Plan C finished! Renamed Plan Copenhagen

Plan Copenhagen
71.5 x 71.5 inches

Finished June 2011

I started this quilt in July 2010. The fabric had been a Christmas Gift from Santa in my stocking, but it took a few months until I figured out what I wanted to make with it. This quilt is made from a pattern in the Schnibbles book by Carrie Nelson. Love that book! The pattern went together fairly quickly. I loved the way the stars started to pop out, even before the white was added.

Here you can see the quilt beginning to come together -- this is only one or two days worth of sewing.

After piecing together the top, I took a break for a few weeks. That always seems to happen to me -- borders must get me down! But, in mid-August, I finally pieced together the piano key border and the top was finished.

It was so large, my living room floor wasn't quite big enough to get a clear picture. The quilt sat in my storage room for months! I couldn't figure out how I wanted to quilt it, so I just left it alone. Then, I had grand ideas that I would finish all my quilts that are just sitting waiting to be quilted while I recovered from foot surgery. That didn't happen! They're still downstairs waiting to be quilted.

But, in May my husband was asked to go to Denmark to take a class. A wonderful family offered up their home as a place for my husband and his colleagues to stay for a month while they took their class. I am amazed at their generosity! This quilt came to mind -- to me it just says 'Denmark'. That's also why I changed it's name to Plan Copenhagen -- just seemed to fit. :)

So, I finally had a reason to push myself to finish it. I quilted it in the first two weeks of June and it was ready to fly to Copenhagen.

I stippled it with really tiny flowers and leaves. I have to admit, the quilting was not exactly as I like it. I did it really tight together, which makes it difficult to see the design. Oh well. Live and learn.

The quilt flew in my suitcase to Denmark and now resides in this adorable little house outside of Copenhagen:

This is a picture of the summer guest house out back. We actually stayed in the basement of the big house, but the guest house just looks so Danish I had to include it here. :)

Thanks Annie & Jens -- we had an absolutely lovely time! We loved every minute in your home and in your country. Thank you for being so kind to share it with us. Hopefully this quilt will help you to remember over time how much we truly loved it! Thanks!

Mama Bear Quilt

Mama Bear Quilt

about 78" square

made with Hoffman and batik fabrics

Thanks to Amy for hosting the Blogger's Quilt Festival -- what a great event! Here's my entry this fall -- my Mama Bear Quilt.

Several years ago, my sister's life was suddenly changed forever by a brain aneurysm and a previously undetected AVM. It was devastating to our whole family to have her struggle on the brink of death. We powerless to do anything. I was thousands of miles away -- with nothing I could do to help. Some days she was so sick, she couldn't even talk on the phone.


So, I did the only thing I could think to do -- I made her a quilt. As she faced months of surgery and struggles, I packaged all my love into this quilt for her. Every cut, stitch, and seam was made with her in mind. I made it long enough to cover her from head to toe -- at that point it was the largest quilt I'd made. It took some time, but I was finally able to send it to her.


My sister made it through. Today, you'd never know she ever faced such a physical challenge. Every day I'm grateful she's here and healthy. Words cannot convey how important she is to me.


Years later, long after my sister had recovered, she had it on her daughter's bed. It reminds me now that even when we think life is at it's worst, it can always get better and brighter.

Bloggers Quilt Festival Entry Spring 2010

I love the bloggers quilt festival! It's so much fun to look at every quilt and get ideas for the coming six months.

Here's my entry:

I made this quilt for a friend having a baby boy. It was a really good project to try out new stuff. This was the first time I've quilted shapes using my machine. I was astonished at how easy it was to do--

• First I found clip art online.
• I printed it out and then cut out the shape.
• Using a water-soluble marker, I traced the pattern onto the fabric.
• Then I quilted the pattern using free motion quilting
• The stippling helps to give each design added depth
• Then I sprayed the markings with water to make them disappear

The quilt was pretty easy to put together, but I thoroughly enjoyed the process.

Whirlygiggle repeat is finished and it's fantastic!

This baby is 72 inches by 66 inches and absolutely vibrant! It's so much more dramatic in person than in a picture. I love it! It'll be perfect in my basement to help lighten and brighten the room without windows. I always love my quilts when they are finished, but I'm really enamored with this one. It just makes me feel happy inside to look at it. Yum!

I had not expected to finish the quilt this week. We are so packed with things that I thought I'd have to wait until next week to sew. Wouldn't you know it -- my daughter got the stomach flu and I had to cancel everything on Monday and Tuesday. Well, stuck at home means sewing time for mom! Yeah! But, I'll always remember this as the quilt I finished when my daughter was devastatingly ill. (She wasn't sick when I staged this photo, so there are no germs on the quilt)

Grandma's Quilt

I made this quilt in stages. I started piecing the log cabin blocks back in 2003 with the great intention of giving my family each a Christmas quilt for the holiday season that year. I worked on it quite a bit, but just when the blocks were almost finished I gave up for some unknown reason. I picked it up again in the spring of 2009 and finally finished the job. It took me forever to decide how to make the borders. I just couldn't wrap my head around it, but in the end, I like what I chose.

