Thursday, May 20, 2010

Making another Neighborhood Quilt

So my friend Denise decided it was high time that we had another neighborhood project, because at least once a year I have to pull all my hair out and drive those around me crazy. She wanted to make a quilt for our friend Connie, whose 50th birthday party is coming up. Connie is amazing. She's one of those people who you meet, and 5 minutes later you feel like you've known her all your life. She's got 5 gorgeous boys (6 if you count her husband) and a beautiful house and she kicks butt at her job and everyone loves her.

In January, Connie was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Some of the neighbors have been doing so much for the family- driving the boys places, making meals, taking Connie to doctor's appointments, threatening bodily harm to doctors who were less than empathetic, and just generally helping out. I on the other hand have done very little. When Denise mentioned a quilt for Connie that would be from all of us I immediately thought it was a great idea. Denise rallied the troops with an email asking for fabric, pictures, and contributions (for the additional materials), and we have realllly gotten some fabulous stuff so far.
Take a look! Is anyone surprised by the fabric Denise picked?






I know, I know, there is a big shiny splotch in the middle of the Gordons' picture. All I can say it, Marianna must have used some extra shiny photo paper because I took that darned pic about 10 times and this was the least offensive version I managed to get.
On Sunday we'll see how far we can get putting our top together. I have changed my mind about the pattern and I'm pretty excited. No previews though, you'll just have to wait and see!

Note, if you don't see your stuff here and you've dropped it off, it just means that I haven't had a chance to put it in a collage yet. Collage number three coming soon, I hope!

Look at all those gorgeous neighborhood families.  Aren't they beautiful?






Sunday, May 9, 2010

Emma and Kate Make Some Shirts

Emma decided she wanted to design her own shirt and in yet another fit of idiocy I agreed. Actually, this shirt wasn't too idiotic, the idiotic decision came later. So she and I drafted a pattern and made things up as we went along and came up with this:

The shirt ties at the shoulder and it turned out pretty cute. Now for the idiotic decision- since Emma had a shirt, Kate wanted a shirt. Kate hasn't worn anything that wasn't knit fabric since 2005, so believing she was going to wear a crisp quilting fabric shirt was overly optimistic. The shirt turned out totally adorable, based on a pattern from the Made by Rae post on Sew Mama Sew:

You can see from the expression on her face how thrilled she is with it. She wore it twice- once for the picture, and once to school because I talked her into it. After that, there was no convincing. It was not a tie-dyed t-shirt, and therefore not worthy of her time.
So. Know any 5 or 6 year old girls who would wear this? Cute shirt free to a good home.




100 Good Wishes Quilt


Hello again.

I got reminded the other day that I haven't posted here in oh, almost a year. So I thought maybe I should catch up a little. Shown above is Neighborhood Project #1... a quilt made for a friend in the neighborhood when she adopted a darling little boy from China. Lots of folks from the neighborhood contributed fabric squares that went into this Bow Tie Quilt. And then probably half of them helped to put it together- ironing, pinning, color-blocking, making the binding and backing- and most of all babysitting so I could finish up! Once it was done my neighbor Val even wrapped it up- so all in all it might have been my fastest quilt ever. (It was certainly the most stressful, but I don't need to go into all the details. Let's just say PROPOSAL at work and a shower date that was about a month earlier than expected, and leave it at that.)

Accompanying the quilt was a beautiful scrapbook that my friend Denise put together with all of the notes that everyone had written. In my opinion the book was nicer than the quilt- Denise did a ton of work on it and it was amazing.
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