T-Shirt Quilt Parade🎽

  Graduation season is also t-shirt quilt season! Here are 5 t-shirt quilts that have recently come out of the Grace & Peace Quilting studio.
  This first quilt was made by Hannah, close friend of DD2, Susanna. Hannah and Susanna have been working together on this quilt for more than a year, so it's fun to see it come to a finish and get used!

For the backing, Hannah had a favorite piece of fabric she wanted to use, the horse fabric, and she pieced some extra, coordinating fabrics to bring it up to size:

May Minikins Challenge ✅

Sara at Sew Sweetness is having a different challenge each month with her Minikins patterns. The Minikins are 12 patterns, with step-by-step videos, of small bags that are fun to make and use, or give as gifts. 

Sara's Minikins challenge for May is the Grab and Go Sleeve, a custom sized sleeve with handles, for a device or book.

Ruby Tsunami 🌊

This year is the 40th anniversary of Minnesota Quilters. The traditional 40th anniversary gift is ruby. My small group decided to commemorate the event by each of us making a red and white quilt to be entered in the special exhibit category of the Minnesota Quilters quilt show in St. Cloud on June 14-16. I was happy when I finished the last stitch on Wednesday!

This quilt started about a year ago as this pile of 9-patches:

Charity Quilts 14, 15, 16 & 17 of 52

How sweet is this little girl! I'm making 52 quilts in 2018 for Jack's Basket, where babies with Down syndrome are celebrated. This photo featuring Hannah, with my quilt number 6 as backdrop, is from their Instagram feed on March 31. 


In April I worked on quilts 14, 15, 16 and 17:

What To Do With ½ Yard of Fabric...

My small group is doing "secret pals" this year. We drew names and are giving our secret pal a different small gift every month at our meeting. We're doing this anonymously by putting the gifts in brown lunch bags. This month I received a half yard of Alison Glass fabric in my favorite color, fuchsia:

To me, fuchsia is warm, feminine, colorful, vivid and friendly. Next, what to do with a half of a yard...

April Minikins Challenge ✅

Sara at Sew Sweetness is having a different challenge each month with her Minikins patterns. The Minikins are 12 patterns of small, quick and easy bags that are fun to make and use, or give as gifts. 

Sara's Minikins challenge for April is the Desktop Cubes. 

Chain Gang Snowstorm

On Saturday, April 14, 2018, we got 15" of new snow here in Minnesota. There was a "No travel" alert out. I was traveling across this quilt:

This is Sandi Irish's quilt, of Irish Chain. Sandi is also my co-worker at Quilt Cove. She is getting ready for Spring Quilt Market, with her many patterns and her Quilted Jewel templates.

Grace & Peace Update

Here are some projects coming out of my own studio recently. First off, I'm doing a Gypsy Wife sew along with two groups. I'm making the blocks in the order that they appear in the book, using Japanese fabrics. Here are the 10 blocks I have so far:

Last Saturday I joined a class at The Quilting Grounds in Norwood Young America, and made a barn quilt! I did a Bear Paw block, which is the logo I use for my quilting business.

I had to do a lot of "fussy taping" for my block. Also, the teacher told us that the colors red and yellow both need extra coats of paint to get good coverage, so I did 4 coats of each of those colors.

We worked from 8:30 to 3:30. There were only 2 items we had to bring for the class: a 6" X 24" ruler and a hairdryer. Here's my finished barn quilt! It's 24" square. 

There were 8 of us in the class. It was fun to see the variety of barn quilts that were made! Also pictured here is the paint and rollers that we used in class.

I also made these Sidewinder pouches from the Minikins collection. I made sizes small, medium and large. Fabrics by Tula Pink. I used "pleather" for the handles.

You can see an entire parade of Sidewinder pouches at Sara's blog, here. I added my own photo, also, #41.

I've been working intensely on Bonnie Hunter's "Talkin' Turkey" quilt pattern for a few months now. I finally got it on my longarm this week! 

This quilt is a scrapbook of my 38 years of quilting: old & new, traditional & modern, American & Japanese fabrics. It's going to hang at the Minnesota Quilters quilt show in St. Cloud in June, in the special exhibits section: Red & White Quilts for the ruby (40th) anniversary of Minnesota Quilters.

What are you working on?
Grace & peace!!! ~Nancy
    
Linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts, TGIFF, Busy Hands Quilts, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Friday Foto Fun, Oh Scrap, Cooking Up Quilts, Let's Bee Social, Midweek Makers, Needle & Thread Thursday.

Checkerboard Pipeline 🏁

Paula made this fun checkerboard 16-patch quilt!

With it being a bit traditional, I quilted it with Baptist Swirl:

Minty Riptide

My dear sister, Quilter Bonnie, made this beautiful jelly roll quilt top! Aren't the colors gorgeous?! This jelly roll was hand picked from stock and cut at Quilt Cove, the quilt shop where I work. It's a variety of fabric lines.

The colors remind me of these pastel mint patties: