Festival is going on this week over at Amy's Creative Side blog. It's a quilt show online. Bloggers can enter two quilts in the link party. This is my second entry, my Lego quilt:

My original blog entry on this quilt can be found here. It's made from 1 1/2" scrap strips. Many of the blocks are theme based on color words I had leftover from an extra-wide backing:

Quilt Bloggers Festival--Fall 2017

This week is the Quilt Bloggers Festival, where bloggers link their quilts together in one spot. It's like a quilt show online. Check it out here, Quilt Bloggers Festival, and be prepared to be inspired!

I am entering my latest quilt finish into the festival: Florence Flamingo. You may recognize it as a pattern by the modern quilt designer Elizabeth Hartman. Finished size for my version is 21" X 29". 

Star BOM

Christa made this beautiful Star BOM (Block Of the Month) at Eagle Creek Quilt shop.

What Cancer Cannot Do

Vicki made this quilt top for her girlfriend. The free pattern can be found here.

Butterflies on a Quilt & on Flowers

Judi made this super cute quilt for her 5 year old granddaughter!

She used a layer cake of 30's repro fabrics featuring a lot of cute children's scenes.

Vicki's Cascade

Vicki made this quilt top from a free Robert Kaufman pattern called Cascade, link here.  
This quilt is a tumbler block with sashing. Don't you love how Vicki gradated her colors?!

Best Baby Quilt Pattern Ever!

This baby quilt pattern is the perfect quick project!

The pattern comes in this little booklet, 4 1/8" X 5 3/8", put out by Modern Quilt Studio.

Typewriters + Halloween

Typewriters and Halloween, but not in the same quilt! Mary has been busy putting together tops and she brought these two to be quilted at the same time. 

First up is this retro typewriter/office items quilt.

Kyle's King-size Kwilt

Kyle made this batik quilt for her daughter and future son-in-law's upcoming wedding and it's a beauty! 

Now, don't be fooled by Kyle's name--she is one of my co-workers at Quilt Cove. She is super talented at combining/picking out fabrics for customers' quilts, as you can tell by this quilt.

Rainbow Quilt 🌈

This is Sally's first quilt! Isn't the rainbow grading beautiful?!

A Longarm Double Header

A longarm double header is quilting two quilts in one day. I did just that recently, quilting these two cheerful, colorful modern quilts made by my sister, Quilter Bonnie!

ERA T-Shirt Quilt

Betty made this quilt for her granddaughter, who will be taking it to college this fall!

Fibonacci Lace

This antique-looking bed runner was made by Julie. She made it as a gift for a friend.

Flannel Jelly Roll Quilt

Jane made this soft northwoods quilt from a flannel jelly roll. She gave it a different look by having the strips go the long way. This is a super long quilt--62" X 98", just the way my family loves them, too!

Bonnie Hunter Comes To Minnesota!

We were blessed to have Bonnie Hunter visit the Twin Cites this week! Here I am, left, with Bonnie, right, during her 3rd day of workshops. Bonnie was here at the invite of the Chaska Area Quilt guild. It took 4 1/2 years from booking to event!

Quilt Minnesota 2017 Southwest Region

My quiltin' cousin, Sue, myself and our chauffeur (DH) took off early Monday morning to do another region of the Quilt Minnesota 2017 shop hop! We visited 9 shops and covered 450 miles.

Here is our personal "Row'd Warrior"!!! Thanks for safely driving us around on the shop hop!

  1. Our first stop was Heather's Book Nook and Sew Much More which is half quilt shop and half used bookstore. It's a mother/daughter business set-up. They gave out chocolate dipped pretzel logs to all the shop hoppers--a nice treat!

This shop is in Granite Falls, so we stopped by to see the falls. There were several pelicans at the falls waiting for breakfast.

We walked over to get a closer look and discovered 30+ more pelicans down river!


2. Fabrics Plus in Marshall:


3.  Crafty Corner Quilt and Sewing Shoppe in Worthington had these cute samples:


4. Prairie Quilting in Windom shares space in a grain elevator!


5. Old Alley Quilt Shop in Sherburn is in a former bowling alley and had a bunch of samples made from the shop hop fabrics:


6. Michele's Quilting and Sewing Center in Blue Earth:


7. The Thimble Box of New Ulm:


8. Spinning Spools Quilt Shop of New Ulm:

They had a great idea for what to do with the 5" squares each shop is giving out:

  
9. The favorite for all three of us was our last stop, Sewing Seeds Quilt Co. of New Ulm:



The block on the right, below, was the free pattern Sewing Seeds Quilt Co. was giving out, called Minnesota Lucy, done in the Lucy Boston style. We bought kits for this adorable block done up in Minnesota fabrics:

  
And our reward for finishing the Southwest Region--12 flannel fat quarters! We are giving both bundles to DD2, who is making Days For Girls kits. These flannels are perfect for that project!


Grace and peace!!! ~Nancy