My first

I had surgery in the middle of December, so stayed home a lot. I had plenty of time to read lots of blogs, especially quilting blogs. That inspired me to start my own, more for a journal or diary of the work I am doing than for anything else.

If someone else enjoys it--all the better.

I've finished three quilt tops since December 19th--one I just added the borders to, and the other two are baby quilts for future great-nieces. I used fabric from my stash for all three. I haven't quilted them yet, but I have been inspired by reading Stitched with Love's blog and plan to work on quilting them in the next couple of weeks.

The first quilt is one of the baby quilts. It's from Karla Alexander's book "New Cuts for New Quilts". It's a stack the deck book, and was quite fun to make. I bought a box of 1/2 yard cuts in green, and another in yellow last year. I found three in each color that went well together and used them. I bought the fabric I used for the hour-glass border about 4 years ago when a local fabric shop had lots of bright on sale for $1 per yard.

The second is from a pattern called "County Lines". The leading is 1" wide I'm thinking of making the next one (I have three great nieces being born between Feb and March) with smaller leading, maybe just 1/2 inch. It will make the quilt smaller, but I think I might like it better.

The third is a quilt I made from a block exchange at my quilt guild. We were assigned to groups, and made blocks with the person's request, and their blocks as a sample in mind. For example, one woman wanted blocks with shabby chic fabrics--pink, green and off-white. My request was for the North Winds block with black and brights. This was a scrappy quilt (the first I have made and I found I hated using a bunch of different fabrics--it's way too messy) and my blocks were all in the same color family. I should have ended up with 30 blocks at the end of the exchange, but one woman dropped out, and some of the blocks didn't fit my request--so I didn't use them.

I ended up having to make more blocks to make a quilt that was usable. All the small blocks at the top and the bottom of the quilt were made with the same multi-colored batik. Then I used the same fabric in the border.

I don't know how I am going to quilt these yet, but I'll work on it.

Mary