Hello Ladies!

 Here are the photos of the the family quilt that I promised! Tell me what you think!

Damon's aunt a while ago asked me to make a family history quilt. Saying that then the quilt would be raffled off at the next Brimhall reunion. I liked the idea but in the end decided to just give it to Damon's mom and her siblings to share.

 This quilt took a long time to make.  I spent hours and hours surfing the internet alone just looking for the perfect blocks to use in this quilt.

I had help from Damon on what to put in it and he assisted in putting it together as well. His mom helped with information and I used ideas from a family history book his aunt gave us.

Paper piecing was the main technique that I used with touches of traditional piecing through out.

The majority of the quotes came from Lori Holt's Family Reunion quilt pattern.

Damon's Grandma was known for her pies! Damon has made this strawberry pie for me and it is 

heaven in your mouth!  

His grandma also played the ukulele.

This is something his grandma would always say.

His grandma always cleaned her dishes with Joy dish soap and bathed with bars of Zest soap. It was said that she lived how she cleaned.

I had Esther make this family tree on her PhotoShop program that she has and then she sent it into Spoonflower and I ordered it.  I actually ordered it about three or four times for various reasons (we all know that means I goofed up that many times so I had no choice).

This flying geese panel Damon made and did awesome! I had made one like it first and some how, after it was all sewn up, I squared it up wrong. I was so devastated that Damon came to the rescue as he always does.

This quote I threw in there from off of Pinterest.

Damon's Grandpa played the Saxophone and he would always say this:

"I get a lot of requests but I play anyway."

Also, Mary, the gal who quilted my quilt, put a musical note right above the Sax.

Love it!

Damon has some Native American history in his family tree.  Damon's grandpa grew up in a family that ran trading posts at various locations in Northwest New Mexico. Anyway there is a Native American rug that is in the family and this block is supposed to be identical to a part of that rug.

This block is called Grandmother's Flowers. It is by Charise Creates. I love Charise and this is not the first pattern of hers that I use in this quilt.  Yes. There's more.

This is the second. It is called Vintage block Light and Shadow.

I really love this one and have made a whole stack of them to make a lovely quilt of my very own!

And just so you know--it's a paper pieced pattern.

I know you'll sleep better knowing that.

And thirdly, it was Charise who designed the grandparents house for me. 

So along the way of working on this quilt I would have dreams of things that I felt that I needed to put in the quilt. For instances this block: Damon's Grandpa was not an official barber but would always cut his grandkids hair. And from what I understand they didn't like it. At least Damon didn't.

I dreamed about the back ground color of this block and that there should be a bird in it.

Also, this is what Damon's granddad would always say.

This is a wall hanging that was found in the grandparents home.

This was either a dream or a prompting to put into the quilt. Damon's grandpa was a butcher.

I paid someone $50 to make this paper pieced pattern for me. It was one expensive pattern.

The label on back. =)

For the backing I pieced a lot of left over fabric from the quilt top, but not all of it. Oh no. I have more. Lots more. I bought so much fabric for this thing, it's sad. 

It looks like I neglected to get a close up of the knitting needles (and the jam too,-- I'll have to add them in next time I see the quilt). Damon's grandma knew how to knit and made afghans for her grandchildren.

If you can't read any of the quotes let me know and I'll translate them for you. :)

  You guys! This awesome quilt is a 'mystery' quilt! Let me tell you about it. It's totally fun! :)  I signed up for a "mystery class" at My Girlfriends Quilt Shoppe.   A Mystery Quilt class goes like this: they tell you what materials you need and how to cut it up, but you have no idea what the quilt is going to look like.  When you get to the class you are given a slip of paper telling you what to do for the first step.  Then when you finish that step, you get a new slip of paper with the next step on it. And so on.  You don't know what the quilt is going to look like until it's finished. The mystery really keeps you moving at a fast pace. In addition to all that fun, there are lots of freebies handed out and yummy food to eat.  Boy, it would be so fun to do one of these classes with you girls! Someday... :)

Not to toot my own horn or anything...but I really love the colors I picked out.

The purple especially.

I gave this quilt to Cambria for her birthday!

I really love the word fabric I used.  It has "New York City" words on it, where Cambria was born, and other lovely words like "love" and "joy".

