Ohio Star

Here is yet another block from the quilt shop hop 2011. We made such good progress on it this summer but sadly now its locked in a plastic storage bin waiting for time. We are falling slowly more and more behind on the quilt shop hops. However I feel that 2012 will be the year we catch up. 

Finished Almost Irish Chain

Hoping S has a better picture. Gives the general idea though. :)



R did most of the quilting. Artwork in the "white spaces" includes turtles, stars, seaweed, fish, stylistic nautilus, and a couple unidentifiable objects. We made a small dent on already cut 2 1/2" squares and finished it up in time for Christmas!

A cartoon block

Part of the 20101 quilt shop hop fabric this year has cartoons. How cool is that? Do to busy work schedules we haven't been quilting much this fall. but that's all going to change. Every January we the three S's swear this is the year we finish all the the half finished projects and this year we will. Woot!

Irish Chain sorta

Shhhh... It's a work in process for the holidays. But since the intended doesn't read this blog probably safe to talk about.

I like intricate small pieces in complicated designs. In my attempt to move from smaller postage stamp sized quilt squares I moved to this. It's an Irish chain like pattern, however instead of one fabric making the pattern all of the little 2.5 inch squares are in the same color plait. I resisted my desire to make these pieces 1 inch postage stamp size but barely. More pictures to follow.

Spool

Spools woot, one of the S's really likes spools. she made this block as a test to see if she wanted to make a whole quilt out of it. I think she decided to add it to the maybe list. Will we see a whole quilt made out of this pattern here soon? Maybe we will wait and see. In the mean time here is another addition to the quilt shop hop quilt.We are making progress slowly but hey the turtle won the race right?

More Dresdens

This quilt has a lot of Dresden plate blocks some of them like this one below is a mini Dresden. Look at how small the individual pieces are. Next photo op we will have to picture the mini Dresden with a coin to give some perspective.  

Oh the Kite Quilt!

I almost don't want to talk about this quilt. It brings back difficult memories. For starters, I thought it would be a great idea to do a paper piece type quilt without doing paper piece.

So, I hopped on my computer and made myself a pattern for kites. Then, I printed out the pattern, built like 4 kites, swore, yelled, and complained. Then, I realized the printer scaled my pattern and I was about 20% to small. So, those went in our extra pieces scrap bin and I started alllll over!

Since I wanted each kite to be different, I cut each piece separately. This took a very long time to complete but it was worth it. I think it turned out adorable. I embroidered little kite tails to each of the kites after I put the quilt together.




I would make the sky a little more plain to accent the kites if I did this again. I thought a pale shade of blue with different patterns would fade into the background but it didn't. Oh well. Lesson learned.

Whirly Gig

As part of the quilt shop hop the whirly gigs enter the finished block pile. That's right we have enough finished blocks to call it a pile. Go us. These are a little wonky right now but trim them iron them and they will be a perfect addition to the quilt. We are still debating on how to set all the squares. The last quilt shop hop we set with stripes in between the squares.   

An really Old Family Quilt

Well maybe just an old family quilt. Grandma J. made this quilt a long long time ago the 1940s  (I think, could be wrong about the date). This quilt was on family beds for years and now resides in the family vacation cabin still on family beds. Grandma J would not have won any quilting awards. Like herself her quilts were quirky. She was not a fan of the saying measure twice cut once. She was more of a measure, well guess the size cut and if it isn't the right size cut again or add another piece. It was a quilt you were making, you were going to sew it together anyway. If you look closely at the stars in this quilt you will see that not a single point matches quit right and all the squares are different. In fact I think the crazy quilt pattern was her favorite for making start. She made quite a few in this general pattern. And every one of them is fun, colorful and not quite perfectly square. Even After Grandma A. spend a long time in the 1960s trying to get the points to match up. Grandma A was a firm believer in the measure twice saying.

Red-work quilt

Ever since I saw my first picture of  a red-work quilt I wanted one. As the other two S's won't make me one I decided to make my own. That said stem stitch is boring after a while, so I am thinking of doing a sampler quilt of different stitches and patterns. If my calculations are correct I will need 90 different squares. I am still  picking out -patterns I want to try. Here is block one. 89 more to go. 

Shop Hop 2008

I'd just moved to the greater Seattle area. You quilters probably already knew this, but...hopping from shop to shop gives you an introduction to backroads you had NO clue existed! The girls and I shopped from Vancouver to Lynden. And then we got busy sewing. I'm admitting progress might have been a little slow. Here are a few of our finished blocks:


A simple but rather striking block. I love seeing the ideas each shop brings together as they design within a theme and with the year's fabric.

Check out the mantis eyes below! And the flower. It looks velvety soft. I want to reach out and touch. Isn't this awesome embroidery? Way to go, S!

A Floral Snowstorm

That stack of 6" floral blocks...we're not sure where we got them. So onward with the mission to finish half finished project -- in this case, maybe less than half finished -- we chose a blocky pattern to mellow the flower. Blocks were sorted by color; hopefully enough of each palette for a complete square. Here's our finished quilt top:


Does anyone know the name of this simple block?

