Bloggers Virtual Quilt Show

While reading blogs this morning, I discovered the First Bloggers Online Virtual Quilt Show hosted by Amy at the blog Park City Girl. There is still time to enter your favorite quilt and then blog about it. 

Chosing a favorite quilt is like chosing your favorite child, friend, book, food - it's hard to choose just one. I debated choosing the Neutral Stars Quilt. 

The neutral fabric just came together on that one. I thought about the band quilt I made using the Friendship Crossing Pattern by Pat Wys. The colors that I had to use blue, gold, and cream are not my normal color choices. (I can't find the photo at this minute. Will look later today) There was also the T-shirt quilt for my previous school. The colors just came together. I guess you can tell that I'm all about the color choices of the fabrics in my quilts.

 I decided to feature the quilt that I just completed. It's called the Mulberry Author Quilt. Our fourth grade students wrote to their favorite authors. They included a 6 inch quilt square in the letter requesting the author to autograph it and mail it back to us. We had 23 squares to include in the quilt. That's a hard number to design with. I brought the squares to my art teacher. In our discussion it occured to me to add more color to the quilt and to use Sharon Henderson's T-Shirt Quilt Pattern. I had found some library book fabric from an online shop. I visited Melisa at Sweet Home Quilt Shop to purchase additional fabric for the background and quilt sashings. Peggy Barkle quilted it for me. She did a fabulous job enhancing the blocks, but not interfering with the autographs. The quilt will be shown to the students this week. I've taken photos of each block. These photos in addition to pictures of the authors and their books will be used in a Powerpoint Presentation. We have autographs from some wonderful children's authors, Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary, Barbara Park, Christopher Paolini, R.L. Stine - just to name a few. Thanks for viewing my quilt! Click on my side-bar to visit the other quilts in the Bloggers Virtual Quilt Show.

T-Shirt Quilts

Our youngest  son will be a Senior in High School this year.  T-Shirt quilts are quite popular here at high school graduation time. I've saved his favorite T-shrits since he was in kindergarten. Sunday, I pulled all the t-shirts out of their hiding place. I had Michael go through the shirts to begin choosing the ones that will be in his quilt. He found it hard to believe that he actually wore some of those tiny shirts. We smiled at the Rugrats shirt with Tommy and Dil. Harrry Potter, The Ninja Turtles, and lots of videogame shirt were chosen for his quilt. Now, you might think I'm starting this a bit early. Michael's quilt is not the only one that I need to make this year. I have three to make before the end of May. Friday, I took him to Intown Quilts to choose background and border fabric. He wanted really "bland" fabric, but I think what we choose will work great. He told me " that what seems like five minutes in a quilt shop for me is really a long time."   He brought his Ipod and was very patient :)

I also have to make a T-shirt quilt for a friend's daughter. I had her do some of the cutting of the T-shirt. We've chosen fabric for her quilt. Her T-shirts are a bit boring so  we chose bright fabric, blacks, pinks and greens. 

The third quilt is for a teen who is a gymnist. She wants to use her competition leotards. That should be interesting and different.

This is the first T-shirt quilt that I made. It was made  for my previous elementary school. I collected T-shirts from the years that I was not at the school. The pattern designer Sharon Henderson taught a class at my LQS so I was blessed to have her quidance on this quilt. It remained at the school when I moved to my new school this past year. 

This quilt was made for my friend's son. He had almost too many t-shirts. He had some interesting shirts so it was fun to work on.