Rolling Blue Waves

Hurricane Ike is nearing us today and I am binding this quilt while I stay home. Hooray! It is now  completed for Ben and Steph. I will mail it to them on Monday. I don't know why I avoid these little binding tasks for so long, maybe because a queen size quilt is so unwieldy. 

This lovely blue quilt is quilted with a serpentine stitch covering all the seams on the half triangle blocks, this helps with durability when you have a one year old and a  little pomeranian dog. These are large blue blocks and this worked up quickly. It has interlocking stars on the dark blue borders. Some of the fabric has little white doves on them, a hope for a peaceful nation and a peaceful home from grandma.

Learning Quilt

This really should be called a learning to tie quilt. I had 13 girls around my quilt frame learning to tie. They did not want to learn to cut squares, or piece, or sew or bind a quilt, just tie! My mom taught my sisters' and I to tie simple comforters made of two sheets tied together with yarn and batting between. We used to do these on our driveway, with half of the neighborhood girls on a sunny spring or summer day, I guess I was 10?

I forgot the batting after we got to the church building and had no time to go for any- so we told the girls that this was for a beach blanket or tablecloth. They learned to tie easier without the batting, and then we drew names and one girl got to keep it. She was pretty excited to be the winner.

One day years ago mom and I went to this "all you could stuff in a grocery sack for a dollar" thrift store in Maryland. We bought all the bright colored plaid shirts and Hawaiian shirts, striped oxford cloth etc. We had five full sacks. We took them home and washed them up and cut everything up. We made many different types of quilts from them. This one had all the plaids. Being us we even purchased some plaids to add brightness to this. I had this top in my stash when they asked for a quilt to be taught.

The pastel one has men's striped oxford dress shirts with additional feed sack reproduction prints and the blue one has blue striped dress shirts from those original grocery bags. There is a lot of available fabric in a men's shirt!