faulker094

The bottom border for "Contentment" is hand-stitched, soaked and pressed, but not trimmed and attached yet.  I might wait until all four borders are done before I trim anything.  My little mathematical brain is a little distracted right now...better to be safe then sorry! These pictures aren't very good...I have both tops I am bordering laid out on the pool table as I ponder things.  My pieces of design wall are leaning up against furniture in my bedroom, upstairs.  I have got to figure out where and how to have my design wall down where the quilt cave is! And for my second project sprawling on the pool table, you won't believe one of my skinny stop borders I am employing in "Life's Little Treasures."   Some of you have been making these blocks in a larger size, one at-a-time, one day-at-a-time in 2016.  I just finished making 116 little versions of this hand-appliqued block in four days!  Now I just need to stitch them into strips and apply them to ...

After much moving things around, I finally settled on an arrangement for my center medallion block and my seventy-two LITTLE TREASURES hand applique blocks. The little blocks measure 6-inches finished (but can easily be scaled up larger), and the quilt top is 54-inches square... SO FAR. Patterns, both traditional and digital, for the blocks are available here . Now I am trying to figure out my options...I am thinking that I will apply another sawtooth border, but with 2-inch finished HST's instead of the 1-inch that I used around the center medallion. But then, what?!?  My mind is racing... It was interesting trying to get the blocks arranged.  I did not use seventy-two different background neutrals, so I had to worry about repeats being adjacent to each other.   I think I moved the flying pig around the most...due to the neutral fabric palette it was a little hard to balance the occasional bursts of brightness. It is busy without calming sashing, but I like that.  ...

The 18 blocks pictured above are the LAST of the 72 (total)  LITTLE TREASURES blocks; original blocks that I drafted and hand appliqued to amuse myself and stay sane over the last sixteen months.  The finished size of each block is 6-inches square. I started making these 6-inch blocks over a year ago for a project that was leaning in another direction.  That project, "Repro Madness," was to be a swap project that would contain blocks made by me and two of my Michigan friends.  I started making 6-inch hand applique blocks designed by Lori Smith of From My Heart to Your Hands designs to put together with pieced and embroidered blocks from my friends. The three of us chose Reproduction fabrics and got to work.  After I made five blocks using Lori's designs, I started drafting my own blocks, all the time making 3 of each design for a while, one for each of us. As my project got more ambitious in my head, it became clear to me that I was now working on two diffe...

I am so happy to have made decisions about the borders for "Contentment," my original quilt celebrating our marriage (our 23rd anniversary is on October 23).  I started this project just before our 20th anniversary.  Zeesh!  Birthing this project has been like having a baby...in slow motion! The first border has the pieces woven like a chain (my "chain and bull's eye" border...Steve calls it the "ball and chain border").  That seems appropriate for an anniversary quilt. I am calling the second border my "pop bead and bull's eye" border since Steve said it reminded him of a toddler's pop-together toys.  I could not make a decision about using one blue, so I used twenty-eight (stash justification at its BEST!) and almost as many purples. I felt the first border wasn't heavy or solid enough so I knew I wanted the second border to have the visual weight of a solid strip of color but be more interesting than that.   It's getting t...