A quick follow up to the post T-Shirt Quilt Assembled – today, two days before Christmas, I received in the mail John’s T-shirt quilt from the longarm quilter (who had longarm machine quilted an all over pattern).
Fresh out of the box…
I was tempted for a moment to get it trimmed (remove overhanging extra binding and backing), assemble the binding, attach the binding and then attempt to sew down the binding/complete binding the quilt 2 days before the holiday so I could give it to John on Christmas.
Nope. I went ahead and showed John the quilted quilt and put it away to deal with until after the holiday! He knows it is eventually coming into his life to snuggle under…
I also had a couple of last minute gifts I was going to make and then decided this year no last minute crafting. (The intended gift recipients won’t know what they did not receive!)
Perhaps I will be better prepared next year – ha!
Postscript
Photo from the longarm quilter Sew Colorado Quilting after she completed the machine quilting at her house:
For the second year in a row I am participating in the annual group Ovarian Cancer Charity Fundraising Quilt headed up by the lovely Australian based quilter Kate C. @talltales from chiconia.
I made two 12.5 inch by 12.5 inch blocks and shipped them off to Australia on Monday. (By the way I have a really good friend and penpal in Austria that I regularly mail letters and I made sure to clearly enunciate the country to the my regular postal clerk and make sure envelope was going to “Australia” this time and not “Austria” – ha! My Austrian based friend years ago sent me a funny magnet with a kangaroo with a slash mark over it that read: “there are no kangaroos in Austria”!)
This year’s theme is “Tealing All Our Stories” and we are to make bookcase shelf themed blocks. Check out Kate’s blog I linked in the first paragraph if you’d like to see some of the blocks she’s received from other quilters around the world.
So if you haven’t guessed, we needed to make teal, the color used to represent Ovarian Cancer Awareness, the feature color in our blocks.
I had a fat quarter of tiny stripe pattern Figo fabric I won at QuiltCon in February (see my post QuiltCon February 2025, Phoenix Arizona if you’d like to read about my first trip to QuiltCon), that reminded me of pages in a book seen from the side of a book and that was my inspiration.
I created two blocks of stacked books view from the pages side:
I happened to have in my fabric stash some unusual ombre teal fabric that sort of looked like mountains and I used that as the. background for my book stacks to represent Colorado where I live.
In order to unify all the bookcase blocks, Kate asked us all to put a 1 inch finished border around our blocks and that is why you see a cream border. She also asked us to use a dark teal as the background for whatever image we create for our blocks.
Fingers crossed the blocks arrive safe to Kate’s house in Australia (and don’t wander over to Austria, ha!)
If you are interested in the progress of this quilt please follow Kate’s blog @talltales from chiconia; and I will try to post an update on the quilt when she has the layout complete (she does a tremendous amoung of work on these annual charity quilts, the rest of us just have to make a couple blocks and ship them off!)
Postscript
I’ve fallen a bit behind in blogging as we’ve been enjoying the late Spring/nearly Summer warm weather and going on some fun holidays and roadtrips – from day long trips where we come home at night to trips over several days. I’ll blog about some of them in the future.
This past weekend we went to the community garage/yard sale and picked up some fun items, each for $2:
A leather top hat for John (for fun or costume wear):
And a lovely cast iron Japanese tea pot set for me:
In this post I want to share an update on my Colorado themed quilt, which will be hung in our guest room, that is made from panels I picked up during the 2021 Rocky Mountain Quilt Shop Hop.
The quilt arrived back from the professional longarm quilter who used an Aspen Tree Leaf pattern (Aspen trees are so Colorado and I have several in my yard) for the quilting.
I have the binding sewn on as well as the hanging sleeve. I just need to sew them down and then hang the quilt!
Speaking on Aspen trees, the Aspen trees next to the windows in my studio (on the 3rd level of our house) are in full bloom now as are all the other deciduous trees in our backyard.
Once again I feel like I am crafting in a treehouse!
Postscript
I mentioned above I just need to sew down the binding and then it is done. But alas, that will have to wait because first I need to work on two blocks for the group Ovarian Cancer fundraiser quilt that Australian-based quilter Kate of Tall Tales From Chiconia is spearheading again (see her post Ovarian Cancer Quilt 12: Tealing All Our Stories).
I think I am the only U.S. based quilter participating again this year. Correct me if I am wrong and you are participating.
The theme is a bookcase quilt and since I love books (and libraries…and bookcases), I had to participate! I’ll share my blocks in a future post. Check out Kate’s blog if you want to see some of the blocks the group working on this charity quilt has made so far.
Back in August 2021, John and I drove around the southern Front Range area of Colorado to visit the quilt shops in the 2021 Rocky Mountain Quilt Shop Hop.
Each quilt shop on the shop hop had a small panel, displaying something about Colorado, that you could purchase for $5 and make part of a Colorado themed quilt or use individually in project:
And then there were several Colorado themed larger panels to select from that you could buy to make a Colorado themed quilt including this one shown in a sample quilt in one of the shop hop quilt shops:
Here is another sample quilt using the same panel combined with the small panels each quilt shop participating in the shop hop had available:
While attending the 2021 Rocky Mountain Shop Hop, I bought this panel (“Welcome to Colorful Colorado”), collected the small panels from each quilt shop we visited along the shop hop, and bought this pattern – Pieces of Colorado.
And then they all sat in a box together for 4 years…
Recently I decided to finally make the quilt (which is wall hanging/small lap quilt sized) for our basement guest room which I was in the process of redecorating. Originally due to some waterfront/boating art John had from his previous life, the room was ocean/beach/sea themed. But we are “landlocked” in Colorado and the closest ocean is roughly 1000 miles away; and I thought we needed a theme that better represents where we live.
So I thought for our visitors, the guest room should celebrate Colorado as well as the amazing National Parks we have in my country.
At a later time I will reveal the remodeled guest room (and all the National Park themed art I havw added) but for now here is MY version of the Colorado themed quilt (“Pieces of Colorado”) in progress (I finished the quilt top) that is going above the bed in the guest room:
In addition to the large and small panels, I used several yards from my collection of Peppered Cottons in green and saffron. I will be using a brown Peppered Cotton for the quilt binding to “frame” the quilt.
Here’s the backing fabric that I found thrifting. It is a heavy cotton duvet that I disassembled to salvage the fabric:
So right now the quilt top and back are with my long arm machine quilter getting professionally quilted. I can’t wait to put the binding on and hang it on the wall (I will make a hanging sleeve for the back) when it returns!
Postscript
Here is the inspiration for the “Welcome to Colorful Colado” panel:
This sign is located at various borders between Colorado and neighboring states.
It was also the 2021 commemorative Rocky Mountain Quilt Shop Hop pin that I got when I completed my “passport” by visiting all the shops on the shop hop!
tierneycreates 