Sweet Dreams

 The bright batik colors of this quilt on the Connecting Threads website caught my eye during a quilt browsing session. Designed by Daniela Stout for Cozy Quilt Designs, it has beautiful pinks, fuchsia, orange, and purple. I ordered it while in Florida (winter 2019) and put it aside. I decided to bring it with me to Florida 2020, so I did the cutting ahead of time. 

I don't recall if I worked on it in Florida because...Covid.

I finished the top on May 23, 2020

Audiobook for this quilt:

The End of October by Lawrence Wright

Romancing the Blues

 You know how when you see a quilt you like and think, hey, I have two drawers plus spillover of blue fabrics! I can do this! Designed by Monique Dillard of Open Gate Quilts, this lovely blue item was featured in the 2014 issue of the American Patchwork & Quilting Calendar. I put aside some beautiful fabrics and let them percolate until I was ready to make it. Well, turns out I didn't have ENOUGH of the main fabric put aside and had to think quickly. This project was going with me to Florida! So back to my drawers to find something that would work. I found “Jasmine” by Quilter's Only for Spring Industries, and “Beautiful Borders and Backgrounds” by Maywood Studios, fabrics I had been hoarding for years for just the right quilt. I began this project just before I flew to Florida in February 2020 and finished it after I had to come home early because...Covid.

I made this quilt entirely from my own stash. And isn't that the point?

Audiobook for this quilt:
The End of October by Lawrence Wright

Friendship Stars

I fell in love with this simple pattern arranged on point in red, black, and gold fabrics, with a large black and cream gingham border. It was featured in the annual American Patchwork & Quilting Calendar; the year and the designer is lost to time. I made this for my kitchen as a wall hanging but it lives as a table cover on an old sewing machine cabinet in a corner of the kitchen that my husband uses as a sort of office/library/telephone stand. It is pretty faded after all these years but fits right in to my 1897 house aura.

During the following years I made a blue and yellow version for my friend's blue kitchen. A few years after that she changed her color palette to gray.

Last spring I hauled out another version that I had started a while ago. I had hoped to make this one for another friend. Her family owned a coffee business for many years, and I had collected a number of coffee fabrics to use for her table topper/wall hanging. Unfortunately, I waited too long and she died before I could make it. So I made it in her memory.

For BM 2020

April 2021: The Pandemic Quilting Year in Review

 Coronavirus! COVID-19 testing! Masks! Social distancing (I hate that phrase)! Wash hands! Hand sanitizer! No traffic. No travel. No haircuts. No family holiday gatherings. No celebrating landmark birthdays. No hugging. Sadness for those families who lost someone dear. Parking lot pick ups at grocery store and library. Zoom quilt meetings.

My fully-stocked quilt studio has kept me busy and sane. I think I had two quilt shop visits. I bought some fabric online. I made a lot of quilt tops and signed up for two BOM's. I also listened to a lot of books while sewing, which resulted in more time spent sewing because I didn't want to “put the book down!”

And today we have Vaccines! Easter family gatherings! Hugging! Grandchildren! Travel! A long awaited round-trip road trip to California!!!

We all have our stories. Here are my pandemic quilt stories:

Pandemic Audiobooks

I sewed my way through all of these audiobooks. The longer I listened, the longer I sewed and completed projects! Louise Penny tops my chart!

The Affair (Jack Reacher, #16, Chronological Order #3), Lee Child
Night School (Jack Reacher #21, Chronological Order #2) Lee Child
Passing, Nella Larsen
The Wife Between Us, Greer Hendricks
Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3), Tana French
The Glass Ocean, Beatriz Williams
A Hundred Summers, Beatriz Williams
Her Last Flight, Beatriz Williams
All the Devils are Here (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #16), Louise Penny
A Better Man (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #15), Louise Penny
Kingdom of the Blind (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #14), Louise Penny
The 6th Target (Women's Murder Club, #6), James Patterson
Glass Houses (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #13), Louise Penny
The Long Way Home (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #10), Louise Penny
How the Light Gets In (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #9), Louise Penny
Big Lies in a Small Town, Diane Chamberlain
4th of July (Women's Murder Club, #4), James Patterson
Elevation, Stephen King
The Hangman (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #6.5), Louise Penny
The Beautiful Mystery (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #8), Louise Penny
Zero Day (John Puller, #1), David Baldacci
If It Bleeds, Stephen King
Meet Me in Monaco, Hazel Gaynor
Naked in Death (In Death #1), J.D. Robb
The Jane Austen Society, Natalie Jenner
A Trick of the Light (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #7), Louise Penny
3rd Degree (Women's Murder Club, #3), James Patterson
The Kept Woman (Will Trent, #8), Karin Slaughter
The Splendour Falls, Susanna Kearsley

The End of October, Lawrence Wright 

    Published just as our pandemic was raging, this book felt like real life happening. Highly recommend.

