The Three Rs Quilts

I have been participating in the Art Quilts Around the World, quilt challenge for a while now. The latest was "The Three Rs...Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" and the only rules (aside from staying within the size range) was that we were not to purchase anything new for the creation of these quilts. I immediately knew what I was going to use for my quilt....I have been doing a lot of fusible web stuff lately and really enjoy it and always end up with bits and pieces of fused fabric left over that I have just been tossing into a box. I decided that I would pull all of that out and and figure out a use for it. I then came across a picture in a recycling ad of a swirly tree with its limbs all ending in what can be recycled and the importance, blah blah. Well, I decided that I wanted to make a tree. This is what I ended up with: 

As I was working on it, it felt a little Dr. Seussian to me...but I loved it.

Then, sadly, I quilted it....

This is with the quilting and the binding. I am very disappointed in both of those.  I wanted to do a bunch of free motion quilting, but need to practice a lot more on that. Ah well, I learn with each challenge. 

This is the backing. I used a wallhanging that I made for my friend Sara's nursery...or rather, I used the first attempt at the wall hanging. I wasn't happy with the placement on the fabric after I had fused it all down and decided to make a second version....which is what she received. However, since this was the reduce, reuse, and recycle challenge, I figured I would go ahead and use it. The binding is also a bit that I had left over from some other quilt and you will notice that the bobbin thread on the backside is all different shades, that is because I used up a whole bunch of bobbins that were partially filled with different colors (nice thing about that is now I have a bunch of empty bobbins that I can prefill in preparation for my next big quilt rather than just having a single or couple of bobbins that I have to repeatedly stop and refill. 

As I look at this more, I may take the binding off and redo it...if I get done with the next challenge early...

This was a great challenge for me and I really enjoyed it. I've always wanted to attempt doing a "snippet" picture and this was my first foray into that but it won't be my last....I'm thinking about just covering a whole bunch of fabric with fusible and then see what moves me... 

Quilts for Wee Watson

So a couple of weeks ago my friend Sara was given a baby shower (Waiting to Meet Avery Hope: Baby Shower). Me being me decided that I wasn't going to go off of the baby registry, but instead, I decided to make a quilt....A quilt... yeah that didn't happen.

We all knew back in March what we were having (and yeah, I'm using "we"). I happened to be at the Dallas Quilt Show when I saw a pattern for a wall hanging called "Faith, Hope, and Love" and knew that I wanted to make that for Sara and the nursery, since she was having a girl and it would be fitting for a girl's room. While also at the quilt show, I came across a booth that was out of Bryan, TX and specializes in Texas A&M fabric and patterns and saw the cutest baby quilt pattern that I had to pick up.

The thing is....I had already found a really cute quilt pattern and fabric for a baby quilt that was all about puppies, and I know that both Sara and Randall are dog people as they have 3 crazy critters already. And then I found out that she was doing the nursery in pink and grey, and well.... the black and red doggie quilt nor the maroon and white A&M quilt would really work there. So..... Yep, you guessed it, there were 3 quilts wrapped and a triptyche of angels for the wall:

Faith

Hope

Love

A&M Quilt

Puppy Quilt with Razorback backing fabric

For the Nursery

And because I am notorious about talking about my mistakes... The Faith and Love quilts were made twice as I didn't like the original placement of them. I then trimmed all three wrong so that I had to do a little adjusting there and lastly, after it had quilted all three of them and taken them over to my mom's so that she could put on the binding(and actually finish them off nicely, I realized that there was a black thread showing on Faith, so I had to take out a small chunk of the quilting, dig out the thread and then quilt that section again. Needless to say, there was much cursing to be had while making these small quilts.

(Thank you, Sara, for getting pictures of these and letting me 'borrow' them from your blog.)