Flowers and Coins

Picture a gallon zip-lock bag crammed full of 5" squares. To be honest these were approximately 5", give or take a bit. We've been working out of this particular sack a couple years and created several quilt tops. This month's challenge: Use orange and pink! And here's the result. A unique, cheery baby quilt.

and the back just as cheery as the front 

R did a a great job on the machine quilting. I've taken a close-up so y'all can admire the tiny flowers and critters. Also thanking Alice Marshall at Running Stitch Fabrics in Kent, Washington for allowing our 16-year-old the opportunity to work on the machine. :)

Gram's Pinwheel Quilt

Gram never was particularly tall and as she got older, she became even shorter. Most quilts were too long and bunglesome for comfort. Her eyesight was also going so I put together a bright, pinwheel pattern, lap quilt so it would be easier to pull up or kick off.

I tied it for extra texture.

Here it is at the design stage, laid out on the floor. If you look closely you'll notice my dyslexia. Some of the blocks spiral clockwise and others counter clockwise.

When Gram passed away, the quilt came to one of the younger girls. Here's how it looks today after many more years of love.

Roo's Quilt or the Hearty Heart Quilt

Roo's Quilt has hundreds of little hand appliquéd hearts. I don't remember how many, but I do remember being excited that we only had 187 left to go. It's a full size quilt and a happy birthday quilt, made in what we termed the "bruise palette" -- greens, yellows, purples, and lots of turquoise (Roo's favorite color).

After this quilt I swore I would never make another heart pattern again. Why might you ask, did we make a heart quilt? Well this project was part of the half finished project pile, and all of the hearts were leftovers.


We also made a matching tuffet. Here it is:

First of the Dresdens!

One of the Dresden Plate blocks in the shop hop 2011. I believe we have four or five. After quilting we might add a gawdy bright red or yellow button in the middle of the yoyo.

Rescued from the Rag Bag!

Reaching back one more generation. Grandma Henry embroidered these state bird and flower blocks from the 40's. When cut apart, they were different sizes. Totally an annoyance to her, so she disgustedly plopped them in a drawer. Fast forward 60 years... and S, it's your turn to take up the story.



So years later S and Grandma A were cleaning out the half finished projects. This lovely quilt was destined for the rag bag. The strips of embroidery were inches from tossing the rag bag, but I saved them in all their embroidered beauty.  It wasn't until I cut all the squares apart that I realized that Grandma Henry never measured anything in her life, nothing was square, nothing was the same size so I threw the birds in a candy tin and there they sat for 10 more  years.

Finally I saw a picture of a wonky log cabin. I realized I could put borders on the squares the borders didn't have to be the same size.

There you have it one of our longer half finished projects done. Production time 72 years.

Jill's Graduation Quilt Leftovers Make a Baby Quilt

Here is Jillybean's graduation quilt...no...
Wedding? No.
Congratulation on the twin's birth? No
Anniversary? No.
Happy Birthday Quilt? YES!

And here it is, 12 years of procrastination later, (...as soon as I find the image and yes I am rolling my eyes.) I will create the blog for it, but in the meantime we hope you enjoy our leftovers from several project turned into M's baby quilt.




We had a few leftover pieces, so made this baby quilt for wee baby M. The wee baby quilt also has leftover pieces from my moment of insanity, the postage stamp days.

Flying Wild Geese

I wasn't doing it this year; I didn't have time... Right. So here's a block from our guild's Round Robin -- the one I wasn't participating in.



I've always had a soft spot for wild geese blocks. This one flies in a circle, is paper-pieced and made a brilliant sun.

Spring blossom

This square was complicated little tiny squares weird curving center. But is done and cute. 

Here it is again -- after fixing the corners. :) Amazing how our brains "fix" things. I certainly didn't notice those two corners being kittywampus at first.

It's a Dot

It's a dot. Sadly I need a new camera so it's a fuzzy dot. One square closer to a finished quilt. 

worktable block

One more block done on the quilt shop hop. 78 or so to go. 

Evil Stripey Quilt of Doom:Middle

When I started this quilt I was ooh so excited. I cut out thousands of little diamonds. I had a pattern, a color scheme, everything was going to be great! My color scheme is mostly greys, pale yellow, and purples with a touch of pink/red.

Then my little diamonds wouldn't sew together properly. So I threw my project in the bag, lost my patterns, and have a million little diamonds and strips all cut out. This is one of these projects my family will look back on and say your great auntie started this quilt in the early 2000s.

Below is my sketch of what it would look like when it is done (with color coding)

The Citrus Quilt:The beginning

For many years I have been collecting fabric and thinking about the citrus quilt. At the moment, it has lemons, limes, and grapefruits with some Turquoise for contract. . However, I have also included some other fabric that have the same color scheme. Attached are pictures of my fabric, and the patterns I'm thinking about. The fabric may be culled to remove stuff I don't think fits. The top picture is an applique pattern(no yoyo for mine). The bottom are patterns of my own making. Someday, I will decide which one to use.

Welcome to S S and S quilts

Welcome! We are three quilters trying and sometimes failing to finish up three generations of half-finished projects. Our projects range from super easy, weekend quilts to  paper piecing, embroidery and applique. We have high hopes of completing these projects soon -- really, really soon...just as soon as we try this cool, new pattern.