My Patriotic Quilt (Quilt #6 for 2026)

You may remember that I wanted to make a Patriotic Quilt this year to celebrate our country's 250th birthday.  I started this quilt on June 3 and finished it up this week, just in time for the 4th of July!

The pattern that I picked out was Stardust, a free pattern from the Fat Quarter Shop.  It was easy to follow and fun to make.

Some of the fabrics are from the Old Glory fabric line by Lella Boutique.  I especially love the red one with the flowers.  :)

Thankfully I have some fabrics left over to make another project.  Isn't that the story of my life?  I might made another quilt with some of the same colors to coordinate with this one.

I had seen this line of fabrics on Facebook and wanted to get some of these for my quilt. While I was on my Shop Hop, I happily found some of them at a local store.  I added in a couple of other colors to complete the look that I was going for.

Starting out, I found the pattern easy to make, as long as you label the squares!  Most of the quilt is made with half-square triangles and whole squares, in all different sizes.  Thankfully I had a new set of Alpha Clippies to help me out.  

Here is a pic of the starburst before I put on the border.  You can see the size of it with my chair in the photo.  I think it's about 60" square, which makes a nice throw.

In this photo I am free motion quilting it on my sit-down longarm.  Because it wasn't too big, I finished it in a couple of days.  

The color of the medium blue is more to it's true color in this photo.  I made a quick journey to Hobby Lobby and found a very nice dark blue fabric with ships on it for the back.  

All in all, it turned out so nicely.  And it's actually done - yay!

 

Irish Chain Quilt #2

This week I had a chance to put the binding onto the Irish Chain quilt that I am making for my daughter.  Last year I gave her a table runner that was made in the same colors. So the quilt will coordinate with it.  I hope that she likes it!

The color of the fabric is a bit greener than what the photo shows.  It's more of a celery green than a beige green.  I started this quilt last year and am proud to get it done in a somewhat quick period of time!  

For the back of the quilt, I found a pretty paisley print that had different greens in it and I thought that it gives some interest to the quilt.  Of course, you could display it either way.  

The quilting has free motion daisy flowers in it.  I love how it turned out.  I hope my daughter likes it as much as I do.  :)

Oh, My Stars! Quilt #7

 I've been wanted to put together a quilt with Pat Sloan's "Oh, My Stars!" pattern for a while.  I started this quilt for my son last summer.  I cut up a bunch of teals, greens, blues and grays for this quilt from some fabrics that I picked up in Houston at the Quilt Show a year ago.

I had to put the squares up on my design wall so that I could see where to fit in the gray blocks to form the stars.  Then it sat in my dining room (yes, dining room!) for about 6 months.  Finally one day, I put in the gray star points and sewed the rows together.

It certainly is not a hard quilt to make, but it does take a little planning on where you want to place your stars for the most impact.

I finished this quilt in time for Christmas and gave it to my son.  He loved it!  It's so nice to have quilts to cuddle up with that are made for you by your mom.  :)

I used the teal palate to coordinate with the teal afghan that I made him last year.  I machine quilted  free motion swirls for the quilt pattern, but if he looks closely at the quilt, I "wrote" a message in it near the the top corner that says, "To Chris, Love Mom."  Clever, huh?

Here is the quilt when I was putting borders on it at my quilt retreat in Oct.  Why is it so hard to actually finish up a quilt when it is almost done?

This is the 7th (if you count the Baby Quilt that I made last year) that I finished for 2019!  That's a new record for me.  :)

Now to get started for 2020...

Table Topper

This week I put together a table topper with 2" squares for a friend who is graduating from Nursing School along with my daughter.  I used the Garden Song fabric that I had left over from the Pretty Quilt.  I thought the colors offered a nice variety for this project.

I divided up the square sections into blocks and it went together pretty quickly.  Then I added some borders and quilted it using straight lines in every other block.

I really like how it all came together.  Maybe I'll make another one (in my spare time) for myself.  :)

This type of project can also be hung on the wall or used on a coffee table, etc.  I even have a small quilt on my desk.  :)

Heart Quilt

Ah, the holidays are over and I'm so glad to begin a new year!  This year my goal is to sew, sew, sew!  I have a lot of quilts and other sewing projects that have been lying around and it's time to finish them up and move them along.  For real. :)

I made this cute little wall hanging for my daughter for Christmas.  Her favorite colors are teal and coral, so I used a fabric line called, Nest, for my project.  It has the sweetest little images in it!

Look at the birds and nests - so sweet!  I definitely want to use this fabric collection again. 

I found the layout on Pinterest from Robert Kaufman fabrics (link is here) and started cutting 2 1/2" squares from my jelly roll.  It took some time to cut the squares and arrange the colors, but once I was done with that, I numbered them and took them into my sewing room to sew them all together. 

The sewing took longer than I thought that it would - although it's a relatively small quilt, there are over 100 little squares to sew together!

Then I put on a white border and finished it off with a teal binding.  And yes, it was actually done before Christmas!  (Christmas Eve, but who's counting)

It's about 26" square- just the perfect size to hang on the wall or use as table topper - my kind of project (the kind that you can finish - LOL!).