I got the backing for really cheap at the Quilt-in-a-Day website.  I probably would have gone for a different background that matched better, but for the price & quality of the fabric, I settled for this one.

 Mary Christensen at the Shop did the quilting and she also was the instructor for this class.  I love how you can see the quilting really well here, Mary is so talented.  You can see the words "love" and "joy" in the fabric in this picture as well.

Isn't it lovely?

                       I'm falling behind on my journaling. =)

These two easy quilts I made for my two younger brothers; James & Andrew. 

They are the bachelors in my family. 

But beyond their marital status; they are awesome men who are great with my kids. 

Which makes them stars!  

Who could use some extra love. 

And I do adore them. 

So making some cozy, snug warmth that they can

hunker down under on the dark, cold, windy nights. Ensuing wonderful feelings and thoughts that come when one feels loved, safe and happy. 

It's just right.

I have to tell about my sweet Damon. He is so wonderful in numerous ways I can not begain to say.
I love that he will quilt with me!

This year while on the annual shop hop he saw a flag quilt he liked and decided to make one like it.

Damon's talent astounds me. He pays such great attention to detail and accuracy. (I lack in this department. Big time.)

 This took him about a week to make.

 I love the stars he quilted in. He used the walking foot to make the stars on the borders and the darning foot for the loops and strars on the blue section. Then he stiched in the ditch for the red and white strips.

I love this man! He is the best in the world!

I made this quilt for my niece for a birthday present.  I found the purple fabric, Pumpkin Pie by Henry Glass, at a quilt shop that was going out of business a few years ago here in Logan.  I am really quite fond of purple, and this amazing fabric was just so beautiful! I was smitten. So I bought the whole bolt. At 80% off what else could I do?  Astounding deals don't happen every day.  

The picture is very busy, and with the whole name it doesn't look great, but in person it is cute.  

I used a deferent grunge fabric for each of the letters; I love grunge so much!  

Damon and I quilted this together; it's one of the last ones we did since we started our break from quilting at the shop.

In this close up, you can see that the fabric really is so pretty!  I used it for the backing too.

In the end, this quilt was really inexpensive because of the bargain on the Pumpkin Pie fabric! And very easy because all I did was put her name on it.  It's nice to make a simple quilt every now and then--it rejuvinates the soul and replinishes my love for the craft. 

Man! I miss you guys!

  I made this Chevron quilt for Damon's friends who just had their first baby.  They live in Pittsburgh and are Steeler's fans, so I wanted it to be black and yellow.  

  I picked out 1930's reprints for the black and yellow, and used thangles to make the design--it was very simple!  

  Unfortunately, I used grey thread to sew it together, and didn't realize that when it was all done you'd be able to see the grey thread through the white fabric, causing it to look dingy. It was so disheartening too since I had it custom quilted.   

For the inspiration for the quilting, I found this on pinterest.  I was really in love with it.  The quilting that my quilter did wasn't exactly like this, but she did a really good job!

For the backing I just used the remander of the yellow and black fabric.

The name of the quilt is actually 1930s Chevron, but this was the first tag that I made a little mistake on (it accidentally said 1980s Chevron on this tag!)

Love you two!

This quilt right here is a quilt for one of Damon's pals that lives in upstate New York.  I named it "chocolate flowers.'   Damon actually did most of the work on this. He picked out the colors and pattern, he cut the squares, and sewed them into rows.

I sewed the rows together and did the boarders.  The binding I initially attempted a decorative machine stitch again, but it was a disaster and I hated it.  I tried to pick it out, but the intricate machine stitches were so small that I couldn't get it out.  So in desperation I decided to undo a bit of the binding that hadn't been stitched on, cut into it, and just put a new binding over the old binding stretch that had the machine stitching on it.

I was going to hand-stitch the binding on after that, but Damon wanted to machine sew it on in a straight line so he did.  I have been completely and utterly converted back to hand-stitching the binding on after this experience!

The backing.

Close up of the brown and pink grunge.  I love the way the pink thread used in the quilting drifts in and out of being visible on this quilt from the brown areas and then onto the pink & patterned areas of the quilt.

I can't wait to show you my next quilt! It's a chevron, with 1930's and I had it custom quilted!