The Book of Longings, Sue Monk Kidd
China Rich Girlfriend (Crazy Rich Asia #2), Kevin Kwan
Crime Scene (Clay Edison, #1), Jonathan Kellerman
Bury Your Dead (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #6), Louise Penny
The Brutal Telling (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #5), Louise Penny
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, Therese Anne Fowler

Not included are audiobooks I did not finish.

Brown Bag Mystery Quilts

 I am a great fan of mystery quilts and have made several throughout my quilting career. Usually I pick out my fabrics and cut them according to the initial instructions. For in-person mysteries, I would get the first clue, complete it, and move on to the next clue; the teacher would do all the pressing. So, by the end of the class I would have a partially made quilt. Then there are the shop mysteries where again I choose the fabrics and make the initial cuts, and then wait to have the shop mail each clue during a specific time span. This is great because my mystery quilt shops are in California and Florida.

I discovered my first Brown Bag Mystery in Florida at Cotton Patch Quilt Shop in University Park, during one of my post-retirement winter visits. Designed by Karen Montgomery, it truly IS a brown bag stapled shut.

The only hint is a strip of fabric (included in the bag) that is tied to the handle. There is no peaking at what other fabrics are included. Cutting directions and the clue schedule are also in the bag. Each quilt shop offering the BBM chooses the fabrics for each bag. There have been some misgivings in the quilting crowd, especially if they are trying it out for the first time. The shop owners attend a special retreat with the designer so they know how the fabrics will work together in each bag. So trust in your quilt shop!

Beginning in March, which happens to be National Quilter's month, the clues are sent out every two weeks. It is not hard to keep up and the pattern construction is pretty easy. Just have to remember to read the instructions carefully and correctly!

Along with the BBM is membership in the BBMQ Facebook page where quilters can show off their fabrics. Some are so excited that they purchase multiple bags! I tried that last year and decided one at a time was enough; I feel for the quilters who are working on three, four, and five at a time! 

I think the brown bag mystery is a great concept and I am completely open to the surprise, but I'm sure there are a lot of quilters who are uncomfortable with not having control of what goes into their quilts.

Brown Bag Mystery 2020: Under the Stars 

I made two last year!

Brown Bag Mystery 2019: Check Please!

Brown Bag Mystery 2018: Town Square

I am currently working on the 2021 version which I picked out online because of ....Covid. These are my fabrics:

Brown Bag Mystery 2021: Double the Fun

Evelyn's Flower Baskets

This lovely basket pattern is pink and green. Yeah, yeah, it's well known that pink and green together are not my particular favorites. See my post about this at https://fabricoverload.blogspot.com/2010/09/peggys-quilts.html (September 18, 2010 post).

I saw this project, designed by Betsy Chuchian Designs, in the summer of 2019 I think, partially made at Yankee Cloth in Wallingford. It was hand-pieced and I immediately fell in love with it. I figured a hand-piecing project would be a good thing to work on while watching TV. When I have something to keep my hands busy I tend to stay awake longer. The pink and green fabrics were gorgeous, really clear colors that were very soothing. I bought the main green fabric and some pinks too.

I started cutting the pieces and sewing them during that fall, but put it away for other more tempting projects. It came with me to Florida in 2020 but again, had to come home early. So when I picked it up at home I had an epiphany. My time was short, the blocks were just taking too long to make, and I had soooo many projects to make. So I finished with my sewing machine and completed it on July 1, 2020.

Audiobooks for this quilt:

Zero Day (John Puller, #1) by David Baldacci (finished June 28)

A Trick of the Light (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #7) by Louise Penny (started listening June 29)

Silhouette Stars

 I must have been going through a McCall's Quilting magazine when I saw this quilt on the very back page. It is part of McCall's “I Love This Quilt” series, and I found the pattern on line. I absolutely knew what fabrics I would use (they were ALL in my stash!) and with whom it would eventually live (can't say yet). The star appears to have flying geese units, but the designer, Gerri Robinson, planned the units differently.