We gave the quilt to my husband's grandma this year for Christmas.

Whirlygigle ideas

I fell in love with the whirlygigle quilt from Crazy Mom Quilts that is pictured above. I'm so sad she has left the blogging world, but I still find her quilts inspirational. So I decided to imitate her whirlygiggle pattern. I really tried to find out where the pattern comes from, but it seems that most people refer back to Crazy Mom Quilts at some point. My blocks are 8" square, for a total quilt size of about 42" -- a perfect size for a baby quilt. I cut all the colors out to make 75 squares -- enough for three baby quilts.

Now I just have to decide which design I like most. Our friend had a baby last Friday and I'm a little slow on getting her a present. I figure that one of these should go together fairly quickly. We have a big snow storm coming and I have all the supplies here at home.

YEAH! Let's sew! Oh and make homemade doughnuts and oatmeal cookie pancakes. Bring on the party!

Unfinished projects

This year one of my goals is to finish as many of my works-in-progress as I can. Each of those bins pictured above contains at least one unfinished quilt. UGH! What a mess!

Not only is it a big mess in my storage room, but they are starting to loom large in my mind and beginning to cause me overwhelming guilt. Most importantly, all that fabric makes me feel like I can't buy more until these quilts are done. I love buying fabric(a completely obvious statement!). I always want more! But, I need to force myself to finish these projects before going crazy with more stuff.

Here's all the quilts in various stages of completion:

• two self-designed and as yet un-named patterns for the Oh Cherry! fabric
• three pinwheel quilts in the American Jane Snippets fabric
• one nine-patch from the quilt-along made from all my scrap fabrics
• one triple-Irish chain for John's baby quilt
• one blue & white in various fabrics
• two Christmas log-cabin quilts
• Underground Railroad quilt in blue, red and green
• one disappearing nine-patch in pastel colors
• one quilt from this quilt along, but I'll probably change the pattern
• one alphabet quilt
• one cream and red nine-patch

(That's a total of 15 quilts in progress)

I also have a lot of fabric purchased, but the quilts have not even been started. Here's just what I can remember off the top of my head:

• Yellow & blue fabric from April Cornel's Nature's notebook line by Moda
• Snippets fabric for this quilt -- a whirlygigle pattern
• Plaids for crazy nine-patch
• six-inch squares for an 'I Spy' quilt
• a purple medley of half-yards
• about 40 different pink fat quarters
• a black and white collection

(A total of 7 quilts with fabric purchased)

I've recalled all this from memory, and I'm sure I'm forgetting something. All told that's 22 quilts. UGH! If I finish one every two weeks I might be done by the end of the year -- wish me luck!

Christmas projects finished!

All the Christmas gifts are in the mail. This was my final gift project. After it has been delivered, I'll show the entire quilt. I'm pretty jazzed about this one -- I made up the pattern and finished it all in about 6 weeks. Compared to some people, that's a quilter's lifetime. For me, that's pretty speedy!

Now I'm off to make my kids Christmas pajamas! Yahoo! It's almost here!

Oh Cherry Oh! idea

I've been working with some fun fabrics lately, sadly I haven't figured out how to import fabric to Electric Quilt yet. I'll just suffer through with their sample swatches to make my designs.

The quilt design I'm working on right now uses Oh Cherry Oh! fabrics by Moda's Me and My sister line. I purchased the pre-cut turnovers and have been trying to figure out how best to use them on quilts for an un-named upcoming holiday. I really like how they look on point, and I think that may be my final choice. I don't have any yardage of the fabrics, so I think the end of each row and the borders will be bleached white Kona muslin.

Any thoughts?

Fantastic Voyage Step #7

If you've been following along for the Fantastic Voyage quilt, we've reached step #7 -- putting the top together. I love this step! It always makes me feel like the time and creative energy was worth all the effort.

The trick to getting your top together correctly for this pattern is alternating the orientation for every block. The outside strips should be at 90 degrees from each other. It's easiest to look at the picture and figure it out. Promise!

I liked sewing two blocks together and then two additional blocks and so on. Then it's easy to iron them and stack them and then proceed to sew two to two. The four to four.

The final strips will each have 8 blocks. You should have eight strips of eight blocks each. By the time the entire quilt is assembled, it will be 8 blocks x 8 blocks.

That all came out a bit confusing sounding, but it should be pretty easy to interpret I hope.

Yahoo!!!

This morning, I was missing my beloved EQ5 as I worked on my new computer. For my birthday this past year, I saved all my pennies and bought this great new laptop which I love, love, love! But, it is Vista, and I didn't think that EQ5 would work on Vista.

I tried it out and sure enough it works!

I've spent the morning playing with my long lost software friend. I've been dreaming up ways to use my wonderful Snippets fabric from Moda. It's a take on this quilt -- just a grown-up size using turnovers instead of a charm packet.

I'm off to sew!