Quilt Update

 Wow! The last time I blogged about quilts was THREE YEARS AGO? I've gotten way deeper into quilting since then. I joined the Denver Metro Modern Quilt Guild, which is a hoot. I've been to QuiltCon twice, in Feb 2024 in Raleigh, and just a couple weeks ago I went to QuiltCon 2025 in Phoenix. QuiltCon is amazing!

I just love quilting. I think about quilting a lot when I'm not quilting. Here are some of the things I've made since March 2022:

 

This one is called Looper and I made it for Adam for his birthday in 2022. I like the retro vibe. First time trying curves, it went...okay.

This is a small wall hanging I made as a mystery quilt-along and then donated to the Arapahoe County Quilters fall auction. Another quilter bought it! (Nesting Phoenix by Ships and Violins)

This is New Horizons by Suzy Quilts. I made this for my colleague Ashley when she was in the hospital trying not to have her baby too early, and then all their Christmas presents and car got stolen from the hospital parking lot on Christmas day.

This little pillow I made for Adam for Christmas. It's a character from Adventure Time.

I love this little baby quilt I made for my friend Carolyn's 2nd baby, Gwennie. It's called Hello Geese by Leila Gardunia.

This is a small wall hanging I made for our guild challenge. We just had to use the two colors (purply and aqua-y) that you see here. This is the first quilt I designed myself! I even designed the FPP toothbrush!! I call it Murphy's Law. 😂

Another small wall hanging quilt I did for a guild thing. We got to have a quilt display at the Denver Airport! I used an FPP pattern I have in a book, but designed the quilt myself! I called it Balloon Festival. I love it.

Here I am with my little quilt at the airport show!

 

 

 

I like making little quilts. This is a trivet-sized mini quilt. Pattern from Quiet Play.

I made Phoebe this awesome Colorado quilt for Christmas of 2023. I used the panels and mini-panels I picked up at the Colorado shop hop in summer 2022. It turned out amazing! This is the back.

This is the front!

I made this big kid quilt for Orion and gave it to him in Raleigh in 2024. It is called Deep Dive from Legit Kits. It took a long time to make!!

I made this little guy for the new Lapp Lodge at La Foret!

My friend Michaela was having her second baby and asked me to make her a matching quilt to her first one (see March 2022 post). This is the same pattern, different colors, for Baby Z!

I made this big kid quilt for Aurora and brought it to her in Vermont just a week ago! The Elephant is called the Matriarch by Pride and Joy Quilting, the little mouse is by TartanKiwi. I called this quilt 'Mouse and Elephant."

Here's a detail of the mouse (pre-binding)

 

I put this little gnome on the back of a hoodie for dad for Christmas 2024. This pattern is also from Quiet Play.

I discovered a trucker hat pattern by Rose City Originals and I went crazy! Here's the very first 'practice' one I made. It's still my favorite, I think.

Made a turtle one for Orion

Made matching hats for mom and I to wear at QuiltCon in Phoenix. They were a huge hit!!

Then I gave the pink one to Aurora, who looks way cuter in it.

This is my still-in-progress data quilt for my Quilt Your Life online quilting group. I made a book block for every book I read in 2023. The center is a color wheel key to what the different genres are. That color wheel took me AGES. Now I've got another skinny border to add and another border of books and then some more keys. I hope to finish this quilt by the end of 2025.

I've also made a bunch of individual blocks to send off to folks in my online quilting bee. The bee is okay, but I don't like it enough to want to do it again. But March is the month where people will start sending me blocks, so hopefully I'll have a really neat neighborhood quilt made from all their blocks soon. Below are some of the bee blocks I've made over the past year:

Quilts- March 2022

 I've been quilting like crazy! Here are some recent quilts I've made:

Baby quilt for my friend Michaela's baby, Ciannaleigh. This one was foundation paper pieced.

I made a quilted sweatshirt just for fun! This is also foundation paper piecing.

I made these small succulent wall hangings for my friend Ben for his birthday. These are foundation paper pieced, too.

I finished this quilt top for Brian for his birthday in October, but didn't finish the whole quilt until January. The pattern is by Elizabeth Hartman, and the hummingbird is an FPP pattern I bought on Etsy. I used the same scrap fabrics from Orion and Aurora's quilts, plus some new fabrics.

I made this quilt top for myself more than a year ago, and finally finished it up. The pattern is Elizabeth Hartman, and I used what scraps I could from Orion and Aurora's quilts.

In the year+ it took me to finish this quilt, I dived deep into Foundation Paper Piecing, and I LOVE it. I made all these small blocks on the back of the cat quilt from FPP patterns, to represent things about me. This quilt is mine!

I made this toddler quilt for my friend Ellory's son, Felix. The pattern is from Running Doe quilts and I used all kinds of truck and car fabric on it. This is the first quilt I made using a plush throw blanket for the backing, and I loved that. I will do it again for sure.

I made this wall-hanging sized quilt for a challenge from a local quilt shop. They gave me a bunch of scrap fabric, and I chose this FPP pattern from Juliet van der Heijden using at least 75% of their scraps. It will hang in their shop for the month of April for customers to vote on their favorite challenge quilt.

Here's the back of the butterfly quilt.

Quilts

I made my very first quilt in 2016-17 as a gift for my only nephew Orion, who was turning 1. I liked it okay, but I wasn't interested in making more.

Then I made another quilt, a companion to Orion's, for my niece Aurora, in 2020, for her first birthday. I had a quilting mentor, Annie Nestor, who taught me a lot about quilting, and I realized I really enjoyed quilting.

In 2020 I also did a block of the month quilt, which was also hugely valuable to me in learning techniques.

Here are all the quilts I have made so far. 

Orion's 1-year quilt. Pattern is Hazel Hedgehog by Elizabeth Hartman. Someone in St. Cloud quilted it for me, and one of my co-workers helped (basically did for me) the binding. I chose the fabric for the spines to be all nature-related, with the four corners being Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall.

Aurora's 1-year quilt. Pattern is Bjorn Bear by Elizabeth Hartman. I still had *some* of the fabrics left from Orion's quilt, so I made this one to match, but I didn't have much of some of them, so the nature fabrics are just in the little ears.

This is one of the layouts from the block of the month pattern I did, by State Fair Sampler by Leila Gardunia. This one I made for my colleague Sondra's daughter, Hallie. The colors I chose to be warm colors, as she was born in the summer.

Another baby quilt made from the State Fair Sampler options. This one is for Sondra's new baby, August, which I finished for him when he was around 4 months old! I chose the cool colors because he is a winter baby.

This is the State Fair Sampler in the throw size that I made for myself. It took me about 18 months to make this quilt. I finished the other three baby quilts above during the time I was still working on this one.

This is a baby quilt for Charlotte, Kate Westlund's new baby. This pattern came together very quickly, and Brian helped me pick out the fabric, which apparently is a perfect match for her nursery. Charlotte will get this quilt before she is even 3 months old! The "C" is foundation paper pieced from a separate set of letters that I combined with this tutorial from Ricochet and Away. 

I have 4 other quilts I am working on presently.