I began this project in the Fall of 2018, and brought it with me on my personl annual winter quilt retreat in Florida 2019 and 2020. Of course, I had to return to Connecticut earlier than planned, so I continued sewing the blocks through the summer. I completed this quilt top on September 18, 2020. I recently bought a beautiful back, a delicate print that will look just lovely with the blocks. It sits in my overloaded closet waiting its turn to be quilted.

Winter's Eve

This is another quilt, actually finished, that was on my pandemic bucket list. The pattern is Sawtooth Star from one of my very first quilt books, Quilts! Quilts! Quilts! by Diana McClun and Laura Nownes. I saved these fabrics for over 20 years and they are very close to the colors in the quilt pictured in the book.

While it looks like a Christmas quilt, there are no Christmas-themed fabrics in it. The border is a Jinny Beyer fabric from eons ago! At the time I was putting this together in June 2020, I had not thought about who would own it. But as I worked on it, I decided my son Kevin and his lady, Jen, should have it.

Kevin was in the process of moving into Jen's house, his car loaded with stuff, when his fire department was called to a possible heart attack victim, with COVID symptoms. He did not have an N95 mask on, just the surgical mask that we've all come to know and hate. So after treating this person who did not survive, Kevin was put into quarantine right away. For two weeks. In a local motel. I was able to drop off some home-baked goodies; I left them in the grass outside his door and he retrieved them while I stood far away. I asked him if he was afraid someone would break into his car because it was loaded with all his paper products from his apartment, stuff that was nowhere to be found at that point in early April 2020!

So this was their Christmas present, which I quilted myself because my favorite long-arm quilter had her own problems at that time.

New Baby in the Family

 

Our newest family member is Wesley. born in the fall of 2020. The family as a whole got to meet this cute little guy at Easter, our first family get together with hugging in more than a year. Till now the moms have kept us entertained and up to date with a private picture-sharing app. He is a happy, easy-going, cuddly baby.

Wes' baby quilt is made of lively colors. I figured his sister's personality is so strong, he would need a way to grab some of the adoring attention, So I made his quilt loud. I left the quilt with his grandmother to give at Christmas. Because, again, no visitors.

Waterfalls

 

This quilt pattern is from the Vintage Legacies book published by Martingale, and designed by Carol Hopkins. She describes the pattern as imitating women's popular hairstyles during the Civil War era, long cascades of hair flowing down the back of the head.

My husband and I both love Civil War era quilts, so I let him choose the pattern this time, ensuring that he would like it when completed. The only fabrics purchased were for the setting triangles, sashing, and borders. Thanks to the ladies at Yankee Cloth in Wallingford for help in finding this beautiful navy print! I began this top just after Christmas 2020. (No visitors, so no decorating. Only the tree occupied by birds and a single ornament. And the Christmas star of course.) I finished the top at the end of January. 

This is another bed size quilt that I had to lay out on the living room floor, and move my sewing machine nearby. My chiropractor loves me.

Double X Folly

 

This pattern, Double X, designed by Mabeth Oxenrider, appeared in the 1999 issue of American Patchwork & Quilting magazine. She used fabrics designed by Pat Nichols, reproductions of 1840's textiles. So I collected a lot of them over the years. It's taken this long to get to that project box, and the pandemic helped bring it to the top of the pile. 

I completed this quilt top in February. It is so big I had to lay it out on the living room floor. I moved my sewing machine close by and let me tell you, this is back breaking work picking up and putting down the blocks. And stepping all over them to boot! It measures approximately 100” by 100.” Can you spot the "folly?"

Nordic Delight - Red and White

 December 2021 update:

Here is the quilted version of this luscious quilt with the backing.  Won't this look striking decorating my living room or on my guest bed?

Merry Christmas to me!

  

April 2021 post:

I saw this pattern on the cover of the Winter 2020 issue of Quilts n' More at my favorite California quilt shop, Cotton and Chocolate in Thousand Oaks, while on my annual Thanksgiving visit with my daughter and family. It took my breath away! I LOVE red and white quilts! I came home with eight yards of Kona Rich Red and began to make this quilt top on March 16; I finished the top on March 30! It currently is hanging on the back of the closet door and I love looking at it! It will remain there till I finish the next quilt on my project pile.

Why is it hanging on the BACK of the closet door where I can see it??? My closet is full of unquilted tops (with backings) as well as the hook on back of the door. The hook is so full, I cannot close the door!

Audiobooks: 

Night School, Jack Reacher #21 - Lee Child

The Golden Hour - Beatriz Williams

Passing - Nella Larson