Quilt Bucket list grows

February 2016  New Year's Resolution:  Actually write about all the things I think about. 

2016 Quilts to Make list is long and getting longer.  Join me for the adventure!

Grand Teton National Park "Cathedral Group"

This is a photograph that represents my first home.  Among my adventures-in-the-wings, I am designing the 2016 Row X Row quilt row for the Send-It-Home quilt and yarn shop in West Yellowstone, Montana.  The format is a little challenging:  9" x 36" but when the theme was announced it suggested lots of options.  "Home Sweet Home." 

I wonder how many quilt shops across the continent will have bird houses on their row.  At the moment I am thinking about "Home on the Range."  Wait and see!  I may drop hints occasionally.

Today my home town quilt group met, and my task was to teach a class on foundation piecing.  We wound up with too little time, and I think I need to post my instructions and the photos that go with them.  Look for that here later this week.

If you are a quilter who purchased a Victoria Rose Quilts pattern last summer which did not have all the template patterns, please contact us at victoriarosequilts@gmail.com.

G

Forest Star Baby Quilt  44" x 44"

This quilt is still in the cut and paste design stage.  The fabrics are Forest Frolics by Heidi Boyd for Red Rooster Fabrics. We will probably replace the bear block with one of deer, since the brown of the bears seems to overbalance the left corner.  There are six blocks on the panel along with the birds on boughs swags on the top and bottom border.  The Send-it-Home Quilt and Yarn Shop has the panel and the coordinating fabrics except the green and lavender. www.send-it-home.com

This will be the side border center panels, and most of the back of the quilt.

Tiny mushrooms for the star point hourglass blocks

And kit foxes for the hourglass blocks.

Bremen Critters and Summer landscapes

This quilt uses a great group of fabrics designed by Leanne Anderson for Henry Glass and Co. Just finished and available as a kit from Send-It-Home Quilt and Yarn Shop in West Yellowstone, Montana.  www.send-it-home.com

Official name?  Build Each Other Up.   Our private name?  Bremen Critters, in honor of "The Musicians of BremenTown."

We've done a lot for the shop this summer with what some call "Cheater cloth" and others "Convenience Cloth."  Sometimes the fabrics are too adorable, or just plain beautiful, to pass by.

The "pieced" blocks in the 3rd border of Build Each Other Up would be fun to actually piece, especially for those of us who adore 4" blocks.  There is enough piecing with the 5 borders of this quilt to allay the guilt for those who suspect they should applique the whole thing.

This photo is from my phone, on a Sunday afternoon jaunt to find out where the road goes.  Zen navigation, anyone?  Taken near Lander Wyoming.

Sunset looking northwest from Gramdmama Jere's house in Idaho.  

Current quilt projects are the Huckleberry Patch quilt in purple and blue batiks, and the dragon applique for my Winter Dreams quilt.  Pictures soon!

Can't See the Forest

ARGH!  After the embarrassment of discovering the Tree templates were left out of our Bears on the Porch Log Cabin pattern, the email addressed offered in the previous blog is impossible.  So, if you purchased the Bears on the Porch pattern in West Yellowstone this summer, and the Tree templates are missing, please email  victoriarosequilts@gmail.com  or call 1(435) 730-4976.  Mention the trees template and give your name and address and we'll send you the template pattern  immediately.

Bottom Fir Tree border 

Meanwhile, we're enjoying the beginning of Quilt Season.   Of course, the Opening Day of Quilt Season follows right on the heels of the Closing Day of Quilt Season.   Oh, wait.  Maybe some of you don't consider NCAA football season prime Quilt Season. Isn't that why instant replay was invented? I've got great seats, and never get rained or snowed out. Still following Boise State, and waiting for Utah/vs BYU and Army vs Navy, and Syracuse vs anybody.

Missing Forest

The missing trees

To our friends and fellow quilters;

Howdy.  If you bought a copy of our Bears on the Front Porch quilt pattern this summer in West Yellowstone,  please email us for a copy of the Tree block templates. We deeply regret our error in leaving the template pages out of the printed pattern.  We can email the file or send you a paper copy, at no charge to you, of course.


              victoriarosequilts@blogspot,com

Digital plan for Bears on the Porch quilt

     

Bright!

Midwinter Dream Quilt

When the snow gets deep and the skies are grey, I'm not the only one who dreams of summer.

Plan A for the Midwinter quilt

This quilt project started several years ago when my sister gave me a foot tall stack of batik fat quarters as a Christmas gift.  My world, and especially my appliqué, brightened up considerably.  As I've collected bright batiks, I've put some aside for this project. Now they've reached an acceptable level of curing-on-the-shelf, so in the dark ages of January I started piecing.

Originally we just wanted an easy to piece design that would showcase the intense colors of batiks.  I’d seen a Finnish quilt online with a gorgeous array of bright fabrics, but it was far more complex than I wanted to tackle in a big quilt, so this quilt is only somewhat inspired by that one, mostly in the borders. 

The blocks of the quilt center are a simple log-cabin style square.  The zig-zag border is cut from a pieced panel of stripes.                                                                                                                                                                 

blocks ready for piecing

                                        

                                                                             

First block begins

I just have to remember which way I'm rotating the blocks as I add pieces

a finished block, pressed and "squared up" but skewed on the greid in the background.

These are the strips which will become stripes for the border

And the striped panel cut into blocks.

and the border begins to take shape.

The plan is to finish this in time to have it quilted by midsummer.  Bright days ahead!

Bear Paw

Baby Bear Paw

The trip through the Green Mountains and the Adirondacks reminded me of the first bear quilt I did.  I think I'll make a new version with autumn leaf colors.  Nice to remember that scarlet and orange are "earthtones."