Author: bramangirlsquilt

Have you ever made a quilt and it wasn’t quite right?  That’s what happened with this one.  A few years ago I made a wall hanging as a challenge quilt.  I had to use their specific fabrics and it had to be a specific size.  I used my brother’s Christmas tree field as inspiration.  There are big trees, little trees and lots of stumps from the trees he harvests every year at Christmas time.  As I look back,  I really should have put some holes in the ground from where he digs up trees for transplanting.  I liked the looks of the wallhanging, but the problem was it needed to be bigger to snuggle up in.

Seeing the buck behind the tree was special to my brother and his kids as they all deer hunt in that field and surrounding area.

Stuck at home, in this quartatine we find ourselves in, led me to removing the binding.  I couldn’t remove the border since the entire thing had been quilted.  So this quilter did as quilters do, I made more blocks and added them on one side and the top.  We’ve decided the original border that is now in the middle of the quilt is the driveway we use when out picking out our Christmas tree.

The quilting was the most difficult part of this remake as I had originally quilted it in a wavy line.  Now I had to line up my new wavy lines to match.

Another project completed during this stay-at-home order.  My brother called it an heirloom quilt, which I appreciated.  On to the next one, “Hen House” pattern by claire turpin.

With the Stay at Home Order in Michigan we were unable to have the usual family Easter Dinner.  I decided to make bread baskets for each of my sons’ families and fill them with Grandma’s homemade rolls.  (Ha Ha, they are Rhodes frozen rolls.   But I do back them, and all my grandkids love them)

Thirty-some years ago I made baskets everyday.  Just like my fabric stash, I have a reed stash.  So I dragged out the reed, the clothes pins and a small table covered with an old towel and started soaking reed.

Since the reed was out and soaking, I decided to make myself a much needed garlic basket and one for my sister too.

Baskets were made, but I didn’t have enough of my homemade walnut stain, so my husband and I gathered walnuts from my parent’s yard.  Here, I’m boiling the walnuts to make the stain.  It’s a stinky job, and you need to keep watch so that you don’t boil over.

 

Stained and dried. That was a nice change for my creativity. Tomorrow back to quilting.

I’ve been collage quilting animals lately. When I decided to try to draw a goat I had my granddaughter take a picture of her mini goat as inspiration.

From this picture you can see my drawing and the start of the project. I had lots of fabric with Steam-a-Seam 2 already on the back so I didn’t have much prep work. Just traced Antonio onto the base fabric and started placing fabric.

At this point the goat is completed on the base fabric, now to find a backing fabric that would look good with him and fit in to my granddaughter’s bedroom.

Antonio is ready for hanging. The perfect little wall hanging for my granddaughter’s bedroom. Now to decide which of her animals to collage next; horse, rabbit, dog maybe even her cat.

I started collage quilting just a few years ago.  My first class was at Seven Sisters Quilt Shop.  It was a Laura Heine pattern of a cow named Abilene.  I was hooked from that first quilt.  I’ve made many more collage quilts using her patterns as you can see from my previous posts.

My last collage creations is one of my very own.  Here is “Old Iron.”

When my son was twelve-years-old he convinced my husband to buy him an old two-cylinder John Deere,  an old “putt-Putt.”  Since that time they have collected over 40 of these old tractors.  Many are found in a fence row next to a stone pile, like this one.

 

 

I waited for a bit of snow to photograph my snowman quilt.

Snowman is just hanging around at the farm.  He’s the perfect quilt to snuggle with on the couch for the entire winter.

I love barn quilts.  We made a weekend trip to Wisconsin this summer with some friends and saw many on barns along the highway.     Even though our barns are all pole barns, my husband got me a barn quilt for Christmas a few years ago.

This spring I wanted a barn quilt sign by our driveway at Otsego Lake in northern Michigan.  No need for any writing on this sign, our friends would all know it was our place because it is a smaller version of the one on our barn,

One of my projects last winter was to sew a quilt to look just like my barn quilt.

 

Here’s Jack.  This is my latest quilted wall hanging made from a Laura Heine pattern.  As a child we always grew our pumpkins in the corn field, so I thought it was the perfect place to photograph it.

I know you have seen this quilt before on my blog.  But this summer Nancy and I spent  some time photographing our quilts in a natural situation.  We planned to take pictures with the barn as the background, but then I looked at our cornfield 10 feet away.  I love both of these, but the cow in the corn is the best.

 

They are still works in progress; Nancy’s fish and my fox. We had so much fun at Laura Heine’s Fiberworks class. I had taken a class here in Michigan at a local quilt store, but we learned so much from Laura. From fabric selection, use of color and the techniques she uses. These are both from her mini series.

When I got home I started another fox. What a difference fabric selection makes. This is what I love about making a collage quilt, They all have their own personalities. I’m sure that will change even more when I get them quilted.

Lots of quilting this week.  I’m headed to  Acworth, Georgia to see my sister and we are going to a quilt guild, then quilt class with instructor Laura Heine.   Then next week on to Nashville, Tennesse for QuiltCon 2019, the Modern Quilt Show.  I’ll try to post pictures along the way.

“Come Bossie” is my first attempt of a  Laura Heine pattern.  If you attended the American Quilters Society show in Grand Rapids Michigan August, 2018 you may have seen her.  I was thrilled to get this wall quilt into a AQS show.

I made this squirrel last year.  He usually lives on the wall at our lake house.

A Laura Heine pattern.

I left in a snowstorm with icy, snowy roads. But it was worth the drive because I just ate lunch in Nancy’s back yard with no coat and daffodils starting to bloom.